Jim Baen’s Universe

Vol 2 Num 4 December 2007

Written by Jim Baen’s Universe! Staff

Jim Baen’s Universe, Volume 2, Issue 4

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this magazine are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

Copyright (c) 2007 by Jim Baen’s Universe

A Baen Publishing Enterprises Publication

Jim Baen’s Universe

P. O. Box 7488

Moore, OK 73153-1488

ISSN: 1932-0930

“Laws of Survival” Copyright (c) 2007 by Nancy Kress

“Misfits” Copyright (c) 2007 by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller

“Double Secret Weapon” Copyright (c) 2007 Tony Frazier

“Darwin’s Suitcase” Copyright (c) 2007 by Elizabeth Malartre

“Christmas Eve at Harvey Wallbanger’s” Copyright (c) 2007 by Mike Resnick

“Fossilized Gods” Copyright (c) 2007 by J. Simon

“Second Banana” Copyright (c) 2007 by Way Jeng

“The Art of Memory” Copyright (c) 2007 by Barry N. Malzberg and Jack Dann

“Countdown to Armageddon, Episode Two” Copyright (c) 2007 by Edward M. Lerner

“Fish Story, Episode Ten” Copyright (c) 2007 by Dave Freer, Eric Flint and Andrew Dennis

“Inheritance” Copyright (c) 2007 by David Wesley

“Queen’s Mask” Copyright (c) 2007 by Barbara Tarbox

“Rubber Sciences” by Norman Spinrad This article was first published in The Craft of Science Fiction, edited by Reginald Breitnor and published by Harper and Row in 1976.

“Your Medical Care in the Coming Three Decades” Copyright (c) 2007 by Stephen Euin Cobb

“A Holy Terror” by Ambrose Bierce was originally published in Twisted, May 1962

Laws of Survival

Written by Nancy Kress

Illustrated by John Ward

My name is Jill. I am somewhere you can’t imagine, going somewhere even more unimaginable. If you think I like what I did to get here, you’re crazy.

Actually, I’m the one who’s crazy. You—any “you”—will never read this. But I have paper now, and a sort of pencil, and time. Lots and lots of time. So I will write what happened, all of it, as carefully as I can.

After all—why the hell not?

I went out very early one morning to look for food. Before dawn was safest for a woman alone. The boy-gangs had gone to bed, tired of attacking each other. The trucks from the city hadn’t arrived yet. That meant the garbage was pretty picked over, but it also meant most of the refugee camp wasn’t out scavenging. Most days I could find enough: a carrot stolen from somebody’s garden patch, my arm bloody from reaching through the barbed wire. Overlooked potato peelings under a pile of rags and glass. A can of stew thrown away by one of the soldiers on the base, but still half full. Soldiers on duty by the Dome were often careless. They got bored, with nothing to do.

That morning was cool but fair, with a pearly haze that the sun would burn off later. I wore all my clothing, for warmth, and my boots. Yesterday’s garbage load, I’d heard somebody say, was huge, so I had hopes. I hiked to my favorite spot, where garbage spills almost to the Dome wall. Maybe I’d find bread, or even fruit that wasn’t too rotten.

Instead I found the puppy.

Its eyes weren’t open yet and it squirmed along the bare ground, a scrawny brown-and-white mass with a tiny fluffy tail. Nearby was a fluid-soaked towel. Some sentimental fool had left the puppy there, hoping … what? It didn’t matter. Scrawny or not, there was some meat on the thing. I scooped it up.

The sun pushed above the horizon, flooding the haze with golden light.

I hate it when grief seizes me. I hate it and it’s dangerous, a violation of one of Jill’s Laws of Survival. I can go for weeks, months without thinking of my life before the War. Without remembering or feeling. Then something will strike me—a flower growing in the dump, a burst of birdsong, the stars on a clear night—and grief will hit me like the maglevs that no longer exist, a grief all the sharper because it contains the memory of joy. I can’t afford joy, which always comes with an astronomical price tag. I can’t even afford the grief that comes from the memory of living things, which is why it is only the flower, the birdsong, the morning sunlight that starts it. My grief was not for that puppy. I still intended to eat it.

But I heard a noise behind me and turned. The Dome wall was opening.

* * *

Who knew why the aliens put their Domes by garbage dumps, by waste pits, by radioactive cities? Who knew why aliens did anything?

There was a widespread belief in the camp that the aliens started the War. I’m old enough to know better. That was us, just like the global warming and the bio-crobes were us. The aliens didn’t even show up until the War was over and Raleigh was the northernmost city left on the East Coast and refugees poured south like mudslides. Including me. That’s when the ships landed and then turned into the huge gray Domes like upended bowls. I heard there were many Domes, some in other countries. The Army, what was left of it, threw tanks and bombs at ours. When they gave up, the refugees threw bullets and Molotov cocktails and prayers and graffiti and candle-light vigils and rain dances. Everything slid off and the Domes just sat there. And sat. And sat. Three years later, they were still sitting, silent and closed, although of course there were rumors to the contrary. There are always rumors. Personally, I’d never gotten over a slight disbelief that the Dome was there at all. Who would want to visit us?

The opening was small, no larger than a porthole, and about six feet above the ground. All I could see inside was a fog the same color as the Dome. Something came out, gliding quickly toward me. It took me a moment to realize it was a robot, a blue metal sphere above a hanging basket. It stopped a foot from my face and said, “This food for this dog.”

I could have run, or screamed, or at the least—the very least —looked around for a witness. I didn’t. The basket held a pile of fresh produce, green lettuce and deep purple eggplant and apples so shiny red they looked lacquered. And peaches … My mouth filled with sweet water. I couldn’t move.

The puppy whimpered.

My mother used to make fresh peach pie.

I scooped the food into my scavenger bag, laid the puppy in the basket, and backed away. The robot floated back into the Dome, which closed immediately. I sped back to my corrugated-tin and windowless hut and ate until I couldn’t hold any more. I slept, woke, and ate the rest, crouching in the dark so nobody else would see. All that fruit and vegetables gave me the runs, but it was worth it.

Peaches.

* * *

Two weeks later, I brought another puppy to the Dome, the only survivor of a litter deep in the dump. I never knew what happened to the mother. I had to wait a long time outside the Dome before the blue sphere took the puppy in exchange for produce. Apparently the Dome would only open when there was no one else around to see. What were they afraid of? It’s not like PETA was going to show up.

The next day I traded three of the peaches to an old man in exchange for a small, mangy poodle. We didn’t look each other in the eye, but I nonetheless knew that his held tears. He limped hurriedly away. I kept the dog, which clearly wanted nothing to do with me, in my shack until very early morning and then took it to the Dome. It tried to escape but I’d tied a bit of rope onto its frayed collar. We sat outside the Dome in mutual dislike, waiting, as the sky paled slightly in the east. Gunshots sounded in the distance.

I have never owned a dog.

When the Dome finally opened, I gripped the dog’s rope and spoke to the robot. “Not fruit. Not vegetables. I want eggs and bread.”

The robot floated back inside.

Instantly I cursed myself. Eggs? Bread? I was crazy not to take what I could get. That was Law of Survival #1. Now there would be nothing. Eggs, bread … crazy. I glared at the dog and kicked it. It yelped, looked indignant, and tried to bite my boot.

The Dome opened again and the robot glided toward me. In the gloom I couldn’t see what was in the basket. In fact, I couldn’t see the basket. It wasn’t there. Mechanical tentacles shot out from the sphere and seized both me and the poodle. I cried out and the tentacles squeezed harder. Then I was flying through the air, the stupid dog suddenly howling beneath me, and we were carried through the Dome wall and inside.

Then nothing.

* * *

A nightmare room made of nightmare sound: barking, yelping, whimpering, snapping. I jerked awake, sat up, and discovered myself on a floating platform above a mass of dogs. Big dogs, small dogs, old dogs, puppies, sick dogs, dogs that looked all too healthy, flashing their forty-two teeth at me—why did I remember that number? From where? The largest and strongest dogs couldn’t quite reach me with their snaps, but they were trying.

“You are operative,” the blue metal sphere said, floating beside me. “Now we must begin. Here.”

Its basket held eggs and bread.

“Get them away!”

Obediently it floated off.

“Not the food! The dogs!”

“What to do with these dogs?”

“Put them in cages!” A large black animal—German shepherd or Boxer or something—had nearly closed its jaws on my ankle. The next bite might do it.

“Cages,” the metal sphere said in its uninflected mechanical voice. “Yes.”

“Son of a bitch!” The shepherd leaping high had grazed my thigh; its spittle slimed my pants. “Raise the goddamn platform!”

“Yes.”

The platform floated so high, that I had to duck my head to avoid hitting the ceiling. I peered over the edge and … no, that wasn’t possible. But it was happening. The floor was growing upright sticks, and the sticks were growing crossbars, and the crossbars were extending themselves into mesh tops … Within minutes, each dog was encased in a cage just large enough to hold its protesting body.

“What to do now?” the metal sphere asked.

I stared at it. I was, as far as I knew, the first human being to ever enter an alien Dome, I was trapped in a small room with feral caged dogs and a robot … what to do now?

“Why … why am I here?” I hated myself for the brief stammer and vowed it would not happen again. Law of Survival #2: Show no fear.

Would a metal sphere even recognize fear?

It said, “These dogs do not behave correctly.”

“Not behave correctly?”

“No.”

I looked down again at the slavering and snarling mass of dogs; how strong was that mesh on the cage tops? “What do you want them to do?”

“You want to see the presentation?”

“Not yet.” Law #3: Never volunteer for anything.

“What to do now?”

How the hell should I know? But the smell of the bread reached me and my stomach flopped. “Now to eat,” I said. “Give me the things in your basket.”

It did, and I tore into the bread like a wolf into deer. The real wolves below me increased their howling. When I’d eaten an entire loaf, I looked back at the metal sphere. “Have those dogs eaten?”

“Yes.”

“What did you give them?”

“Garbage.”

”Garbage? Why?”

“In hell they eat garbage.”

So even the robot thought this was Hell. Panic surged through me; I pushed it back. Surviving this would depend on staying steady. “Show me what you fed the dogs.”

“Yes.” A section of wall melted and garbage cascaded into the room, flowing greasily between the cages. I recognized it: It was exactly like the garbage I picked through every day, trucked out from a city I could no longer imagine and from the Army base I could not approach without being shot. Bloody rags, tin cans from before the War, shit, plastic bags, dead flowers, dead animals, dead electronics, cardboard, eggshells, paper, hair, bone, scraps of decaying food, glass shards, potato peelings, foam rubber, roaches, sneakers with holes, sagging furniture, corn cobs. The smell hit my stomach, newly distended with bread.

“You fed the dogs that?”

“Yes. They eat it in hell.”

Outside. Hell was outside, and of course that’s what the feral dogs ate, that’s all there was. But the metal sphere had produced fruit and lettuce and bread for me.

“You must give them better food. They eat that in … in hell because they can’t get anything else.”

“What to do now?”

It finally dawned on me—slow, I was too slow for this, only the quick survive—that the metal sphere had limited initiative along with its limited vocabulary. But it had made cages, made bread, made fruit—hadn’t it? Or was this stuff grown in some unimaginable secret garden inside the Dome? “You must give the dogs meat.”

“Flesh?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

No change in that mechanical voice, but the “no” was definite and quick. Law of Survival #4: Notice everything. So—no flesh-eating allowed here. Also no time to ask why not; I had to keep issuing orders so that the robot didn’t start issuing them. “Give them bread mixed with … with soy protein.”

“Yes.”

“And take away the garbage.”

“Yes.”

The garbage began to dissolve. I saw nothing poured on it, nothing rise from the floor. But all that stinking mass fell into powder and vanished. Nothing replaced it.

I said, “Are you getting bread mixed with soy powder?” Getting seemed the safest verb I could think of.

“Yes.”

The stuff came then, tumbling through the same melted hole in the wall, loaves of bread with, presumably, soy powder in them. The dogs, barking insanely, reached paws and snouts and tongues through the bars of their cages. They couldn’t get at the food.

“Metal sphere—do you have a name?”

No answer.

“Okay. Blue, how strong are those cages? Can the dogs break them? Any of the dogs?”

“No.”

“Lower the platform to the floor.”

My safe perch floated down. The aisles between the cages were irregular, some wide and some so narrow the dogs could reach through to touch each other, since each cage had “grown” wherever the dog was at the time. Gingerly I picked my way to a clearing and sat down. Tearing a loaf of bread into chunks, I pushed the pieces through the bars of the least dangerous-looking dogs, which made the bruisers howl even more. For them, I put chunks at a distance they could just reach with a paw through the front bars of their prisons.

The puppy I had first brought to the Dome lay in a tiny cage. Dead.

The second one was alive but just barely.

The old man’s mangy poodle looked more mangy than ever, but otherwise alert. It tried to bite me when I fed it.

“What to do now?”

“They need water.”

“Yes.”

Water flowed through the wall. When it had reached an inch or so, it stopped. The dogs lapped whatever came into their cages. I stood with wet feet—a hole in my boot after all, I hadn’t known—and a stomach roiling from the stench of the dogs, which only worsened as they got wet. The dead puppy smelled especially horrible. I climbed back onto my platform.

“What to do now?”

“You tell me,” I said.

“These dogs do not behave correctly.”

“Not behave correctly?”

“No.”

“What do you want them to do?”

“Do you want to see the presentation?”

We had been here before. On second thought, a “presentation” sounded more like acquiring information (“Notice everything”) than like undertaking action (“Never volunteer”). So I sat cross-legged on the platform, which was easier on my uncushioned bones, breathed through my mouth instead of my nose, and said “Why the hell not?”

Blue repeated, “Do you want to see the presentation?”

“Yes.” A one-syllable answer.

I didn’t know what to expected. Aliens, spaceships, war, strange places barely comprehensible to humans. What I got was scenes from the dump.

A beam of light shot out from Blue and resolved into a three-dimensional holo, not too different from one I’d seen in a science museum on a school field trip once (no. push memory away), only this was far sharper and detailed. A ragged and unsmiling toddler, one of thousands, staggered toward a cesspool. A big dog with patchy coat dashed up, seized the kid’s dress, and pulled her back just before she fell into the waste.

A medium-sized brown dog in a guide-dog harness led around someone tapping a white-headed cane.

An Army dog, this one sleek and well-fed, sniffed at a pile of garbage, found something, pointed stiffly at attention.

A group of teenagers tortured a puppy. It writhed in pain, but in a long lingering close-up, tried to lick the torturer’s hand.

A thin, small dog dodged rocks, dashed inside a corrugated tin hut, and laid a piece of carrion beside an old lady lying on the ground.

The holo went on and on like that, but the strange thing was that the people were barely seen. The toddler’s bare and filthy feet and chubby knees, the old lady’s withered cheek, a flash of a camouflage uniform above a brown boot, the hands of the torturers. Never a whole person, never a focus on people. Just on the dogs.

The “presentation” ended.

“These dogs do not behave correctly,” Blue said.

“These dogs? In the presentation?”

“These dogs here do not behave correctly.”

“These dogs here.” I pointed to the wet, stinking dogs in their cages. Some, fed now, had quieted. Others still snarled and barked, trying their hellish best to get out and kill me.

“These dogs here. Yes. What to do now?”

“You want these dogs to behave like the dogs in the presentation.”

“These dogs here must behave correctly. Yes.”

“You want them to … do what? Rescue people? Sniff out ammunition dumps? Guide the blind and feed the hungry and love their torturers?”

Blue said nothing. Again I had the impression I had exceeded its thought processes, or its vocabulary, or its something. A strange feeling gathered in my gut.

“Blue, you yourself didn’t build this Dome, or the starship that it was before, did you? You’re just a … a computer.”

Nothing.

“Blue, who tells you what to do?”

“What to do now? These dogs do not behave correctly.”

“Who wants these dogs to behave correctly?” I said, and found I was holding my breath.

“The masters.”

The masters. I knew all about them. Masters were the people who started wars, ran the corporations that ruined the Earth, manufactured the bioweapons that killed billions, and now holed up in the cities to send their garbage out to us in the refugee camps. Masters were something else I didn’t think about, but not because grief would take me. Rage would.

Law of Survival #5: Feel nothing that doesn’t aid survival.

“Are the masters here? In this … inside here?”

“No.”

“Who is here inside?”

“These dogs here are inside.”

Clearly. “The masters want these dogs here to behave like the dogs in the presentation.”

“Yes.”

“The masters want these dogs here to provide them with loyalty and protection and service.”

No response.

“The masters aren’t interested in human beings, are they? That’s why they haven’t communicated at all with any government.”

Nothing. But I didn’t need a response; the masters’ thinking was already clear to me. Humans were unimportant—maybe because we had, after all, destroyed each other and our own world. We weren’t worth contact. But dogs: companion animals capable of selfless service and great unconditional love, even in the face of abuse. For all I knew, dogs were unique in the universe. For all I know.

Blue said, “What to do now?”

I stared at the mangy, reeking, howling mass of animals. Some feral, some tamed once, some sick, at least one dead. I chose my words to be as simple as possible, relying on phrases Blue knew. “The masters want these dogs here to behave correctly.”

“Yes.”

“The masters want me to make these dogs behave correctly.”

“Yes.”

“The masters will make me food, and keep me inside, for to make these dogs behave correctly.”

Long pause; my sentence had a lot of grammatical elements. But finally Blue said, “Yes.”

“If these dogs do not behave correctly, the masters—what to do then?”

Another long pause. “Find another human.”

“And this human here?”

“Kill it.”

I gripped the edges of my floating platform hard. My hands still trembled. “Put me outside now.”

“No.”

“I must stay inside.”

“These dogs do not behave correctly.”

“I must make these dogs behave correctly.”

“Yes.”

“And the masters want these dogs to display …” I had stopped talking to Blue. I was talking to myself, to steady myself, but even that I couldn’t manage. The words caromed around in my mind—loyalty, service, protection—but none came out of my mouth. I couldn’t do this. I was going to die. The aliens had come from God-knew-where to treat the dying Earth like a giant pet store, intrigued only by a canine domestication that had happened ten thousand years ago and by nothing else on the planet, nothing else humanity had or might accomplish. Only dogs. The masters want these dogs to display—

Blue surprised me with a new word. “Love,” it said.

* * *

Law #4: Notice everything. I needed to learn all I could, starting with Blue. He’d made garbage appear, and food and water and cages. What else could he do?

“Blue, make the water go away.” And it did, just sank into the floor, which dried instantly. I was fucking Moses, commanding the Red Sea. I climbed off the platform, inched among the dog cages, and studied them individually.

“You called the refugee camp and the dump ‘hell.’ Where did you get that word?”

Nothing.

“Who said ‘hell’?”

“Humans.”

Blue had cameras outside the Dome. Of course he did; he’d seen me find that first puppy in the garbage. Maybe Blue had been waiting for someone like me, alone and non-threatening, to come close with a dog. But it had watched before that, and it had learned the word “hell,” and maybe it had recorded the incidents in the “presentation.” I filed this information for future use.

“This dog is dead.” The first puppy, decaying into stinking pulp. “It is killed. Non-operative.”

“What to do now?”

“Make the dead dog go away.”

A long pause: thinking it over? Accessing data banks? Communicating with aliens? And what kind of moron couldn’t figure out by itself that a dead dog was never going to behave correctly? So much for artificial intelligence.

“Yes,” Blue finally said, and the little corpse dissolved as if it had never been.

I found one more dead dog and one close to death. Blue disappeared the first, said no to the second. Apparently we had to just let it suffer until it died. I wondered how much the idea of “death” even meant to a robot. There were twenty-three live dogs, of which I had delivered only three to the Dome.

“Blue—did another human, before you brought me here, try to train the dogs?”

“These dogs do not behave correctly.”

“Yes. But did a human not me be inside? To make these dogs behave correctly?”

“Yes.”

“What happened to him or her?”

No response.

“What to do now with the other human?”

“Kill it.”

I put a hand against the wall and leaned on it. The wall felt smooth and slick, with a faint and unpleasant tingle. I removed my hand.

All computers could count. “How many humans did you kill?”

“Two.”

Three’s the charm. But there were no charms. No spells, no magic wards, no cavalry coming over the hill to ride to the rescue; I’d known that ever since the War. There was just survival. And, now, dogs.

I chose the mangy little poodle. It hadn’t bit me when the old man had surrendered it, or when I’d kept it overnight. That was at least a start. “Blue, make this dog’s cage go away. But only this one cage!”

The cage dissolved. The poodle stared at me distrustfully. Was I supposed to stare back, or would that get us into some kind of canine pissing contest? The thing was small but it had teeth.

I had a sudden idea. “Blue, show me how this dog does not behave correctly.” If I could see what it wasn’t doing, that would at least be a start.

Blue floated to within a foot of the dog’s face. The dog growled and backed away. Blue floated away and the dog quieted but it still stood in what would be a menacing stance if it weighed more than nine or ten pounds: ears raised, legs braced, neck hair bristling. Blue said, “Come.” The dog did nothing. Blue repeated the entire sequence and so did Mangy.

I said, “You want the dog to follow you. Like the dogs in the presentation.”

“Yes.”

“You want the dog to come when you say ‘Come.’”

“Love,” Blue said.

“What is ‘love,’ Blue?”

No response.

The robot didn’t know. Its masters must have had some concept of “love,” but fuck-all knew what it was. And I wasn’t sure I knew any more, either. That left Mangy, who would never “love” Blue or follow him or lick his hand because dogs operated on smell—even I knew that about them—and Blue, a machine, didn’t smell like either a person or another dog. Couldn’t the aliens who sent him here figure that out? Were they watching this whole farce, or had they just dropped a half-sentient computer under an upturned bowl on Earth and told it, “Bring us some loving dogs”? Who knew how aliens thought?

I didn’t even know how dogs thought. There were much better people for this job—professional trainers, or that guy on TV who made tigers jump through burning hoops. But they weren’t here, and I was. I squatted on my haunches a respectful distance from Mangy and said, “Come.”

It growled at me.

“Blue, raise the platform this high.” I held my hand at shoulder height. The platform rose.

“Now make some cookies on the platform.”

Nothing.

“Make some … cheese on the platform.”

Nothing. You don’t see much cheese in a dump.

“Make some bread on the platform.”

Nothing. Maybe the platform wasn’t user-friendly.

“Make some bread.”

After a moment, loaves tumbled out of the wall. “Enough! Stop!”

Mangy had rushed over to the bread, tearing at it, and the other dogs were going wild. I picked up one loaf, put it on the platform, and said, “Make the rest of the bread go away.”

It all dissolved. No wonder the dogs were wary; I felt a little dizzy myself. A sentence from some long-ago child’s book rose in my mind: Things come and go so quickly here!

I had no idea how much Blue could, or would, do on my orders. “Blue, make another room for me and this one dog. Away from the other dogs.”

“No.”

“Make this room bigger.”

The room expanded evenly on all sides. “Stop.” It did. “Make only this end of the room bigger.”

Nothing.

“Okay, make the whole room bigger.”

When the room stopped expanding, I had a space about forty feet square, with the dog cages huddled in the middle. After half an hour of experimenting, I got the platform moved to one corner, not far enough to escape the dog stench but better than nothing. (Law #1: Take what you can get.) I got a depression in the floor filled with warm water. I got food, drinking water, soap, and some clean cloth, and a lot of rope. By distracting Mangy with bits of bread, I got rope onto her frayed collar. After I got into the warm water and scrubbed myself, I pulled the poodle in. She bit me. But somehow I got her washed, too. Afterwards she shook herself, glared at me, and went to sleep on the hard floor. I asked Blue for a soft rug.

He said, “The other humans did this.”

And Blue killed them anyway.

“Shut up,” I said.

* * *

The big windowless room had no day, no night, no sanity. I slept and ate when I needed to, and otherwise I worked. Blue never left. He was an oversized, all-seeing eye in the corner. Big Brother, or God.

Within a few weeks—maybe—I had Mangy trained to come when called, to sit, and to follow me on command. I did this by dispensing bits of bread and other goodies. Mangy got fatter. I didn’t care if she ended up the Fat Fiona of dogs. Her mange didn’t improve, since I couldn’t get Blue to wrap his digital mind around the concept of medicines, and even if he had I wouldn’t have known what to ask for. The sick puppy died in its cage.

I kept the others fed and watered and flooded the shit out of their cages every day, but that was all. Mangy took all my time. She still regarded me warily, never curled up next to me, and occasionally growled. Love was not happening here.

Nonetheless, Blue left his corner and spoke for the first time in a week, scaring the hell out of me. “This dog behaves correctly.”

“Well, thanks. I tried to … no, Blue …”

Blue floated to within a foot of Mangy’s face, said, “Follow,” and floated away. Mangy sat down and began to lick one paw. Blue rose and floated toward me.

“This dog does not behave correctly.”

I was going to die.

“No, listen to me—listen! The dog can’t smell you! It behaves for humans because of humans’ smell! Do you understand?”

“No. This dog does not behave correctly.”

“Listen! How the hell can you learn anything if you don’t listen? You have to have a smell! Then the dog will follow you!”

Blue stopped. We stood frozen, a bizarre tableau, while the robot considered. Even Mangy stopped licking her paw and watched, still. They say dogs can smell fear.

Finally Blue said, “What is smell?”

It isn’t possible to explain smell. Can’t be done. Instead I pulled down my pants, tore the cloth I was using as underwear from between my legs, and rubbed it all over Blue, who did not react. I hoped he wasn’t made of the same stuff as the Dome, which even spray paint had just slid off of. But, of course, he was. So I tied the strip of cloth around him with a piece of rope, my fingers trembling. “Now try the dog, Blue.”

“Follow,” Blue said, and floated away from Mangy.

She looked at him, then at me, then back at the floating metal sphere. I held my breath from some insane idea that I would thereby diminish my own smell. Mangy didn’t move.

“This dog does not be—”

“She will if I’m gone!” I said desperately. “She smells me and you … and we smell the same so it’s confusing her! But she’ll follow you fine if I’m gone, do you understand?”

“No.”

“Blue … I’m going to get on the platform. See, I’m doing it. Raise the platform very high, Blue. Very high.”

A moment later my head and ass both pushed against the ceiling, squishing me. I couldn’t see what was happening below. I heard Blue say, “Follow,” and I squeezed my eyes shut, waiting. My life depended on a scrofulous poodle with a gloomy disposition.

Blue said, “This dog behaves correctly.”

He lowered my platform to a few yards above the floor, and I swear that—eyeless as he is and with part of his sphere obscured by my underwear—he looked right at me.

“This dog does behave correctly. This dog is ready.”

“Ready? For … for what?”

Blue didn’t answer. The next minute the floor opened and Mangy, yelping, tumbled into it. The floor closed. At the same time, one of the cages across the room dissolved and a German shepherd hurtled towards me. I shrieked and yelled, “Raise the platform!” It rose just before the monster grabbed me.

Blue said, “What to do now? This dog does not behave correctly.”

“For God’s sakes, Blue—”

“This dog must love.”

The shepherd leapt and snarled, teeth bared.

* * *

I couldn’t talk Blue out of the shepherd, which was as feral and vicious and unrelenting as anything in a horror movie. Or as Blue himself, in his own mechanical way. So I followed the First Law: Take what you can get.

“Blue, make garbage again. A lot of garbage, right here.” I pointed to the wall beside my platform.

“No.”

Garbage, like everything else, apparently was made—or released, or whatever—from the opposite wall. I resigned myself to this. “Make a lot of garbage, Blue.”

Mountains of stinking debris cascaded from the wall, spilling over until it reached the dog cages.

“Now stop. Move my platform above the garbage.”

The platform moved. The caged dogs howled. Uncaged, the shepherd poked eagerly in the refuse, too distracted to pay much attention to me. I had Blue lower the platform and I poked among it, too, keeping one eye on Vicious. If Blue was creating the garbage and not just trucking it in, he was doing a damn fine job of duplication. Xerox should have made such good copies.

I got smeared with shit and rot, but I found what I was looking for. The box was nearly a quarter full. I stuffed bread into it, coated the bread thoroughly, and discarded the box back onto the pile.

“Blue, make the garbage go away.”

It did. Vicious glared at me and snarled. “Nice doggie,” I said, “have some bread.” I threw pieces and Vicious gobbled them.

Listening to the results was terrible. Not, however, as terrible as having Vicious tear me apart or Blue vaporize me. The rat poison took all “night” to kill the dog, which thrashed and howled. Throughout, Blue stayed silent. He had picked up some words from me, but he apparently didn’t have enough brain power to connect what I’d done with Vicious’s death. Or maybe he just didn’t have enough experience with humans. What does a machine know about survival?

“This dog is dead,” Blue said in the “morning.”

“Yes. Make it go away.” And then, before Blue could get there first, I jumped off my platform and pointed to a cage. “This dog will behave correctly next.”

“No.”

“Why not this dog?”

“Not big.”

“Big. You want big.” Frantically I scanned the cages, before Blue could choose another one like Vicious. “This one, then.”

“Why the hell not?” Blue said.

* * *

It was young. Not a puppy but still frisky, a mongrel of some sort with short hair of dirty white speckled with dirty brown. The dog looked liked something I could handle: big but not too big, not too aggressive, not too old, not too male. “Hey, Not-Too,” I said, without enthusiasm, as Blue dissolved her cage. The mutt dashed over to me and tried to lick my boot.

A natural-born slave.

I had found a piece of rotten, moldy cheese in the garbage, so Blue could now make cheese, which Not-Too went crazy for. Not-Too and I stuck with the same routine I used with Mangy, and it worked pretty well. Or the cheese did. Within a few “days” the dog could sit, stay, and follow on command.

Then Blue threw me a curve. “What to do now? The presentation.”

“We had the presentation,” I said. “I don’t need to see it again.”

“What to do now? The presentation.”

“Fine,” I said, because it was clear I had no choice. “Let’s have the presentation. Roll ‘em.”

I was sitting on my elevated platform, combing my hair. A lot of it had fallen out during the malnourished years in the camp, but now it was growing again. Not-Too had given up trying to jump up there with me and gone to sleep on her pillow below. Blue shot the beam out of his sphere and the holo played in front of me.

Only not the whole thing. This time he played only the brief scene where the big, patchy dog pulled the toddler back from falling into the cesspool. Blue played it once, twice, three times. Cold slid along my spine.

“You want Not-Too … you want this dog here to be trained to save children.”

“This dog here does not behave correctly.”

“Blue … how can I train a dog to save a child?”

“This dog here does not behave correctly.”

“Maybe you haven’t noticed, but we haven’t got any fucking children for the dog to practice on!”

Long pause. “Do you want a child?”

“No!” Christ, he would kidnap one or buy one from the camp and I would be responsible for a kid along with nineteen semi-feral dogs. No.

“This dog here does not behave correctly. What to do now? The presentation.”

“No, not the presentation. I saw it, I saw it. Blue … the other two humans who did not make the dogs behave correctly …”

“Killed.”

“Yes. So you said. But they did get one dog to behave correctly, didn’t they? Or maybe more than one. And then you just kept raising the bar higher. Water rescues, guiding the blind, finding lost people. Higher and higher.”

But to all this, of course, Blue made no answer.

I wracked my brains to remember what I had ever heard, read, or seen about dog training. Not much. However, there’s a problem with opening the door to memory: you can’t control what strolls through. For the first time in years, my sleep was shattered by dreams.

I walked through a tiny garden, picking zinnias. From an open window came music, full and strong, an orchestra on CD. A cat paced beside me, purring. And there was someone else in the window, someone who called my name and I turned and—

I screamed. Clawed my way upright. The dogs started barking and howling. Blue floated from his corner, saying something. And Not-Too made a mighty leap, landed on my platform, and began licking my face.

“Stop it! Don’t do that! I won’t remember!” I shoved her so hard she fell off the platform onto the floor and began yelping. I put my head in my hands.

Blue said, “Are you not operative?”

“Leave me the fuck alone!”

Not-Too still yelped, shrill cries of pain. When I stopped shaking, I crawled off the platform and picked her up. Nothing seemed to be broken—although how would I know? Gradually she quieted. I gave her some cheese and put her back on her pillow. She wanted to stay with me but I wouldn’t let her.

I would not remember. I would not. Law #5: Feel nothing.

* * *

We made a cesspool, or at least a pool. Blue depressed part of the floor to a depth of three feet and filled it with water. Not-Too considered this a swimming pool and loved to be in it, which was not what Blue wanted (“This water does not behave correctly”). I tried having the robot dump various substances into it until I found one that she disliked and I could tolerate: light-grade motor oil. A few small cans of oil like those in the dump created a polluted pool, not unlike Charleston Harbor. After every practice session I needed a bath.

But not Not-Too, because she wouldn’t go into the “cesspool.” I curled myself as small as possible, crouched at the side of the pool, and thrashed. After a few days, the dog would pull me back by my shirt. I moved into the pool. As long as she could reach me without getting any liquid on her, Not-Too happily played that game. As soon as I moved far enough out that I might actually need saving, she sat on her skinny haunches and looked away.

“This dog does not behave correctly.”

I increased the cheese. I withheld the cheese. I pleaded and ordered and shunned and petted and yelled. Nothing worked. Meanwhile, the dream continued. The same dream, each time not greater in length but increasing in intensity. I walked through a tiny garden, picking zinnias. From an open window came music, full and strong, an orchestra on CD. A cat paced beside me, purring. And there was someone else in the window, someone who called my name and I turned and—

And woke screaming.

A cat. I had had a cat, before the War. Before everything. I had always had cats, my whole life. Independent cats, aloof and self-sufficient, admirably disdainful. Cats—

The dog below me whimpered, trying to get onto my platform to offer comfort I did not want.

I would not remember.

“This dog does not behave correctly,” day after day.

I had Blue remove the oil from the pool. But by now Not-Too had been conditioned. She wouldn’t go into even the clear water that she’d reveled in before.

“This dog does not behave correctly.”

Then one day Blue stopped his annoying mantra, which scared me even more. Would I have any warning that I’d failed, or would I just die?

The only thing I could think of was to kill Blue first.

* * *

Blue was a computer. You disabled computers by turning them off, or cutting the power supply, or melting them in a fire, or dumping acid on them, or crushing them. But a careful search of the whole room revealed no switches or wires or anything that looked like a wireless control. A fire in this closed room, assuming I could start one, would kill me, too. Every kind of liquid or solid slid off Blue. And what would I crush him with, if that was even possible? A piece of cheese?

Blue was also—sort of—an intelligence. You could kill those by trapping them somewhere. My prison-or-sanctuary (depending on my mood) had no real “somewheres.” And Blue would just dissolve any structure he found himself in.

What to do now?

I lay awake, thinking, all night, which at least kept me from dreaming, I came up with two ideas, both bad. Plan A depended on discussion, never Blue’s strong suit.

“Blue, this dog does not behave correctly.”

“No.”

“This dog is not operative. I must make another dog behave correctly. Not this dog.”

Blue floated close to Not-Too. She tried to bat at him. He circled her slowly, then returned to his position three feet above the ground. “This dog is operative.”

“No. This dog looks operative. But this dog is not operative inside its head. I cannot make this dog behave correctly. I need a different dog.”

A very long pause. “This dog is not operative inside its head.”

”Yes.”

“You can make another dog behave correctly. Like the presentation.”

“Yes.” It would at least buy me time. Blue must have seen “not operative” dogs and humans in the dump; God knows there were enough of them out there. Madmen, rabid animals, druggies raving just before they died, or were shot. And next time I would add something besides oil to the pool; there must be something that Blue would consider noxious enough to simulate a cesspool but that a dog would enter. If I had to, I’d use my own shit.

“This dog is not operative inside its head,” Blue repeated, getting used to the idea. “You will make a different dog behave correctly.”

“Yes!”

“Why the hell not?” And then, “I kill this dog.”

“No!” The word was torn from me before I knew I was going to say anything. My hand, of its own volition, clutched at Not-Too. She jumped but didn’t bite. Instead, maybe sensing my fear, she cowered behind me, and I started to yell.

“You can’t just kill everything that doesn’t behave like you want! People, dogs … you can’t just kill everything! You can’t just … I had a cat … I never wanted a dog but this dog … she’s behaving correctly for her! For a fucking traumatized dog and you can’t just—I had a dog I mean a cat I had… . I had… .”

—from an open window came music, full and strong, an orchestra on CD. A cat paced beside me, purring. And there was someone else in the window, someone who called my name and I turned and—

“I had a child!”

Oh, God no no no … It all came out then, the memories and the grief and the pain I had pushed away for three solid years in order to survive … Feel nothing … Zack Zack Zack shot down by soldiers like a dog Look, Mommy, here I am Mommy look …

I curled in a ball on the floor and screamed and wanted to die. Grief had been postponed so long that it was a tsunami. I sobbed and screamed; I don’t know for how long. I think I wasn’t quite sane. No human should ever have to experience that much pain. But of course they do.

However, it can’t last too long, that height of pain, and when the flood passed and my head was bruised from banging it on the hard floor, I was still alive, still inside the Dome, still surrounded by barking dogs. Zack was still dead. Blue floated nearby, unchanged, a casually murderous robot who would not supply flesh to dogs as food but who would kill anything he was programmed to destroy. And he had no reason not to murder me.

Not-Too sat on her haunches, regarding me from sad brown eyes, and I did the one thing I told myself I never would do again. I reached for her warmth. I put my arms around her and hung on. She let me.

Maybe that was the decision point. I don’t know.

When I could manage it, I staggered to my feet. Taking hold of the rope that was Not-Too’s leash, I wrapped it firmly around my hand. “Blue,” I said, forcing the words past the grief clogging my throat, “make garbage.”

He did. That was the basis of Plan B; that Blue made most things I asked of him. Not release, or mercy, but at least rooms and platforms and pools and garbage. I walked toward the garbage spilling from the usual place in the wall.

“More garbage! Bigger garbage! I need garbage to make this dog behave correctly!”

The reeking flow increased. Tires, appliances, diapers, rags, cans, furniture. The dogs’ howling rose to an insane, deafening pitch. Not-Too pressed close to me.

“Bigger garbage!”

The chassis of a motorcycle, twisted beyond repair in some unimaginable accident, crashed into the room. The place on the wall from which the garbage spewed was misty gray, the same fog that the Dome had become when I had been taken inside it. Half a sofa clattered through. I grabbed Not-Too, dodged behind the sofa, and hurled both of us through the onrushing garbage and into the wall.

A broken keyboard struck me in the head, and the gray went black.

* * *

Chill. Cold with a spot of heat, which turned out to be Not-Too lying on top of me. I pushed her off and tried to sit up. Pain lanced through my head and when I put a hand to my forehead, it came away covered with blood. The same blood streamed into my eyes, making it hard to see. I wiped the blood away with the front of my shirt, pressed my hand hard on my forehead, and looked around.

Not that there was much to see. The dog and I sat at the end of what appeared to be a corridor. Above me loomed a large machine of some type, with a chute pointed at the now-solid wall. The machine was silent. Not-Too quivered and pressed her furry side into mine, but she, too, stayed silent. I couldn’t hear the nineteen dogs on the other side of the wall, couldn’t see Blue, couldn’t smell anything except Not-Too, who had made a small yellow puddle on the floor.

There was no room to stand upright under the machine, so I moved away from it. Strips ripped from the bottom of my shirt made a bandage that at least kept blood out of my eyes. Slowly Not-Too and I walked along the corridor.

No doors. No openings or alcoves or machinery. Nothing until we reached the end, which was the same uniform material as everything else. Gray, glossy, hard. Dead.

Blue did not appear. Nothing appeared, or disappeared, or lived. We walked back and studied the overhead bulk of the machine. It had no dials or keys or features of any kind.

I sat on the floor, largely because I couldn’t think what else to do, and Not-Too climbed into my lap. She was too big for this and I pushed her away. She pressed against me, trembling.

“Hey,” I said, but not to her. Zack in the window Look, Mommy, here I am Mommy look… . But if I started down that mental road, I would be lost. Anger was better than memory. Anything was better than memory. “Hey!” I screamed. “Hey, you bastard Blue, what to do now? What to do now, you Dome shits, whoever you are?”

Nothing except, very faint, an echo of my own useless words.

I lurched to my feet, reaching for the anger, cloaking myself in it. Not-Too sprang to her feet and backed away from me.

“What to do now? What bloody fucking hell to do now?”

Still nothing, but Not-Too started back down the empty corridor. I was glad to transfer my anger to something visible, real, living. “There’s nothing there, Not-Too. Nothing, you stupid dog!”

She stopped halfway down the corridor and began to scratch at the wall.

I stumbled along behind her, one hand clamped to my head. What the hell was she doing? This piece of wall was identical to every other piece of wall. Kneeling slowly—it hurt my head to move fast—I studied Not-Too. Her scratching increased in frenzy and her nose twitched, as if she smelled something. The wall, of course, didn’t respond; nothing in this place responded to anything. Except—

Blue had learned words from me, had followed my commands. Or had he just transferred my command to the Dome’s unimaginable machinery, instructing it to do anything I said that fell within permissible limits? Feeling like an idiot, I said to the wall, “Make garbage.” Maybe if it complied and the garbage contained food …

The wall made no garbage. Instead it dissolved into the familiar gray fog, and Not-Too immediately jumped through, barking frantically.

Every time I had gone through a Dome wall, my situation had gotten worse. But what other choices were there? Wait for Blue to find and kill me, starve to death, curl up and die in the heart of a mechanical alien mini-world I didn’t understand. Not-Too’s barking increased in pitch and volume. She was terrified or excited or thrilled … How would I know? I pushed through the gray fog.

Another gray metal room, smaller than Blue had made my prison but with the same kind of cages against the far wall. Not-Too saw me and raced from the cages to me. Blue floated toward me … No, not Blue. This metal sphere was dull green, the color of shady moss. It said, “No human comes into this area.”

“Guess again,” I said and grabbed the trailing end of Not-Too’s rope. She’d jumped up on me once and then had turned to dash back to the cages.

“No human comes into this area,” Green repeated. I waited to see what the robot would do about it. Nothing.

Not-Too tugged on her rope, yowling. From across the room came answering barks, weirdly off. Too uneven in pitch, with a strange undertone. Blood, having saturated my makeshift bandage, once again streamed into my eyes. I swiped at it with one hand, turned to keep my gaze on Green, and let Not-Too pull me across the floor. Only when she stopped did I turn to look at the mesh-topped cages. Vertigo swooped over me.

Mangy was the source of the weird barks, a Mangy altered not beyond recognition but certainly beyond anything I could have imagined. Her mange was gone, along with all her fur. The skin beneath was now gray, the same gunmetal gray as everything else in the Dome. Her ears, the floppy poodle ears, were so long they trailed on the floor of her cage, and so was her tail. Holding on to the tail was a gray grub.

Not a grub. Not anything Earthly. Smooth and pulpy, it was about the size of a human head and vaguely oval. I saw no openings on the thing but Mangy’s elongated tail disappeared into the doughy mass, and so there must have been at least one orifice. As Mangy jumped at the bars, trying to get at Not-Too, the grub was whipped back and forth across the cage floor. It left a slimy trail. The dog seemed oblivious.

“This dog is ready,” Blue had said.

Behind me Green said, “No human comes into this area.”

“Up yours.”

“The human does not behave correctly.”

That got my attention. I whirled around to face Green, expecting to be vaporized like the dead puppy, the dead Vicious. I thought I was already dead—and then I welcomed the thought. Look, Mommy, here I am Mommy look … . The laws of survival that had protected me for so long couldn’t protect me against memory, not any more. I was ready to die.

Instead Mangy’s cage dissolved, she bounded out, and she launched herself at me.

Poodles are not natural killers, and this one was small. However, Mangy was doing her level best to destroy me. Her teeth closed on my arm. I screamed and shook her off, but the next moment she was biting my leg above my boot, darting hysterically toward and away from me, biting my legs at each lunge. The grub, or whatever it was, lashed around at the end of her new tail. As I flailed at the dog with both hands, my bandage fell off. Fresh blood from my head wound blinded me. I stumbled and fell and she was at my face.

Then she was pulled off, yelping and snapping and howling.

Not-Too had Mangy in her jaws. Twice as big as the poodle, she shook Mangy violently and then dropped her. Mangy whimpered and rolled over on her belly. Not-Too sprinted over to me and stood in front of me, skinny legs braced and scrawny hackles raised, growling protectively.

Dazed, I got to my feet. Blood, mine and the dogs’, slimed everything. The floor wasn’t trying to reabsorb it. Mangy, who’d never really liked me, stayed down with her belly exposed in submission, but she didn’t seem to be badly hurt. The grub still latched onto the end of her tail like a gray tumor. After a moment she rolled onto her feet and began to nuzzle the grub, one baleful eye on Not-Too: Don’t you come near this thing! Not-Too stayed in position, guarding me.

Green said—and I swear its mechanical voice held satisfaction, no one will ever be able to tell me any different—”These dogs behave correctly.”

* * *

The other cages held grubs, one per cage. I reached through the front bars and gingerly touched one. Moist, firm, repulsive. It didn’t respond to my touch, but Green did. He was beside me in a flash. “No!”

“Sorry.” His tone was dog-disciplining. “Are these the masters?”

No answer.

“What to do now? One dog for one …” I waved at the cages.

“Yes. When these dogs are ready.”

This dog is ready, Blue had said of Mangy just before she was tumbled into the floor. Ready to be a pet, a guardian, a companion, a service animal to alien … what? The most logical answer was “children.” Lassie, Rin Tin Tin, Benji, Little Guy. A boy and his dog. The aliens found humans dangerous or repulsive or uncaring or whatever, but dogs… . You could count on dogs for your kids. Almost, and for the first time, I could see the point of the Domes.

“Are the big masters here? The adults?”

No answer.

“The masters are not here,” I said. “They just set up the Domes as … as nurseries-slash-obedience schools.” And to that statement I didn’t even expect an answer. If the adults had been present, surely one or more would have come running when an alien blew into its nursery wing via a garbage delivery. There would have been alarms or something. Instead there was only Blue and Green and whatever ‘bots inhabited whatever place held the operating room. Mangy’s skin and ears and tail had been altered to fit the needs of these grubs. And maybe her voice-box, too, since her barks now had that weird undertone, like the scrape of metal across rock. Somewhere there was an OR.

I didn’t want to be in that somewhere.

Green seemed to have no orders to kill me, which made sense because he wasn’t programmed to have me here. I wasn’t on his radar, which raised other problems.

“Green, make bread.”

Nothing.

“Make water.”

Nothing.

But two indentations in a corner of the floor, close to a section of wall, held water and dog-food pellets. I tasted both, to the interest of Not-Too and the growling of Mangy. Not too bad. I scooped all the rest of the dog food out of the trough. As soon as the last piece was out, the wall filled it up again. If I died, it wasn’t going to be of starvation.

A few minutes ago, I had wanted to die. Zack …

No. Push the memory away. Life was shit, but I didn’t want death, either. The realization was visceral, gripping my stomach as if that organ had been laid in a vise, or … There is no way to describe it. The feeling just was, its own justification. I wanted to live.

Not-Too lay a short distance away, watching me. Mangy was back in her cage with the grub on her tail. I sat up and looked around. “Green, this dog is not ready.”

“No. What to do now?”

Well, that answered one question. Green was programmed to deal with dogs, and you didn’t ask dogs “what to do now.” So Green must be in some sort of communication with Blue, but the communication didn’t seem to include orders about me. For a star-faring advanced race, the aliens certainly weren’t very good at LANs. Or maybe they just didn’t care—how would I know how an alien thinks?

I said, “I make this dog behave correctly.” The all-purpose answer.

“Yes.”

Did Green know details—that Not-Too refused to pull me from oily pools and thus was an obedience-school failure? It didn’t seem like it. I could pretend to train Not-Too—I could actually train her, only not for water rescue—and stay here, away from the killer Blue, until … until what? As a survival plan, this one was shit. Still, it followed Laws #1 and #3: Take what you can get and never volunteer. And I couldn’t think of anything else.

“Not-Too,” I said wearily, still shaky from my crying jag, “Sit.”

* * *

“Days” went by, then weeks. Not-Too learned to beg, roll over, bring me a piece of dog food, retrieve my thrown boot, lie down, and balance a pellet of dog food on her nose. I had no idea if any of these activities would be useful to an alien, but as long as Not-Too and I were “working,” Green left us alone. No threats, no presentations, no objections. We were behaving correctly. I still hadn’t thought of any additional plan. At night I dreamed of Zack and woke in tears, but not with the raging insanity of my first day of memory. Maybe you can only go through that once.

Mangy’s grub continued to grow, still fastened onto her tail. The other grubs looked exactly the same as before. Mangy growled if I came too close to her, so I didn’t. Her grub seemed to be drying out as it got bigger. Mangy licked it and slept curled around it and generally acted like some mythical dragon guarding a treasure box. Had the aliens bonded those two with some kind of pheromones I couldn’t detect? I had no way of knowing.

Mangy and her grub emerged from their cage only to eat, drink, or shit, which she did in a far corner. Not-Too and I used the same corner, and all of our shit and piss dissolved odorlessly into the floor. Eat your heart out, Thomas Crapper.

As days turned into weeks, flesh returned to my bones. Not-Too also lost her starved look. I talked to her more and more, her watchful silence preferable to Green’s silence or, worse, his inane and limited repertoire of answers. “Green, I had a child named Zack. He was shot in the war. He was five.” “This dog is not ready.”

Well, none of us ever are.

Not-Too started to sleep curled against my left side. This was a problem because I thrashed in my sleep, which woke her, so she growled, which woke me. Both of us became sleep-deprived and irritable. In the camp, I had slept twelve hours a day. Not much else to do, and sleep both conserved energy and kept me out of sight. But the camp was becoming distant in my mind. Zack was shatteringly vivid, with my life before the war, and the Dome was vivid, with Mangy and Not-Too and a bunch of alien grubs. Everything in between was fading.

Then one “day”—after how much time? I had no idea—Green said, “This dog is ready.”

My heart stopped. Green was going to take Not-Too to the hidden OR, was going to— “No!”

Green ignored me. But he also ignored Not-Too. The robot floated over to Mangy’s cage and dissolved it. I stood and craned my neck for a better look.

The grub was hatching.

Its “skin” had become very dry, a papery gray shell. Now it cracked along the top, parallel to Mangy’s tail. She turned and regarded it quizzically, this thing wriggling at the end of her very long tail, but didn’t attack or even growl. Those must have been some pheromones.

Was I really going to be the first and only human to see a Dome alien?

I was not. The papery covering cracked more and dropped free of the dog’s tail. The thing inside wiggled forward, crawling out like a snake shedding its skin. It wasn’t a grub but it clearly wasn’t a sentient being, either. A larva? I’m no zoologist. This creature was as gray as everything else in the Dome but it had legs, six, and heads, two. At least, they might have been heads. Both had various indentations. One “head” crept forward, opened an orifice, and fastened itself back onto Mangy’s tail. She continued to gaze at it. Beside me, Not-Too growled.

I whirled to grab frantically for her rope. Not-Too had no alterations to make her accept this … thing as anything other than a small animal to attack. If she did—

I turned just in time to see the floor open and swallow Not-Too. Green said again, “This dog is ready,” and the floor closed.

“No! Bring her back!” I tried to pound on Green with my fists. He bobbed in the air under my blows. “Bring her back! Don’t hurt her! Don’t …” do what?

Don’t turn her into a nursemaid for a grub, oblivious to me.

Green moved off. I followed, yelling and pounding. Neither one, of course, did the slightest good. Finally I got it together enough to say, “When will Not-Too come back?”

“This human does not behave correctly.”

I looked despairingly at Mangy. She lay curled on her side, like a mother dog nursing puppies. The larva wasn’t nursing, however. A shallow trough had appeared in the floor and filled with some viscous glop, which the larva was scarfing up with its other head. It looked repulsive.

Law #4: Notice everything.

“Green … okay. Just … okay. When will Not-Too come back here?”

No answer; what does time mean to a machine?

“Does the other dog return here?”

“Yes.”

“Does the other dog get a …” A what? I pointed at Mangy’s larva.

No response. I would have to wait.

But not, apparently, alone. Across the room another dog tumbled, snarling, from the same section of wall I had once come through. I recognized it as one of the nineteen left in the other room, a big black beast with powerful looking jaws. It righted itself and charged at me. There was no platform, no place to hide.

“No! Green, no, it will hurt me! This dog does not behave—”

Green didn’t seem to do anything. But even as the black dog leapt toward me, it faltered in mid-air. The next moment, it lay dead on the floor.

The moment after that, the body disappeared, vaporized.

My legs collapsed under me. That was what would happen to me if I failed in my training task, was what had presumably happened to the previous two human failures. And yet it wasn’t fear that made me sit so abruptly on the gray floor. It was relief, and a weird kind of gratitude. Green had protected me, which was more than Blue had ever done. Maybe Green was brighter, or I had proved my worth more, or in this room as opposed to the other room, all dog-training equipment was protected. I was dog-training equipment. It was stupid to feel grateful.

I felt grateful.

Green said, “This dog does not—”

“I know, I know. Listen, Green, what to do now? Bring another dog here?”

“Yes.”

”I choose the dog. I am the … the dog leader. Some dogs behave correctly, some dogs do not behave correctly. I choose. Me.”

I held my breath. Green considered, or conferred with Blue, or consulted its alien and inadequate programming. Who the hell knows? The robot had been created by a race that preferred Earth dogs to whatever species usually nurtured their young, if any did. Maybe Mangy and Not-Too would replace parental care on the home planet, thus introducing the idea of babysitters. All I wanted was to not be eaten by some canine nanny-trainee.

“Yes,” Green said finally, and I let out my breath.

A few minutes later, eighteen dog cages tumbled through the wall like so much garbage, the dogs within bouncing off their bars and mesh tops, furious and noisy. Mangy jumped, curled more protectively around her oblivious larva, and added her weird, rock-scraping bark to the din. A cage grew up around her. When the cages had stopped bouncing, I walked among them like some kind of tattered lord, choosing.

“This dog, Green.” It wasn’t the smallest dog but it had stopped barking the soonest. I hoped that meant it wasn’t a grudge holder. When I put one hand into its cage, it didn’t bite me, also a good sign. The dog was phenomenally ugly, the jowls on its face drooping from small, rheumy eyes into a sort of folded ruff around its short neck. Its body seemed to be all front, with stunted and short back legs. When it stood, I saw it was male.

“This dog? What to do now?”

“Send all the other dogs back.”

The cages sank into the floor. I walked over to the feeding trough, scooped up handfuls of dog food, and put the pellets into my only pocket that didn’t have holes. “Make all the rest of the dog food go away.”

It vaporized.

“Make this dog’s cage go away.”

I braced myself as the cage dissolved. The dog stood uncertainly on the floor, gazing toward Mangy, who snarled at him. I said, as commandingly as possible, “Ruff!”

He looked at me.

“Ruff, come.”

To my surprise, he did. Someone had trained this animal before. I gave him a pellet of dog food.

Green said, “This dog behaves correctly.”

“Well, I’m really good,” I told him, stupidly, while my chest tightened as I thought of Not-Too. The aliens, or their machines, did understand about anesthetic, didn’t they? They wouldn’t let her suffer too much? I would never know.

But now I did know something momentous. I had choices. I had chosen which room to train dogs in. I had chosen which dog to train. I had some control.

“Sit,” I said to Ruff, who didn’t, and I set to work.

* * *

Not-Too was returned to me three or four “days” later. She was gray and hairless, with an altered bark. A grub hung onto her elongated tail, undoubtedly the same one that had vanished from its cage while I was asleep. But unlike Mangy, who’d never liked either of us, Not-Too was ecstatic to see me. She wouldn’t stay in her grub-cage against the wall but insisted on sleeping curled up next to me, grub and all. Green permitted this. I had become the alpha dog.

Not-Too liked Ruff, too. I caught him mounting her, her very long tail conveniently keeping her grub out of the way. Did Green understand the significance of this behavior? No way to tell.

We settled into a routine of training, sleeping, playing, eating. Ruff turned out to be sweet and playful but not very intelligent, and training took a long time. Mangy’s grub grew very slowly, considering the large amount of glop it consumed. I grew, too; the waistband of my ragged pants got too tight and I discarded them, settling for a loin cloth, shirt, and my decaying boots. I talked to the dogs, who were much better conversationalists than Green since two of them at least pricked up their ears, made noises back at me, and wriggled joyfully at attention. Green would have been a dud at a cocktail party.

I don’t know how long this all went on. Time began to lose meaning. I still dreamed of Zack and still woke in tears, but the dreams grew gentler and farther apart. When I cried, Not-Too crawled onto my lap, dragging her grub, and licked my chin. Her brown eyes shared my sorrow. I wondered how I had ever preferred the disdain of cats.

Not-Too got pregnant. I could feel the puppies growing inside her distended belly.

“Puppies will be easy to make behave correctly,” I told Green, who said nothing. Probably he didn’t understand. Some people need concrete visuals in order to learn.

Eventually, it seemed to me that Ruff was almost ready for his own grub. I mulled over how to mention this to Green but before I did, everything came to an end.

* * *

Clang! Clang! Clang!

I jerked awake and bolted upright. The alarm—a very human-sounding alarm—sounded all around me. Dogs barked and howled. Then I realized that it was a human alarm, coming from the Army camp outside the Dome, on the opposite side to the garbage dump. I could see the camp—in outline and faintly, as if through heavy gray fog. The Dome was dissolving.

“Green—what—no!”

Above me, transforming the whole top half of what had been the Dome, was the bottom of a solid saucer. Mangy, in her cage, floated upwards and disappeared into a gap in the saucer’s underside. The other grub cages had already disappeared. I glimpsed a flash of metallic color through the gap: Blue. Green was halfway to the opening, drifting lazily upward. Beside me, both Not-Too and Ruff began to rise.

“No! No!”

I hung onto Not-Too, who howled and barked. But then my body froze. I couldn’t move anything. My hands opened and Not-Too rose, yowling piteously.

“No! No!” And then, before I knew I was going to say it, “Take me, too!”

Green paused in mid-air. I began babbling.

“Take me! Take me! I can make the dogs behave correctly—I can—you need me! Why are you going? Take me!”

“Take this human?”

Not Green but Blue, emerging from the gap. Around me the Dome walls thinned more. Soldiers rushed toward us. Guns fired.

“Yes! What to do? Take this human! The dogs want this human!”

Time stood still. Not-Too howled and tried to reach me. Maybe that’s what did it. I rose into the air just as Blue said, “Why the hell not?”

Inside—inside what?—I was too stunned to do more than grab Not-Too, hang on, and gasp. The gap closed. The saucer rose.

After a few minutes, I sat up and looked around. Gray room, filled with dogs in their cages, with grubs in theirs, with noise and confusion and the two robots. The sensation of motion ceased. I gasped, “Where … where are we going?”

Blue answered. “Home.”

”Why?”

“The humans do not behave correctly.” And then, “What to do now?”

We were leaving Earth in a flying saucer, and it was asking me?

* * *

Over time—I have no idea how much time—I actually got some answers from Blue. The humans “not behaving correctly” had apparently succeeding in breaching one of the Domes somewhere. They must have used a nuclear bomb, but that I couldn’t verify. Grubs and dogs had both died, and so the aliens had packed up and left Earth. Without, as far as I could tell, retaliating. Maybe.

If I had stayed, I told myself, the soldiers would have shot me. Or I would have returned to life in the camp, where I would have died of dysentery or violence or cholera or starvation. Or I would have been locked away by whatever government still existed in the cities, a freak who had lived with aliens, none of my story believed. I barely believed it myself.

I am a freak who lives with aliens. Furthermore, I live knowing that at any moment Blue or Green or their “masters” might decide to vaporize me. But that’s really not much different from the uncertainty of life in the camp, and here I actually have some status. Blue produces whatever I ask for, once I get him to understand what that is. I have new clothes, good food, a bed, paper, a sort of pencil.

And I have the dogs. Mangy still doesn’t like me. Her larva hasn’t as yet done whatever it will do next. Not-Too’s grub grows slowly, and now Ruff has one, too. Their three puppies are adorable and very trainable. I’m not so sure about the other seventeen dogs, some of whom look wilder than ever after their long confinement in small cages. Aliens are not, by definition, humane.

I don’t know what it will take to survive when, and if, we reach “home” and I meet the alien adults. All I can do is rely on Jill’s Five Laws of Survival:

#1: Take what you can get.

#2: Show no fear.

#3: Never volunteer.

#4: Notice everything.

But the Fifth Law has changed. As I lie beside Not-Too and Ruff, their sweet warmth and doggie-odor, I know that my first formulation was wrong. “Feel nothing”—that can take you some ways toward survival, but not very far. Not really.

Law #5: Take the risk. Love something.

The dogs whuff contentedly and we speed toward the stars.

Darwin’s Suitcase

Written by Elizabeth Malartre

Illustrated by Lee Kuruganti

“Our English sphinx moths have proboscides as long as their bodies, but in Madagascar, there must be moths with proboscides capable of extension to a length of between 10 and 11 inches.”

Charles Darwin, 1862, “On the Various Contrivances by which British and Foreign Orchids are Fertilised by Insects, and on the Good Effects of Intercrossing.”

* * *

Sister Solange checked herself just before she nodded off. She stared bleary-eyed at the balky Temporal ViewScreen.

It was before matins, and she was never bright in the early morning. And if someone should find her here … the sister who ran the library would never allow this observation during regular research hours. It wasn’t on the Approved List.

Not many of the sisters were even allowed to touch the machine. Solange was still new to the convent, so it was a great privilege for her to TimeView.

Forty minutes before matins.

She reached out again to the control panel. Maybe this time she’d get it set correctly. She was not very gifted with these new electronics, and far too impatient at their eccentricities. She stared at the crumpled sheet, “Charles Darwin during the writing of The Origin of Species, 1858.”

She ran her finger back and forth over the keyboard in frustration. Still nothing on the screen, but it triggered a recorded warning,

“Caution. The Temporal Viewer is a delicate instrument. Please use it carefully.”

She looked at the ancient clock on the wall. Thirty-eight minutes left.

She rapped her knuckles on the screen. The time-code indicator light flickered and a chime sounded. A toneless voice announced, “The new setting is 1866. Please confirm by pressing the return key.”

Sister Solange groaned. “Oh, no, what have I done?”

She reached for the Year Control knob and turned it back. The time-code indicator flickered again. She briefly saw 1859, then it returned to 1866. In frustration she yanked the knob smartly to the left. It came off in her hand.

She stared in horror at the knob. Too late she remembered what Sister Marthe the Librarian had said. There were nodes in the time stream that seemed to attract the Temporal Viewer. Maybe 1866 was one of them.

Sister Solange sighed. Her impatience had gotten her into trouble once again. Penance, surely, maybe even … she stopped as the screen cleared suddenly, showing a figure dressed in dark clothes.

“Oh, it’s working. Thank you, Lord. I am so unworthy of your beneficence.” She resolved to do penance anyway.

She squinted at the screen. A middle-aged man was walking with a stick in the countryside. She looked at the paper again. Darwin walked and thought things through in an open field called the Sandwalk near his home in England, Down House.

He looked ordinary enough for such an evil man.

She wondered what he was thinking. Was he plotting his terrible attack on the Church?

She adjusted the fine focus gingerly. It seemed like magic—but Holy magic, she corrected herself, to see something that had happened over two hundred years ago.

She bent closer to the screen, wishing for the morning coffee of her pre-convent days.

With a crackling sound, the screen erupted in diagonal stripes.

“Oh, no, please not now.” As suddenly as it started, the lines stopped. Sister Solange stared anxiously at the screen.

There were two people in the field—one walking, the second one standing a little way off.

“Funny, I didn’t see him there before.” She shrugged. “But this is so much better. I’ll be able to hear them talking. I’ll actually hear Darwin’s voice! Oh, thank you Lord!” Despite the Church’s interdiction on viewing Darwin, this had to be Divine intervention, she thought. But no recording—this one was strictly off the record.

She hunched over the screen, absentmindedly tucking a stray red curl under the edge of her severe black wimpole.

* * *

Thwack!

Clink.

Norman Albright hesitated, heart hammering. Through the early morning Kentish fog, he recognized the man wielding the walking stick and approaching at a steady pace.

He cleared his throat and stepped forward. “Ahem, Mr. Darwin, sir …”

He hoped he wasn’t too startling a figure. His clothes had been carefully researched. The unfamiliar wool overcoat was heavy on his shoulders; in the damp air it exuded a musky smell. The stiff shirt collar was uncomfortable, and through the thick cotton of the shirt he felt the box in his breast pocket.

The middle-aged man in front of him looked as Albright had anticipated: balding on top, heavy eyebrows, and a short beard streaked with grey. The few surviving photos had been morphed to this age to aid recognition. Overall, an unassuming man for so pivotal a figure. But the gaze from his pale eyes blazed forth with an intensity at odds with the rest of the body. This was indeed The Darwin.

“You have the advantage, sir.”

Albright proffered his hand awkwardly. “Norman Albright. An honor to meet you, sir. I’ve traveled far for this.” His words sounded stilted, archaic; his tongue was thick with nervousness. But Research assured him this was about right for 1866. He’d gone through a lot of coaching to get the language right.

Darwin’s hand shot out, and his grasp was firm. “Pleased, I’m sure. How may I be of assistance?”

“I—I have urgent need to ask you questions … about your work. Perhaps I could walk with you for a while?”

“That would be agreeable. It does a man good to compose his thoughts with a walk before breakfast.”

Albright fell into step beside Darwin. It was hard to concentrate. He was actually here, on the famous Sandwalk, with the Founder, where, tradition held, Darwin had done much of the thinking on his famous Theory of Natural Selection. The Temporal Voyager worked! He looked around. The land itself was unexceptional—a narrow strip of about one and a half acres, bordered by a gravel walk. On one side large broad-leafed trees shaded the gravel. But what trees! They appeared to be poplars, but much larger, and with many more leaves than the ones at home. On the other side of a low hedge was an adjoining grassy field. He stared at it. The grass was so green and lush! And the smells—so sweet. This was how country air used to smell, he understood. Unfamiliar notes hung in the air. Birdsong!

Darwin walked steadily as Albright got his bearings and took in the scene around him. As he walked he punctuated his steps with blows from the walking stick.

There was a period of silence as they fell into rhythm.

Then Darwin turned to him. “Do tell me how you came to be here so early. Are you stopping nearby?”

“No, I started out this morning from … London.”

“Indeed. I myself prefer not to travel, but when I must do so, I find it preferable also in the early morning. I trust the journey was not too tiring?”

“No, not at all. It was most pleasant, and of course, I was looking forward to this meeting, so my thoughts were well occupied.”

“Very kind of you. How did you find me here? Did you first call at Down House?”

“No, sir,” said the younger man. “Your work is well known among my colleagues, and your regular habits have been chronicled. I knew you would be here at this time of day.”

Darwin seemed taken aback. He looked at Albright’s collar. “Your colleagues, you say.” He pursed his lips and frowned. “But you are a man of the cloth?”

“Well naturally. Who is not these days?” A slight hesitation. “The Order of Scientism.” To Darwin’s puzzled look he added, “Protestant, of course.”

“Scientism. Pardon my confusion, I am not aware …”

“Nor could you be. The Order was founded after you—your time.”

Thwack! As they rounded the last corner, the battered iron tip of the briar wood cane flipped the top flint off the pile. The rough-hewn grey stone landed solidly on the stony ground. Clink.

“After my time? What do you mean?”

Albright sighed. Time was short. He’d better start his pitch. “The Order of Scientism was formed in 1943. I appear in the guise of a Victorian clergyman, but I am from the future. From 2156, to be exact.”

* * *

Sister Solange started. Had she heard correctly? This man Albright claimed to be from … eighteen years in the future! What was he doing there? Indulging himself, as she was, or trying to change something? She felt suddenly uneasy. Perhaps he was the reason the Temporal Viewer had picked this time.

* * *

Darwin stopped and looked at him sternly. “This conversation has taken a most remarkable turn.”

“I assure you, I am most earnest.”

“Yet you claim to be—”

“From the future, yes, sir.”

“Whose future?”

“Well, everyone’s, I guess.” He smiled briefly. To Darwin’s puzzled look he added, “It’s the future you helped to bring about. And that’s why I’m here.”

“Indeed.” Darwin frowned. “This is a prank, is it not?”

“No, sir, not at all. I’m really from the future, and I’m prepared to prove it.” He reached into his inside pocket and withdrew a small, carefully wrapped parcel which he handed to Darwin. “Please, sir, unwrap it.”

Albright watched anxiously as Darwin took the proffered parcel, fumbled with the paper and opened the small cardboard box. With a soft cry he gently lifted out its contents.

With relief, Albright continued. “In 1862 you published a book on orchid fertilization, including a description of Angraecum sesquipedale, a Madagascar orchid species with an eleven and a half inch nectary. You predicted that there must be a sphinx moth with a proboscis long enough to reach the nectar.

“In 1903, just before the Church clamped down all the way on biological inquiries, a collector named Morgan found the moth in Madagascar. He named it Xanthopan morgani praedicta to honor your prediction.” He looked at the small brown object in Darwin’s palm. “We thought you might like to see it.”

“Most remarkable. I am most gratified to see this.” Darwin looked it over carefully before replacing it in the box. “I should like to study this more fully. The proboscis is curled, but it does appear to be fully long enough to extract nectar from the comet orchid.” He looked at Albright. “Was this what you wanted to discuss?”

“No, sir, this was for your pleasure only.”

Darwin straightened up with a jerk. “Of course, this lovely specimen does not, in itself, prove that you are what you say. The moth does not evince a date of discovery.”

“I am aware of that. On the other hand, you have not heard of the discovery, so I could be telling the truth.” Albright smiled. “But in either case it indicates sincerity on my part.”

“That is indeed a reasonable argument. Do you have any other … proofs?”

Albright’s smile faded. “We thought long and hard about that. There are few objects which cannot be falsified—books and newspapers with later dates could have been printed at any time, for example. Same with coins. Also, there are certain limitations on objects that may be carried back into the past. We are only beginning to learn about them by experimentation, but it appears as though future technology cannot go backwards in time. In other words, it cannot exist before it was invented.”

He looked up with a pleading expression. “That also seems reasonable, does it not? We hoped that the moth would make the journey, because others of its kind exist in 1866. And, I, of course, for the same reason.” He smiled nervously. “Humans are an old technology. So I bring only my argument, which I beg to be allowed to present.”

Darwin drew out a watch on a chain and squinted at it before tucking it back into his vest pocket. “Very well, I’m willing to continue our discussion, although I withhold judgment on your fantastic claim.” They resumed walking. “So, what part of my work did you wish to discuss?”

“A work that you are contemplating, but have not yet written. A work that is unnecessary to the acceptance of your theory, but which will cause a great deal of harm to the future of science. A great deal of harm. I am here to beg you not to pursue this work. And I have but little time to do it.”

“Really? You know of a work I have not yet written? I am confounded.”

“Our records are not complete, for reasons which I shall attempt to make clear, but they lead us to believe that about now you are working on a book entitled, “An Answer to the Religious Opposition to the Origin of Species and the Descent of Man.”

“Your knowledge is not quite precise. I have made a few notes about the subject, solely to keep track of arguments in opposition. I believe I have said so in a letter or two.”

“Yes, sir, I know, but trust me, that book will be published, in 1884.”

Darwin looked unhappily at Albright. “So far in the future, then, the attacks will continue?”

“I’m afraid so.”

Thwack!

Clink. Another circuit of the Sandwalk completed, another flint knocked off the pile.

“I admit to initially being puzzled, then irked, by the blind rejection of my Theory by a rigid Biblical interpretation by … by certain minds. And then Captain FitzRoy’s suicide has preyed heavily on my mind these last months.” He looked up. “You know of Captain FitzRoy?”

FitzRoy! If only Darwin knew how much he despised that name! He had been brought up under the gaze of that ubiquitous face! He had grown to hate the mutton chop sideburns, the disdainful expression, the deep-set eyes with their arrogant stare. Darwin spent five pleasant years with the man, but I have been forced to live by FitzRoy’s tyrannical pronouncements all of my life! He stifled the passionate tirade that threatened to burst from his lips. Instead he nodded mutely.

Darwin seemed not to notice his companion’s anguish. He continued, “Despite our initial camaraderie on the Beagle, we argued much during the voyage. I disappointed him severely by not finding substantiation for the Book of Genesis in my observations of the natural world. As I found more variation among the species, so he became more and more rigid and resisted all interpretations that conflicted in any way with the most literal reading of the Bible.” He shook his head. “We last met as friends in 1857, when he came to stay at Down House for two nights, but the visit was not a success. We parted coolly, and never met again.”

1857. A visit with FitzRoy. Albright made a mental note. As a leading Darwin scholar, even he hadn’t been aware that the two had continued on social terms after the voyage. A familiar ache gripped him. So much has been lost.

Seemingly gripped by memories, Darwin continued his monologue, an intense expression on his face. “After the publication of the Origin, he became a violent objector to my work. I, on the other hand, could not see why Natural Selection threatened his religion. Finally, he became convinced that he had nurtured a blasphemer on board the Beagle, and he turned it over and over in his mind until I fear it unhinged him. In despair at what he viewed as the triumph of my satanic views, he took his life most cruelly April last.”

“It was a tragedy,” Albright said with vehemence. “His suicide created one of the most powerful martyrs in history.”

Darwin turned to him with a perplexed look, but continued, “I feel compelled to set down the arguments pro and con my theory, in the hope that others of his religious rigidity might be dissuaded from this unfortunate act. The Church must not be used as an impediment to thinking!”

“And yet such an intended act of mercy will have such terrible consequences,” murmured Albright.

“Indeed? My book?”

“Absolutely. That book started a chain of events that became a crusade against science throughout Europe and the Americas that continues even today, some three hundred years later.”

“Three hundred years—”

Albright waved away his objections, plunged on. “Imagine, sir, that it is 1884, and your book—the book you are going to write—has just been published. As they did for the Origin, your old supporters, Huxley and Hooker, defended you most ably. And by then there were others convinced by your arguments and evidence.”

“Most gratifying.”

“Yes, but more importantly, the Church hierarchy took the criticism very badly. The bishops accused you of setting man’s ingenuity against God’s word. Worse, the public supported them, especially in the face of the very unpopular Neanderthal fossils from Germany. People did not want to believe they were descended from apes and barbarous tribes of men.”

“Indeed, it is perhaps an unpopular idea, but inescapable. Man is not exempted from the rest of the animal kingdom in this regard.”

“I agree, but it fueled the flames of the rebellion. Many men like FitzRoy joined together in a campaign to expunge what they termed the ‘heresy of evolution.’ They called themselves the Fitzrovians, and demanded a literal interpretation of the events set forth in Genesis.”

“And who spoke against them?”

“Nobody, there’s the tragedy. Men of science thought it would pass, and that they could safely ignore what they saw to be religious zealots. But those ideas started to snowball, and what ensued was a great resurgence of fundamentalist religion, and a suppression of science. Schools were forbidden to teach about evolution and natural selection; then it spread to the other sciences. For over two centuries, men of science have had to labor secretly, in great peril.”

“I can not believe that account, Mr. Albright. Rational thought and scientific endeavor are seen as honorable professions in Europe and have for some three hundred years. Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler were great astronomers in the sixteenth century, well respected and rewarded by the Danish crown.”

Thwack!

Clink.

Albright was sure those two sounds would be indelibly burned into his memory no matter what happened. That, and the sounds of the birds.

“Yes, but Kepler’s mother was tried as a witch in Germany, Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in Rome for insisting that the Earth circles the sun, and well into the seventeenth century, Galileo was forced to recant that same doctrine.”

Darwin looked at him sharply. “You know your history well, for a man from so far in the future.”

“We have learned the whole history of suppression these long years. Oh, we are desperate to be free! Believe this if nothing else.” In anguish Albright tore open his shirt to reveal an elaborate, garishly colored tattoo of a cross.

“I am an acolyte of the Holy Order of Scientism, for over two centuries the only way for a few to keep alive the flame of learning untainted by religious dogma. We seek to know the world the way it is, not the way it is ordained to be by the Hierarchy of Fitzrovians. Only now are we beginning to move out from the shadow of the Church. But we have lost so much time, and it may be too late.”

Darwin was visibly taken aback, and stammered, “is that … adornment real?”

“The tattoo? Yes, and another like it on my back. I’ll take them with me to the grave.”

“But … why? Of what use is such … adornment?”

“Fealty, for some. For others such as myself, disguise. Although it is true that the hold of the Church is gradually loosening, we have lost over two centuries of scientific understanding. Two centuries! Our climate is changing and we don’t know why, the world’s population is soaring, the forests were cut or burned, the deserts advance, the air is brown, the waters are poisoned and the people sicken.”

“Surely, the leaders—”

“Either the Hierarchy doesn’t care or they are unable to manage the crisis. Whichever it is, there is little expectation that we can cure the world with our present state of knowledge anyway. It was a desperate hope, but perhaps by changing the past we can recapture that lost time.”

“You speak of lost time, yet you claim to be from the future, therefore you have the ability to travel through time. Surely that is remarkably advanced science.”

“The time travel device was an accidental discovery. We don’t know how it works, but it does, at least for short trips. If I am able to change our past, by dissuading you from publishing that book, we don’t know what will happen. We hope it will change the future for the better. But maybe it cannot be changed. Our philosophers have debated long and deeply about this: maybe I exist only because the events in my past unfurled they have. Perhaps in another—” He stopped short as a wave of dizziness hit him.

Wha—? Oh no, not yet. He peeled back his sleeve to look at his watch. It’s not time yet!

Darwin was looking at him sharply. “Are you ill, sir?”

“No, just … dizzy. Perhaps the temporal travel device has affected me.”

“Young man, your tale is most persuasive, although I can scarcely believe one book of mine could be so pivotal in history.”

Albright recovered himself. “All our historical research indicates just that, sir. What we know of causality tells us that the form the future takes has a sensitive dependence on initial conditions. Even a seemingly minor event can have great consequences. And, for a man of your renown, that new book was not a minor event.”

Darwin stared at him intently. “Just how did you plan to dissuade me?”

“By doing what I just did, telling you what is going to happen if you do publish it.”

“What if I refuse, or am not convinced? I admit that it irks me greatly that certain bishops are so opposed to my ideas.” He looked at Albright sharply. “Are you prepared to accept failure?”

Albright hesitated, suddenly aware of the heavy lump in his overcoat pocket. “Mr. Darwin, sir, I—we wish you no harm, but we are determined not to fail our world.”

“I see. You will stop me by force if necessary.” Darwin looked at him as if appraising what means Albright would use.

Albright nodded slightly. I’m losing him, he thought unhappily. “If I can persuade you that there is independent proof of your theory, would you be satisfied?”

Darwin drew himself up. “Proof? Young man, I have labored for decades on my theory of Natural Selection. I truly believe that I have amassed an overwhelming body of evidence—”

“Someone has found the mechanism for inheritance.”

Darwin stopped short. “The mechanism? What do you mean?”

“Well, not the actual … ah …” He fought back another wave of dizziness. “Well, you understand, not the actual, uh, bodies in the cell, but the mathematics of inheritance.”

Darwin stared uncomprehendingly.

Albright rushed on. “There’s a book, just published, by Gregor Mendel, about experiments he did with garden pea plants. He has established that there is a unit of heredity, some … factor passed from parent to offspring, in a regular and repeatable way. Some of these factors are transmitted visibly, and are called dominant. Others become, ah, latent in the process and are called recessive. With the correct crosses, Mendel could make them reappear in later generations, so he knew they were still there, albeit hidden.”

A look of awe slowly washed over the older man’s face and his mouth worked as he silently wrestled with the implications.

“So you see,” continued Albright, “if an organism exhibits an unfavorable factor and dies because of it, and this happens to all the other individuals with the same factor, it will be eliminated from the population.” Bright sparks flashed across his eyes. He reached into his coat and clutched the weapon. “It’s the mechanism for nashural s’lection!”

“The mechanism for natural selection. Yes. It could very well be. I will need to see that book! Tell me again who is the author?”

“M … M … Mendel,” he slurred. “G … G … Gregor Mendel, a m … m … monk, an Augush … tini … tian.”

“What did you say? I couldn’t understand. Speak up, please!”

Albright stared fuzzily. The scene around him was becoming grainy. Still time. In desperation he yanked his arm out of his pocket, aimed the antique pistol at Darwin. God help me. He squeezed the trigger as greyness descended.

* * *

The crackling noise awakened her. Solange started up, feeling woozy and a bit unclear. She absentmindedly put her hand up to her hair to tuck a stray red curl into … nothing.

“Rats, must’ve dozed off.”

The screen in front of her was full of diagonal lines.

“That does it, I can’t do any assignment if the freaking Viewer conks out on me.”

Electronics never worked for her. This morning already her chronometer had failed to network with her wakeup implant. She’d almost missed her session with the TVS. She’d rushed to the library in the nick of time, shouldered her way past the waiting students and jammed her ID thumbprint down just as the robo-librarian was about to give her slot away. As it was she’d lost fifteen minutes.

Someone pounded on the door. “Two minutes!”

She checked the big chronometer.

“Hell, my session’s over! What’d I see anyway?”

The vidrecorder was still running. She shut it off and removed the spool.

The door opened suddenly. The librarian rolled in. “Time’s up,” it rumbled. “Please relinquish the Temporal ViewScreen.”

“Okay, Okay, keep your treads on,” she muttered. “I’m leaving.”

Her eye fell on the assignment sheet. “Observation of Charles Darwin during writing of The Origin of Species, 1858.”

It was clearly marked “Easy.” Hell, she hadn’t even been able to tune the freaking gizmo to that date. It’d stuck on 1866. Well, she’d done something different. But what? She felt for the spool in her pocket.

Whatever I see, I’ll just be creative with my interpretation, she thought. After all, what difference could it make what some old guy was thinking, three hundred years ago?

She hurried out into the bright new morning in search of coffee.

Double-Secret Weapon

Written by Tony Frazier

Illustrated by Luis Peres

So I’m sitting in the food court, stomach growling as the smells of corn dogs and gyros swirl around me. There’s a cardboard standee to my left and a Playco rep to my right. Her name is Fleming, and she’s young and pretty, fresh out of college with a marketing degree and a dazzling smile. It’s her job to take money, hand out glossies and keep me in line. I don’t think she likes me.

The next kid in line hangs back a little. He’s only five or six, and he looks intimidated at seeing his cartoon superhero idol come to life. His dad nudges him, and the kid shuffles up and slides the picture in front of me without a word. It’s not really a photo of me, just a photo of a drawing of me, the same drawing they used for the cardboard stand-up.

“That’s not the real Digger,” some kid says from back in the line.

“What’s your name?” I ask the kid in front of me.

“Make it out to Kenny,” his dad says. The kid just stares, wide-eyed.

“Oh my God, they killed Kenny! Those …” It suddenly occurs to me that it might be inappropriate to yell out the word bastards in a mall full of kids. You’d think I would have already learned this, but I’ve been known to have trouble keeping my mouth shut, which is why I’ve never really tried to do the secret identity thing. Well, that and the rather obvious disfigurement deal.

“Sorry,” I say to Fleming. It’s entirely possible that I’ll go the whole day having only spoken three different words to her: hi, okay, and sorry. A lot of sorry‘s.

I write, “Kenny, Be a Hero, Digger,” on the picture using the swooping, company-approved penmanship that Playco made me practice for the last week. It’s tricky to write with these big plastic shells on my arms. I’m supposed to write my name with a big flourish, but I can’t pull it off. It looks lame, so I try for the jaunty underline instead. A little better than last time. “Be careful with that. The marker’s still wet,” I say as I hand the picture back. The kid practically dances away with his father in tow.

“I’m serious, Mom, look. His costume’s all wrinkled, and his hair’s all wrong, and the DBG’s look totally fake,” the kid’s voice continues, drawing closer as the line moves.

Of course, the Driller Beam Generators look fake, because they are fake. The animation studio’s artists took some liberties with the design, so my costume has been redesigned to match. The colors of my shirt and pants are brighter, I now sport a big “D” logo on each sleeve, and my forearms are encased in shiny plastic shells like blimps. I don’t mind so much; I never thought the real Drillers looked all that good. At one point, I got so bored with them that I tried to weld on little Cadillac-style fins, give them some panache, but after two or three battles, they were beat all to hell. Looked really pitiful.

Another picture slides in front of me, a little blond kid, about the same age as the last one, staring at me with big, round eyes. His mother nudges him. “Tell him your name, honey,” she says.

“Darren. I really like your show,” the kid says, “And my favorite character is Dig-Dog.”

Jesus wept. Of all the things I hate about The Digger Family Amazing Power Hour, and there are several, the one I hate most is the extended family they’ve saddled me with: Kid Digger and Daisy Digger and Uncle Digger and the Three Lieutenant Diggers: Ditch, Posthole and Grave. But the worst, the absolute worst, is the Mighty Dig-Dog, mainly because he’s the real hero of the show. They play me as a big buffoon, always getting in over my head until Dig-Dog comes in to save the day. Bastard.

But I try to keep a smile on my face as I write on the picture. I hand it back and say, “He’s my favorite, too.” Smiling makes my face hurt.

The next kid is older, eleven or twelve maybe, and he’s got an attitude. “You’re not the real Digger, are you?” This is the snot-nose I’ve been hearing for a while now.

“Yes, I am,” I say. “The real deal.”

“You can’t be,” he says. “Those DBG’s look plastic. Plus you’re like, way too old.”

“Okay, number one, the real Digger calls them Drillers, not DBG’s like on the show. Number two, just because they look fake doesn’t mean they are fake. Although, they are, but there are real ones underneath, trust me. And number three, I’m not old. Now who do I make this out to?”

Snot-Nose shakes his head. “Just write your name. I’ll probably throw it away, anyway.”

“You’re not throwing it away,” his mom says. She’s blonde, well-dressed, working a little too hard to look like she’s not getting any older. “I paid good money for that. If you don’t want it, you can sell it.”

“Who’d pay money for a picture autographed by some fake?” Snot-Nose asks.

“Listen, kid,” I say. “When you get trapped in an alternate dimension by a resurrected god, and have to watch all your friends die while you barely escape, and then spend two freaking years trying to fight your way back to Earth, only to find out that they’ve turned your life into a cartoon while you’ve been gone, then I might listen to what you have to say about my authenticity or lack of same. Until then, watch the damn show, buy the damn toys, and shut up!”

My voice echoes from the rafters of the food court. I notice this because all other noise in the mall seems to have stopped. Did you ever see “National Lampoon’s Animal House,” where the Deltas go into the all-black bar and shout, “Heeeeey Otis!” and everybody stops and stares at them? Just like that. Snot-Nose and his mom, Fleming the Playco rep, passing lady with a stroller, corn dog girls in their goofy hats: all staring. Somewhere back in the line, a kid starts to cry.

“I’m sorry,” I say to Fleming, and then turn back to the kid. “I’m sorry. It’s just … It’s been a long day, and I’m hungry. Maybe if your mom gives me her phone number, I could apologize more fully over drinks or something.”

Mom stares daggers at me. “I don’t believe you,” she says.

“I am pretty unbelievable,” I say. Did I mention my mouth control problems?

Mom leans in close, her perfume mingling with the aroma of chow mein swirling around my head. She smells really good. I try not to sneak a glance at her cleavage, and fail, as she says, “I’m reporting you to mall management.”

“No, come back,” I say as she storms off, dragging Snot-Nose with her. “At least let me sign the picture.”

She keeps walking away as the next person in line, a tall man in a suit, steps up. I look around him at the retreating mom. “You know, this is probably for the best. I’m kinda seeing someone.” If you can call sitting at the bar and paying her money to serve me beer seeing.

“This is not good,” Fleming says.

I sigh and say, “I know. I’m sorry.” I look down at the picture in front of me. “What’s your child’s name, sir?”

“Oh, it’s for me,” says a deep voice speaking in cultured, almost theatrical tones. “Make it out to Pierce. Professor Pierce.”

“You know, I once fought a guy named …” I look up into a smiling, familiar face: tall, thin, with a regal crest of white hair sweeping back from his forehead.

“Hello, Digger,” he says. “You’ve changed your costume, I see.”

Oh, God.

Of all the things I’ve dreaded about doing one of these appearances—the goofy costume and the bratty kids and the cramps in my hand from signing my name a million times—this is the worst one, the one I tried hardest to convince myself wouldn’t happen: one of my enemies showing up and starting a scrap in a crowded mall full of kids.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “I’m not here to start an altercation.”

Which is good. As I recall, Professor Pierce was a nasty one. He threw needles. He threw them really hard.

I hate needles.

“Then why are you here?” I ask.

“Isn’t it obvious? I’m a big fan of your show.” He casts a nervous glance at Fleming, then leans in close. He’s trying hard to seem self-assured, but there’s something almost desperate in his eyes. “In fact, I … I was sort of hoping you could get me on it.”

No. Freaking. Way.

“Uh, what?”

“Think about it,” he says, looking back and forth between Fleming and me. “Digger versus his greatest real-life archenemy. It would give the show a real boost, I think.”

“You weren’t my archenemy, dude,” I say. “We only fought, like, once.”

“Twice,” he says. He turns to plead his case to Fleming. “And they were epic struggles.”

“So epic I don’t remember the second one?”

“The L.A. tunnels?” he says. “Balloons full of poison gas surrounding you so you didn’t dare deflect my needles?”

“That was you?”

“Yes, it was me,” he says, gritting his teeth. He tries to force a smile back onto his face. God, did I look that insincere when that kid was talking about Dig-Dog?

“But what about my idea?” he continues. “You pay me a small licensing fee for the use of my likeness. I would even do the voice for scale. Think about it: the authentic villain with the real-life voice.”

“I so don’t remember that being you,” I say. “I thought it was that laser guy …”

“Digger doesn’t have any input into the creative content of the show,” Fleming says.

“That can’t be true,” Pierce says.

“Fraid so,” I say.

“But you could pull some strings,” Pierce says. “I mean, they need your permission to make the show, obviously. You could threaten to withdraw it, or …”

“Seriously, dude, even if I wanted to, I can’t,” I say.

Pierce shoves his face close to mine, and this time there’s no mistaking the desperation in his eyes. “Do you want me to beg? Is this fun for you? Fine. I’m begging. Please, I need this.”

“Sir, you’ll need to move along,” Fleming says.

“No!” Pierce says, and I can see his eyes welling up. “Digger, I’m desperate. I can barely feed myself. They let me out on parole, but the terms … I’m not allowed near anything sharp. I got a temp job in an office, but I had to quit. They freaked out whenever I used a paper clip, and God help me if I sharpened a pencil. I can’t work in a restaurant, I can’t work in a garage, I can’t even work in a bloody Wal-Mart because they carry sewing supplies! It’s like they want to force me back into a life of crime. Please, you’re the only one who can understand. You and I, we’re special. We have a bond.”

All I can do is shrug and say, “Sorry.” It’s “Sorry Day,” apparently.

“Why won’t you help me?” Pierce demands.

“The terms of Digger’s contract are confidential,” Fleming says.

“Screw that,” I say. “You want to know why? Here’s why: because when I was missing, Playco trademarked my costume, my name and my powers, figuring I wouldn’t need them anymore. I came back from my two-year vacation in the nether realms to find out I’m now a big TV star. And then when I tried to help some folks out, I got slapped with a ‘cease-and’desist’ order from Playco’s lawyers.

“I tried to fight it in court, but I found out that since Digger wasn’t my real name, and I’d never taken steps to protect my use of it, Playco had every right to do what they did. I would probably have lost the case, but Playco offered me a settlement. They pay me a stipend and allow me to wear my costume and use my name, but only with their approval, to promote their show and their toy line. You think I can pull strings to get you on the show? I can’t even pull any strings to get me off of it!”

My voice is echoing from the rafters again, and all traffic in the area has come to a complete standstill for the second time. At some point, I’ve risen from my seat, because I didn’t like the way Pierce was looming over me. Didn’t help, though. Pierce is way taller than me, so still looming. He looks like he wants to say something, but he just lets out this long hiss from his nose, and then he turns and stalks away.

He passes Snot-Nose and his mom, who are coming back with the mall’s manager, a squat woman in a peach-colored suit whose name escapes me. I am so not in the mood for them to start yelling at me, and who knows? Maybe they won’t do it right away. Maybe they’ll, I don’t know, stand in line and wait their turn to berate me like everyone else, except that there’s not a line anymore. It’s magically dissolved to nothing. Amazing how that happens.

“Great. You’re going to get me fired before my six-month review,” Fleming says.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “It’s just, you guys are gonna’ need to provide better security at these things.”

“Security? You’re a superhero, and it’s a bunch of kids,” Fleming says.

“Not all kids, apparently.”

“Mister Digger,” says the mall manager. “Is it true that you’ve been verbally abusing the mall’s guests?”

I start to protest, but Snot-Nose’s Mom cuts me off. “I want him fired.”

Off down the mall, I see Pierce going into a hobby store. Didn’t he just say he wasn’t allowed to do that? “She can’t fire me,” I say.

“I can’t fire him. He’s not a mall employee,” the manager says.

“Then you fire him,” Snot-Nose’s Mom says to Fleming.

“She can’t fire me either,” I say.

“Yeah, see, Digger isn’t technically an employee of Playco,” Fleming says. “It’s more of an independent contractor-type of …”

Pierce strides out of the hobby store, moving quickly. He’s opening a small package as he angles back toward the food court. A woman trails behind him, trying to get his attention, but he ignores her as he fusses over something with his lapel.

“Well, somebody better fire him, damn it! He can’t treat us that way!” the mom says.

“Your kid called me a fake,” I say.

“Because you are a fake,” Snot-Nose says.

Pierce disappears into a restaurant at the edge of the food court. The woman follows him in.

“Then call the cops,” Snot-Nose’s Mom says. “I want to press charges.”

“For what?” I ask.

“Look, what if Digger apologizes?” Fleming asks as a tiny shriek escapes from the restaurant.

“I did apologize,” I say.

“You didn’t mean it,” Snot-Nose’s Mom says.

“… things are totally plastic. Look!” Snot-nose is saying as he knocks on the shells.

“Stop that.”

Pierce strides out of the restaurant and turns towards us. He’s got a transparent plastic box in his hand now.

“So now you’re a mindreader?” Fleming says.

“Excuse me …” I say.

“Even the toys look better than that,” Snot-Nose says.

“Oh, first you try to suck up, now you want to fight,” says the mom.

“Excuse me …” I say again as Pierce strides closer, his eyes locked on mine.

The manager says, “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to …”

I fire up the Drillers. I don’t know exactly how they work, but I do know they work a lot more efficiently if you preheat them first, like the glow plugs in a diesel truck. When I hit the preheat, it makes this snap followed by a high-pitched whine like a camera flash charging. As soon as I do that, Mom stops talking, Snot-Nose jumps back like he’s been shocked, and Fleming and the manager both turn to stare at me like I’m about to explode or something.

“There may be a fight,” I say. “You all need to get out of the way.”

“With him?” Fleming looks over at Pierce, who’s practically trembling, he’s so angry. “What’s that he’s got?”

“I think it’s a toothpick dispenser,” I say.

“Don’t you dare start a fight in here,” the manager says.

“I won’t be the one starting it.”

“Well, if you do fight, don’t destroy my mall, at least,” she says.

“You do know who you’re talking to, right?” Pierce is looking down at the box in his hand, like maybe now he regrets having grabbed it. Maybe I can talk him down. “Hey, Pierce,” I shout.

“Shut up!” he yells and flings out his left hand.

Light glints silver off something flashing toward me. I shove Snot-nose’s Mom in one direction, use the momentum to bump the manager the other way with my shoulder as I lift my hand to intercept the needle strike. It’s how I beat Pierce in the past, deflecting the needles with the metal Drillers grafted permanently onto my forearms.

The needles pierce the fake plastic shells, then a shock runs up my arm, courses through my entire body. I fall to the ground. The plastic Driller shell shatters when I hit.

My hand is numb. I look at the Driller, see three sharp points poking up a quarter-inch from the surface of the metal. Pierce’s needles penetrated almost all the way into it and apparently hit the batteries, because little electrical arcs are jumping between the points. The hell?

I look at Pierce, who smiles angrily. “I practiced a little in prison,” he says.

People run screaming from the food court, corn dog girls diving for cover behind the counter as I struggle to my feet. Snot-Nose’s Mom turns to run, but Pierce spins a toothpick out of the dispenser and buries it in the back of her knee. She falls, screaming “Run, Kenyon! Go!”

Snot-Nose dashes for the nearest exit. Pierce spins another toothpick out of the dispenser. My right arm doesn’t want to work, but my left is just fine. I pound the Driller into the floor and blast, shattering the plastic and sending out a shockwave all around me. Tiles fly up as the ground bucks and bends. Snot-Nose Kenyon screeches and falls as Pierce’s toothpick goes spinning harmlessly up toward the second level.

Pierce snarls, spins out a toothpick and flings it at me. I leap out of the way, carom off a second floor balcony and launch myself at him. He throws another one at me in mid-leap. I deflect it with my left arm; the toothpick doesn’t penetrate the way the needles did.

Pierce dodges out of the way of my landing, grabs for his lapel. I see three more shiny needles there, stuck through the fabric of his shirt. He flings them at me; instead of deflecting them, I try to dodge. I don’t quite make it. The needles hit me in the left shoulder. Pain burns through the muscle, but the arm still works okay. The needles were so sharp, they passed right through.

I take two steps and hit Pierce with my left hand, simultaneously letting loose with a blast from the Driller. The Driller Beams, they’re hard to explain. They’re not laser beams; they’re kind of like focused explosions. Through regular soil, they can blow open big tunnels, big enough for me to stand upright in and run. With stronger materials, I have to focus the blast more, so the tunnels are small and I have to move more slowly.

The point is, I could leave Pierce splattered all over this mall if I wanted, but I just want to put him down, so I diffuse the blast, fling him back fifty feet through a glass shop window.

Problem solved.

The food court is a bit of a mess. I didn’t do any digging, but my shockwave ripped up tiles and flung tables and chairs in all directions. There’s shattered plastic at my feet, a line of scattered toothpicks leading off toward the window I put Pierce through. My right arm is throbbing, rhythmic shocks from the Driller causing my fist to pulse open and closed. It hurts like hell. I turn to see Fleming help the manager shakily to her feet. Snot-Nose is kneeling by his mom, screeching for help.

“Hey, Fleming, you okay?” I ask. She nods. A lock of her perfectly-coiffed hair has fallen out of place and gotten caught in the corner of her mouth. She tries to puff it out and fails. Her blue eyes twinkle a bit at the silliness of it all; I hadn’t realized just how gorgeous her eyes were, and I am way too old and in debt to start thinking this way about one of the enemy.

I start to tell her to call the cops and an ambulance when blinding pain rips through the back of my leg, just above the knee. I fall and look back toward the shop window where I last saw Pierce.

He’s standing there, just in front of the window, his face wet with blood and tears. He holds glass shards in his hands; he snarls and draws one back to throw.

I can’t jump. I’m a sitting duck, and so are the others. Snot-Nose Kenyon. Fleming.

“Wait a second!” I yell as I try to get my good leg under me.

“No!” He throws a shard. I try to dodge, but I’m just too slow. The glass buries itself in my left bicep. I scream and fall flat on my back.

“Stop it, Pierce! Don’t make me …”

“Don’t make you what?” he yells. “The mighty Digger, everybody’s hero, big TV star! Try signing autographs without any arms!”

“I mean it, Pierce,” I say. “I took it easy on you a second ago, because I didn’t want to kill you.”

“Right, but you’re helpless now,” he says. “Can’t jump, can’t punch. What can you do?”

“You ever see ‘Voltron?’”

“What?” he asks.

“The Japanese cartoon,” I say. “Or ‘Robotech?’ ‘Starblazers?’ ‘Power Rangers’ maybe?”

“What, are you just rubbing it in, now?” he asks. “Everybody’s got a cartoon but me?”

“No, I’m just saying, these guys, every week they would fight somebody. And every week, the bad guys would be kicking their ass, until they pulled out their big ultimate weapon. The Blazing Sword. The Wave Motion Gun. And after a while, you just had to wonder, why do they bother fighting normally at all? Why not just fire the Wave Motion Gun the instant a bad guy sticks his head out of a hole?”

“Hello. It was a show. They had time to fill.”

“Yeah, but you want to think that the character has some kind of reason. The best I could figure was, they were always trying to hold something in reserve. If your enemy knows the most extreme thing you can do, he can plan a way to counter it. But if you’ve got some ability that he doesn’t know about, he’ll underestimate you and you can beat him.”

“So what?” Pierce yells.

“So quit now, so I don’t have to use my Wave Motion Gun on your ass,” I say.

Pierce hesitates for a second, then barks out a single laugh. “You don’t have any ‘Wave Motion Gun,’” he says. “And even if you did, I’d be able to counter it next time.”

“That’s the other thing about Wave Motion Guns,” I say. “They’re lethal. One shot, instant destruction. They have to be, so the bad guys can’t get a second chance.”

“You’re bluffing,” he says.

“Throw that glass and find out,” I say.

He looks down at it, blinks at the sight of blood on his hands. He’s been gripping the glass so hard, it’s cut into his fingers. “Crap. Would you look at that? Fingers are all slippery. Couldn’t kill you if I wanted to.” He lets the glass slip from his fingers to shatter on the floor.

Later, after the cops have taken Pierce away, and I’ve signed Snot-Nose Kenyon’s picture before he rode off in the ambulance with his mom, I’m standing with Fleming at the mall entrance. My wounds have been cleaned and dressed. The ambulance guys wanted to take me to the hospital, but I said no. I heal up pretty fast. “I think I’m going to get a beer,” I say. “Want to come?”

“No,” she says. “I’ve got a conference call waiting. You made a big mess here. The company has to reevaluate our relationship with you.”

I nod. I expected as much. “Okay, see you later.” I turn to walk away.

“Hey, Digger,” she says.

I stop and look back at her.

“That stuff you said, about Japanese cartoons and your secret weapon. Was that true, or was it just a bluff?”

“What do you think?” I ask.

“I think it was a bluff,” she says. “But if it were true, I thought it might make a good twist to add to your show, you know?”

“Yeah, that’s a way to keep a secret,” I say. “Put it on a top-rated TV show.”

“Yeah, but it’s a kid’s show where the real hero’s a dog,” Fleming says. “No one would take it seriously. I just, I want to know because you were kind of staking all our lives on it. So, is it true?”

“Call me if you change your mind about the beer,” I say as I turn and walk away. Maybe now I have a string to pull with Playco, after all.

Misfits

Written by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller

Illustrated by Paul Davies

Day 54, Standard Year 1393

Solcintra, Liad

It was a pellucid, temperate morning. The humidity levels were just a point lower than the theoretical “perfect comfort” zone; the sky was an arcing blue-green bowl marred by neither cloud nor threat of rain. It was, in fact, a fine day for gardening.

As were so many days on Liad.

The gardener was early at his work, having risen betimes from restless, unsettling dreams, and knowing from long experience that laboring in the clan’s inner gardens was a potent cure for restlessness. Granted, the work no longer exhausted him to the point of dreamlessness, for which he had only himself to thank. Nine standards gone, the inner gardens had been a jungle of neglect and ill-considered plantings. Now … he flattered himself that it was an oasis, a place of peace and beauty to soothe the spirit and calm the emotions.

To create such a place, that was certainly, he thought as he turned from the portable weather station he had mounted on the garden wall—certainly such a place was of value to the clan.

As he was not, nor ever had been.

An embarrassment to the clan—oh, yes. Many times over; the transgression which had made him gardener under what Terrans so quaintly styled “house arrest,” merely the last in the series of embarrassments that had begun with his birth and naming.

That he was also the instrument of the clan’s continued financial comfort—well, that was an embarrassment, too.

He took up his hoe and walked to the bottom of the garden, where the pesselberries wanted his attention. A small flock of foraging redbirds flew as far as the garden wall, complaints loud and urgent. One, braver than the rest, held position until the gardener was nearly upon him, and then joined his crew. Within moments their song was back to the constant low twitter he’d become accustomed to.

It was hardly his fault that Clan Lysta had once been on the verge of financial ruin, or that a mad Terran had wanted a ship. Not any ship, but a good ship, a Liaden-built ship, with up-to-date cans and mount points and drives, and—Korval’s ships then as now being pre-bought a dozen or more years in advance—his only choice was to buy from Cochel lo’Vanna, whose clan refused to sell to any but a member of a registered clan.

The madman—one Thrugood Brunner—was not without resources. He set himself to become a member of a registered clan. He had—perhaps by chance, perhaps by reasoned searching—located Lysta, teetering on the edge of dissolution. He met with the desperate delm, an agreement was reached to publish a new Line; a contract was written, money changed hands—hey, presto! as some Terrans would have it—Lysta was saved. And Thrugood Brunner got his ship, which he soon boarded, never to return to planet or clanhouse.

But the contract. The contract had established a trust, a certain percentage of which was to be paid into the clan’s operating fund every Standard for precisely as long as Line Brunner flourished in the care of Clan Lysta. This to be proven by the existence, in each generation, of a child bearing the surname Brunner and a personal name from the original Brunner’s family history, a list of those names being appended to the contract.

The clan, no longer in debt, found the contract, but not the portion, to be—awkward. By the delm’s word, the generational Brunners lived quietly retired, calling no attention to themselves, or to the clan which nurtured them.

Until recently, that was.

“Ichliad!” A glad, childish voice interrupted these ruminations.

He looked up and smiled as Verena rushed down the path, trailed, as ever, by orange Charzi, tail high and whiskers a-quiver.

“Why are you all the way down here?” the child asked, depositing herself with abandon on the brick walk. The cat came and stood on her knee, then wandered off, as it was wont to do, to explore what new smells might have developed over night. The birds quieted somewhat, but still muttered among the branches.

“The pesselberries must have their soil aerated, or they will not bear,” he answered.

“That would be a good thing, surely?” she asked. Verena was not fond of pesselberries.

“Not all of us share your distaste for fresh fruits,” he commented, wielding his hoe with a will.

“Not all fresh fruits,” she objected. “Ichliad, let us make a pact! You may have all of my pesselberries, and I will have all of your kelchin fruit.”

He shook his head, a Terran habit he had not been able to break. “You know quite well that kelchin fruit are nuts,” he said. He gave her a glance. “And so do I.”

She sighed, and squinted up at the sky. “What will the weather be today?”

“Clear and calm and placid,” he answered, hoeing. “The weather on Liad is always placid.”

“Always?”

“Excepting the occasional tempest along the coasts, yes. We are fortunate in the weather on our homeworld. Others are not nearly so tame.”

Charzi appeared out of the bushes then and Verena was obliged to express her admiration of his beauty and prowess for the next few minutes. Ichliad plied his hoe, the rhythm of the work lulling him into a state almost of sleep—and was roused by the child.

“Ichliad,” she asked, “will you go back to being a weatherman, when the delm is through punishing you?”

Go back to being a weatherman? he thought, and shook his head once more.

“Child, I have never stopped being a weatherman.”

“And you’re a good one, too!” she said stoutly. “You’re never wrong about—”

Suddenly, unprecedented in this protected place—a down burst of hot, parched wind. The birds went silent. Beneath his feet, the ground shivered.

“Go!” He threw down his hoe, grabbed the child under her arms and yanked her to her feet. “Run! Into the house!”

“Charzi!” she objected and he pushed her, not gently, another blast of wind buffeting them, and a rumble building.

“I’ll bring the cat! Go—now!”

She looked up into his face—and ran.

* * *

The news was everywhere, driving even his delm’s treasured melant’i plays off the house screens. Clan Korval had struck against the homeworld, opening a hole in the center of Solcintra itself. Ichliad stayed a short time among his horrified kin, then escaped upstairs to his rooms, where his private screen told the same tale over.

He listened with half an ear to the explanations, the recorded warnings, the speculations as he paced the length and breadth of his quarters, his fingers twisted together as he debated with himself.

He was an authority—an expert. Unlike most of the meteorologists who studied and graphed the subtle, agreeable weather of the homeworld, he had seen, he had studied—he understood—what would happen next. The winds would carry debris and potentially deadly particles, raining them down on others, so distant from the catastrophe that they would not think of their danger.

“They must,” he whispered, “be warned.”

And by whom? The Scouts? Well, yes. But the Scouts were stretched thin, as he heard the tale told between the sentences of the news reports. There were evacuations, teams sent in to succor the wounded. It would be—days, perhaps, before the Scouts had leisure to think. He—this was his field, and it fell to him to give the warning.

He paused by the window and gazed down into the inner garden that had been his care and duty for the past nine Standards. The terms of his arrest were plain: he was to remain housebound, communicating with no one, calling no attention to himself, bringing no embarrassment to his house. Manage this for ten Standards, his delm had told him, with an ironic bow that indicated such restraint was doubtful, and his confinement would be ended, his debt to the clan’s consequence paid.

Six Standard months remained until his parole. Freedom was within his reach.

And yet—

“They must,” he said to the empty room, his voice striking the walls firmly, “be told.”

His knowledge, his expertise …

His duty.

He had contacts, names. People who would remember him, or at least remember his work. He had only to access the communications module—unlocked, for where was the honor in obedience, if the forbidden were not available as a constant choice?

Ichliad turned from the window, walked over to the desk, sat down. His fingers moved on the keypad, and there was the screen, the program prompting him for an address.

Six months to freedom.

But, really, he was a weatherman. There was no choice.

* * *

Research Station Number Measton 4

Day 198, Standard Year 1382

“Ichliad Brunner to Storage Bay Three; I. Brunner to Storage Bay Three.”

It took some moments for the noise to become sound, for the sound to become words, for the words to have meaning, for the meaning to have urgency.

Brunner looked at the remains of his solitary meal—”lunch” this would be by the cryptic schedule on the canteen wall—and realized he was done anyway. Not that the food was bad, but that his mind was far from it, his discovery of yet another bombed-out weather unit filling his thoughts. Someone on the surface was targeting the ground units—that much was certain. Why they would do so, when accurate reporting of the weather was crucial to both—or perhaps he should say, all—sides of the war being waged on the planet below—that was the puzzle.

Well, that and how he would convince the company this time to send him more units.

“Brunner to Storage Bay Three. Ichliad Brunner to Storage Bay Three!”

Sighing, he folded his assigned portable regretfully and slipped it back into its pocket. Somewhere in the latest information might be a key, a pointer, an explanation of the newest weather pattern, the one he’d hoped to pinpoint using the destroyed monitor.

At least today he’d been able to think and study at lunch. Jack was someplace else.

Never good with small talk, even among Liadens, Brunner found station-livers to be largely respectful of someone who was working. Still, there was Jacumbra Edgil—”Jack, just call me Jack and everybody’ll know who you’re talking about!”—who seemed to wander the station talkative and unfettered at all shifts, doing whatever it was that “Jack” did.

One was warned of Jack’s approach by a chorus of subtle clicks, chirps, beeps, and clanks, some of them electronic, some born of the accidental interplay of the objects hung along his several tool belts.

There were other warnings, as well, if one were so engrossed in one’s work that mere sound was disregarded. For instance, Jack was very much not of Liaden size, standing a full head taller than Brunner, carrying at least twice the weight; sometimes he blocked the overhead lights.

To hear Jack talk, which was difficult to avoid, he was personally responsible for the upkeep of the station and all its systems. How he could manage this while also being present at people’s elbows during breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack, and “canteen cocktails” was hard to imagine. Still, the phrase, “Guess we’d better ask Jack,” was said often enough to lend credence to his claims of technical omnipotence.

“Ichliad Brunner to Storage Bay Three! Code Eleven.”

Well, he thought, picking up his tray, someone was impatient. And Code Eleven, forsooth! He was expecting no visitors, save the Phaetera company rep, whose existence he was coming to doubt. And when had the Scout designated himself as a mere “visitor”?

He deposited the tray, his thoughts again on the problem of the weather patterns below them. So much unexplained, so much seeming impossible. But there—explanations must exist, revealing what seemed impossible to be merely improbable. That was the hope. It was reason he was here, and why the station was here. Klamath, in its eccentricities, might well demonstrate a key that could unlock the weather patterns of a thousand worlds.

* * *

Storage Bay Three was the area reserved for the Scout when he made his frequent and largely unscheduled appearances. What the Scout did when he wasn’t on station Brunner neither knew nor cared. When the Scout was on station he dipped his fingers into everything, always asking questions, always being very busy, almost always being annoying, and most often doing all of that in the company of Jack and his clanking tool belts.

Brunner entered the access hall to Storage Bay Three at his usual brisk pace, ignoring the urge to hurry prompted by yet another iteration of the demand for his appearance. This summons was a disruption of his work, his thought, and his schedule. He was obeying it—gods forefend that he bring the Scout down upon his work area!—but he would not be goaded into rushing. At least he was not like those who let their names echo through the station for a half-shift.

Ahead, the bay doors were wide open, revealing people, voices, uniforms—and Jack. For a wonder Jack was standing quiet as the Scout and a tall Terran woman dressed in a military uniform peered at something hidden by his bulk.

“Won’t be a cause for trouble, then, for you? I mean political trouble. I don’t think these …” That was the tall woman.

Jack saw Brunner, and Brunner saw the small hand-sign he made to the Scout, one of those pilots and Scouts used to communicate in noisy or distracting environments. Brunner thought of the sign as, “Attend, one approaches,” but he had never been formally trained in hand-talk, something he greatly regretted. He might have been taught—would have been taught!—had his delm allowed the Scouts to buy his contract when he had been at the Scout Academy’s meteorology school. Alas, by the time the offer was made, he had been under contract to the technical services company Phaetera, who had paid for his advanced training.

The Scout turned, bowed a polite if minimal bow of equal recognition, close enough to a Terran nod as to be indistinguishable except by one raised in an exacting house. “Tech Brunner.”

Brunner returned the bow as precisely as possible. Really, it was saying too much for the Scout’s clan to concede equality, but perhaps the Scout himself was acknowledging Brunner’s Scout training. If that were so, then he was actually summoned here for some purpose having to do with his work, rather than to engage in yet another rambling conversation regarding the “news” from the planet surface. Brunner knew Scouts—and, alas, this particular Scout—well enough to understand that those conversations were not as pointless as they seemed, though he was neither sufficiently subtle nor demented to comprehend their purpose.

“Meteorologist Ichliad Brunner Clan Lysta,” the Scout said now, speaking Trade tongue in deference to mixed company. “Allow me to make you known to Commander Liz Lizardi, of Lizardi’s Lunatics.”

“Commander,” said Brunner, giving what was perhaps too curt a bow to someone of rank, but as she was both Terran and a mercenary, he doubted that she would …

Or perhaps, he thought, he had made too hasty a judgment regarding a mere mercenary’s understanding of nuance. The commander returned a bow the mirror image of his own, her face studiously blank.

“Meteorologist,” she said, and then, after a very quick scan for signs of rank, including a glance at his hands to see if he wore rings, she added, “Contractor, are you, Brunner?”

“Indeed, ” he agreed, giving her the fuller bow she had earned. “Like yourself, I assume.”

She smiled slightly. “Yes, but not for your boss, I assure you.”

“I thought it best to bring you together,” the Scout suggested firmly before either raised the conversational stakes again, “so that we might all gain advantage from an awkward situation. The commander is bringing her forces into the fray on the side of the Chilongan government. She is need of accurate weather prediction—and is willing to supply someone to carry special equipment and give reports. “

“Special equipment? I have no equipment to loan …” began Brunner—and stopped at Jack’s low-key hand motion.

Six paces to the big man’s right, a backpack stood on its rack. A red-headed Liaden youth—as much of an oddity on the station as Brunner himself—in combat dress was examining the pack minutely.

“Tech Brunner,” the Scout said. “You will of course be familiar with the commercial version of this Stubbs MicroRanger from your training.” He used his chin to point at the backpack. “The Scouts will supply this unit on loan to the station, if, in your professional opinion, it will be useful to your work. The station may then lend-lease the unit to Klamath—or to someone representing the legitimate government of Klamath. There is … melant’i at work … in that direction.”

Brunner eyed the offered weather machine. The redheaded soldier was bent close, hands prudently behind her back, winged brows pulled together into a frown. “This is no commercial unit, Scout.”

“Indeed. In comparison to the commercial Stubbs … This one is quite a bit more powerful, and has some additional useful features—we will of course supply the manual. Among the upgrades is the ability to transmit very long distances. It may also be set to do precision positioning and multi-remote queries on its own and to act as relay. Is this capability worth the risk to equipment which costs on the order of a dozen cantra to put in place?”

“Worth how much? Maybelle’s beard! And I’m supposed to just lug this around in an active zone?”

Startled, Brunner looked back to the apparent halfling who’d been studying the Stubbs.

As Liaden as she appeared, the language she spoke was Terran and the accent was—backworld, at best.

“That’s not your problem …” began the commander but the halfling rushed on:

“Liz, this thing could buy Surebleak with change left over, couldn’t it? Didn’t you say you can buy a ship for …”

The Scout laughed out loud, and cocked an eyebrow at the tall Terran at his side.

“I see you have found us willing transport, Commander.”

She snorted, made a vague waving motion toward the young soldier.

“Put it on, then we’ll see if you’ve got a worry, right, Corporal?”

The soldier’s face was very unLiaden in its mobility and willingness to display emotion. The expression of the moment, if Brunner read it aright, was a cross between disdain and awe.

“That an order?” she asked warily. “I can’t much afford to pay this back if I drop it wrong …”

“Order,” confirmed the commander, though not as sharply as she might have done. “Now, Redhead.”

“Yes’m.” The soldier bent to the pack.

“The question remains, Tech.” The Scout’s voice drew Brunner’s attention. “Is it worth the risk to the equipment to have the corporal carry it in what she properly names an active zone?”

Brunner sighed, shoulders rising in one of the all-encompassing shrugs that formed a great part of station linqua.

“You wish to argue philosophy, Scout? Equipment is to be used in the pursuit of information. This station exists to gather what information we can regarding the unique events upon the planet’s surface.”

Jack snorted. “See, I told you! Sure he wants the Stubbs onworld. You want the Stubbs onworld. The commander here, she wants the Stubbs onworld …”

“Hey, it ain’t that heavy, really, is it?”

The discussion stopped as all eyes focused on the corporal and her burden. She stood as tall as she could, which was not very, and extremely straight, which was … admirable, given what she was wearing on her back. The unit’s stand was still deployed, and she casually flipped a trip-switch on her left side, retracting it. Reaching to another switch, she said, “This one, right? The antenna?”

The Scout nodded. “But not here. The unit will begin transmitting on antenna deployment and I suspect it would give a jolt to the local receivers at this range, even if all it does is protest the lack of its key.”

The corporal grinned and gave half-salute, with a cheery, “Yes, sir!” She moved her shoulders against the rig and strode away at a good clip, as if testing new boots. Out the door she went, down the corridor a dozen steps, then a quick circle back.

Brunner watched the girl-soldier with some discomfort. Certainly, she was young; at a guess, several years younger than he, and—solely in his opinion—far too young to be at war. But there, the planetary news source most usually available to the station insisted that the “free-breeders” routinely armed children younger than ten Standards. What the news source did not make plain was if those children were armed defensively, or offensively.

“Security,” said the Scout, talking either to the room at large or to the commander, “simply means acknowledging that we have a mobile unit on the surface. We can have no secrets about this: all we are doing is making sure that the planet below gets the kind of meteorological coverage it deserves. Given the interconnectedness of all things, weather belongs to the whole world. And the weather where you are bound, my friend—can teach us something, I’m sure.”

The Scout looked to him—a request for agreement, perhaps, or a reminder of his question?

“Yes,” Brunner murmured, directing his reply to both Scout and commander. “Yes, if this item is in my inventory, it needs to be used if possible.”

There. It was said. And there was another thing that needed, yet, to be said.

He turned to directly face Commander Liz Lizardi, and bowed slightly, promising an accurate account of a problematic situation. “Understand that our channels are sometimes monitored… . Someone on the surface is searching for weather units, and destroying them. I have no doubt that by carrying such a device you will make your force … it could attract the attention of those you may not be sided with.”

She smiled, did the commander and gave a casual salute, as if acknowledging the intent of his bow.

“Comes with the territory, sir. We’re going down there to straighten out a mess; happens the folks on the other side might not appreciate us much, with or without your piece of equipment. Weather’s a big issue down there—almost another army, by what I’ve seen of the records. If that machine lets me know what I’ve got headed my way—well, sir, it’s worth the risk, from where I stand.”

Brunner inclined his head, accepting her summation.

“In that case, I am in favor of going forward. I require the person who is to carry the unit have some formal training beyond, ‘If you push this, the machine will work’… . But I myself will need to read the manuals, as this is not the machine I was trained on.”

“You would, huh? Well, me too.” She looked at the Scout, but it was Jack who answered.

“We can hold the docking hub for you for two orbits, Liz. More’n that, it’d look like we’re taking sides …”

“Understood.” She made what might have been a gesture of dismissal … or a call to action, and raised her voice.

“Redhead! Front and center!”

* * *

Tech Brunner, the guy who was going to teach her how to use the weather rig, was short—not dumpy, just small and skinny, kinda like her—maybe shy, or maybe just nervous. Hard to tell how old he was—didn’t she know how easy it was to suppose years off somebody just ‘cause they were short and small? His face was smooth, except for some strain-lines around his eyes and his mouth, like he spent too much time in front of his screens, looking at things that didn’t make him happy. His hair was what they called “ditchwater blond” back home, not showing any gray; and his eyes were real dark brown, like high-grade chocolate. He had a good voice, firm and cool, and an accent that made it sound almost like he was singing.

He didn’t have any service marks on his sleeves; his uniform was basically just ship clothes: a shirt with his name above the pocket, slacks with a name on the left rear pocket, no hatch marks. The shirt did have a cloud with lightning-bolt on the pocket, just under his name—she guessed that was maybe a company or team logo, and didn’t help at all with guessing how old he might be.

He amused Liz for some reason, and she held him back to walk with her and her friend the Scout, waving Redhead and the weather rig on ahead. That didn’t mean she was lonely, though, ‘cause the big guy—Jack, his name was—tugged right along beside her, hauling what must have been the rig’s shipping crate, and pointing her the way.

Behind, the talk was half in what Redhead supposed was Liaden, half in Trade and prolly half in hand-talk, too, but that didn’t bounce off the walls, so she couldn’t be sure. The whole situation was odd-shaped; off-center and full of politics, in Redhead’s opinion. She’d gotten pretty used to odd since leaving Surebleak, even if the politics sometimes escaped her. Being close ‘round Liz maybe more than most new soldiers meant she got to watch some of the inner stuff going down, though she didn’t savvy all of it.

“There go, kid,” her escort directed in Terran with an accent damn’ close to Surebleak’s; “take the corner there. I gotta bring this cause there’s a bunch of tech-stuff stowed inside, and Mr. Brunner’ll be wanting that after the Scout finishes sharing out today’s mess o’secret. No use us working stiffs hearin’ all that; just makes us anxious.”

“Call me Redhead, why not?” she suggested, letting the pack settle into the slightly rounded corner of the lift. Damn if she was going back to ‘kid,’ now she had chops on her sleeve. “Or corporal.”

Jack leaned against the door panel, twitching at a couple of the push plates while he craned his neck to peer down the corridor, then turned back to her.

“Corporal, is it? They must have rushed grades from what I see.”

Redhead sighed inwardly, but she knew from experience that the best answer was a joke.

“Nah, not really,” she said to Jack, deadpan. “I’m big for my age, is all.”

He shook his head.

“You can’t be young enough to be big for your age and still carry a gun for Commander Liz,” he said in Trade.

She followed that without any trouble, grinning wryly.

“I’ve known Liz a long time. Guess she knew me longer, really, ‘cause she was my mother’s friend, even before I was born.”

Jack nodded sagely. “Right then, she mighta known you longer… .” Back in Terran, that was—and cut off as something on his capacious belt beeped and something else clanked. His hands moved as quick as the sounds. The beeping stopped but the clanking didn’t, ‘cause he was checking the location of some other stuff on the belt. He’d been doing that every so often all the time he’d been in her sight—like he couldn’t stand not knowing exactly where his equipment was. She knew a couple of hands in the Lunatics like that: might call it a nervous habit, but they weren’t the ones to run low on ammo or to suddenly need batteries in the field. Might be Jack’d done soldier-time somewhen, though he seemed even more disinclined to salute than Tech Brunner.

Jack mumbled something and she’d said, “Huh?” before realizing he was talking to his collar. Something twerped on his belt and the lighting in the lift went up a couple notches.

“Sorry ‘bout that, Corporal. Lift’s got some extra solar shielding so I had to go to back-up to get the lights on. Company don’t like to waste power lighting the lifts!” He glanced at her casually, left hand still doing its tour of the belt.

“Must be handy to have the overrides right on your belt!” she said, honestly admiring such efficiency.

He sighed, surprisingly deeply. “You might think so, Corporal Redhead, but answer me this: What happens when you control the overrides?”

She shook her head and shrugged, hands up, the unfamiliar mass on her back making her shift her feet too, for balance. “Dunno. What happens?”

“When you control the overrides, sometimes you gotta make the decisions. Comes with the territory. Same with pilots, you know?” He gave her a hard look. “Same like maybe you’ll hafta do, carrying all that info on your back.”

“Yah,” she said to Jack, nodding in agreement. “I guess that’s so… .”

Liz hit the lift, then, ahead of her escort, leaned against the wall opposite Jack, and gave him a grin. “Penthouse, if you please!”

Jack said something with his hands that Redhead couldn’t see, then the door shut behind the tech and the Scout, with Jack and Liz sharing a smile over their heads.

There was a beep, and the car jerked into motion, going sort of northwest according to Redhead’s stomach. Jack’s belt beeped and the lighting went down a notch.

“Penthouse, next stop!” he said, maybe louder than he needed to—at least, it seemed Tech Brunner thought so, if he wasn’t frowning about something else entirely. The Scout, tucked into the corner next to Liz, only smiled.

* * *

Jack was dismantling the shipping crate, piling each piece just so on the conference room floor, making sure that all the pockets and cavities were empty of whatever odds and ends might have been stuffed there. He hummed as he worked, which was annoying, but Brunner kept himself busy by acting the host, quite happy to see the backs of the Scout and the commander as they fled for the canteen’s small bar after approving the conference area as a classroom, and after the Scout passed him a small blue envelope.

The choice of food available from the conference room fresh-case was somewhat more limited than the canteen’s, but since the room was used from time to time for working meetings, it was stocked with some proper teas in addition to coffee, and it held an unreasonably wide supply of chernubia especially baked for Tech Brunner by the canteen’s cook, who applauded his insistence that each meal should be made more memorable by one or two small sweets to choose from.

The water steaming and a selection of fruited chernubia set out upon a tray, with cups and plates, Brunner turned toward his young student, only to discover her sitting back in the soft, oversized for her as for him, Terran conference chair, her eyes closed and breath regular. He paused, making use of the unguarded moment to study her more closely.

Her face was tanned and thin, with a spangle of freckles bridging her nose. Unlike Commander Lizardi, who wore her hair cut close and utilitarian, the halfling had made a single thick dark red braid and wrapped it around her head, like the copper crown of a barbarian princess.

Her uniform was tight to her slender throat; any jewels or necklace she might wear sealed away from his sight, but her hands, resting half-curled on her knees, were a garden of small silver and gem-chipped rings, matching those in her thin, blue veined ears. None was a Ring as one might find on a delm or even a pilot, rather they were barely more than fine wire. A child’s wealth of play-jewels, gaudy and gay. There might be need, he thought, of bright color and friendly glitter, in the places this soldier frequented.

In other dress, and with her hair styled more fashionably, Brunner would not have been surprised to find her at Joint School, or at college, or as a passing guest in his own clanhouse.

The annoying hum ceased, reminding Brunner that he was not alone with his sleeping student. He turned to see Jack slowly unwinding from his knees to a crouched stand, where he paused for a long moment, as if feeling his age, or perhaps twinges from an old wound.

“Other stuff’s all here, Brunner. I’m guessing you got the key already, ‘cause that’s not. Me, I gotta check some compressors. Catch you next shift!”

With remarkably few clinks and clanks Jack stretched to his full height, touched the ceiling with one hand, while the other did a quick inventory of his belts. He nodded once to himself, as if satisfied with his count, and departed.

Brunner fetched the tray, and carried it quietly to the table, unwilling to disturb the child, though his duty as well as hers demanded it. As it came about, he was spared the necessity; her eyes opened before he set the tray down, but he could not help but feel a small flicker of guilt for having disturbed her repose.

He bowed slightly, the words coming without thought. “Forgive me for disturbing your rest. I bring chernubia and tea, that we might study in comfort, for study we must.”

The soldier blinked, and pushed herself up straight in the too-large chair.

“Sorry, sir,” she said huskily, in a rush of backworld Terran. “I—uh, I mean, I guess that’s Liaden. It’s real pretty, but—I don’t know Liaden! Terran’s best, if you speak it—or Trade.” She looked around the room, her eye lighting on the clock and it seemed she reached some further level of wakefulness. “The lesson,” she said, cheeks coloring; “we don’t have much time!”

Momentarily, Brunner’s mind went blank, empty of words in any language. He hadn’t realized how much he had been certain that she—how much he had needed someone who would be delighted with chernubia, and tea, and who would hear the language of home with pleasure… .

“Yes,” he managed at last, and found a smile for her youth and her obvious embarrassment. “Of course I speak Terran. How else?”

* * *

They’d settled on Tech, or Brunner or Tech Brunner; and Robertson or Redhead. So Liaden a name as “Miri” attached to one with such an accent and so misplaced a sense of food as to prefer coffee to his carefully brewed tea … that was awkward, even unacceptable. Corporal Robertson had the Terran habit of trying to shorten names, but he could not hear himself called “Liad,” nor would she allow “Ich” as acceptable.

“These are great! Never had anything so good!”

It was the fifth time she had told him so, and it made him feel she was even younger than he had first supposed.

“They help make my stay here livable,” he answered now; “it pleases me that they please others as well.”

“That’s important on something so closed up as this.” She stood, snatching one last chernubia before donning the Stubbs as he indicated.

“It is important to stay occupied and pleased with your diet,” he agreed. “So let us study basic operations. It is unlikely that you will need to deploy the DRAPIN—that is the Direct Report And Pinbeam option—which rapidly drains the energy source and requires a modicum of effort; more on this later. You will be acting as our mobile unit; and while the Stubbs can report continuously on deployment of the antenna, the antenna itself may make your travel … less convenient. We shall therefore assume that you will not be simultaneously traveling and transmitting. Instead, let us assume that you have arrived at a destination. Or not even a destination—let us call it not a bivouac but a simple rest stop. You then release the stand …”

Here Robertson did as indicated.

“The unit may be set to begin automatic operation when the stand is released. However, I understand from your commander that she prefers the reports to be under your control. To access the basic operator program, one merely inserts the key. To adjust the program from your side—if, for example, you wish to access the location transponder screen, you must insert both keys.”

She looked up, gray eyes slightly squinted. “Both?”

He removed from the envelope the Scout had given him all three keys; it was conceivable that she might need them all, and the idea of a “manager’s key” kept safe on station, to be issued only at need was ludicrous.

“This one,” he said, handing it to her, “is basic. With this key anyone can turn the unit on or off. You may carry it in your pocket if you like.”

The basic key was flat, silver-colored, and recognizable as what it was. Unlike an everyday key, though, it was clad on several levels of a metallic insulation and had shaped insets at both ends.

Robertson accepted it without comment; her fingers were surprisingly cool as she made light contact with his hand.

“Right then,” she said, nodding so deeply in agreement that at first he took it as a bow. “This is a workday key.”

“Yes. Good. A workday key. This, too, is such a ‘workday key.’” He waved it for emphasis. “Normally, they both must be inserted in order to set local reports or alerts, or to use the unit as a communicator. If you lose one key you may still access basic functions with the other; I will give you the override instructions before you leave for the surface. This system is to insure that little mistakes do not happen, that alerts are neither set, nor lost, easily. It is perhaps best that these two keys not be carried in the same pocket. If you have an assistant, that person might carry one.”

He handed the second key over reluctantly, startled again by the cool touch of her fingers, and more so by her laugh as he held the pair up and compared them by eye.

“That’d be good, wouldn’t it? Miri Robertson’s assistant! Might be a long time before I’m in charge of anyone ‘cept that—what is it?—Stubbs Ranger, what already knows what its doing.”

He bowed, acknowledging that he had heard her.

“It often happens,” translating a line from one of his nadelm’s favorite melant’i plays, “that expectation and event are not the same. When necessity exists, conduct follows.”

She looked at him firmly, gray eyes serious, and nodded once more.

“That’s the way it works everywhere, ain’t it? Push comes to shove, that’s when you find out what somebody’ll really do.”

She shook herself then, as if casting off unwanted implications, and showed him the keys.

“So, all I need to do is put these in once a day and you’ll get the data and whatever else you need?”

It was his turn to smile.

“If this ‘stop once a day’ is all that is possible, then that is what we will hope for. But we have far more hopes than that!”

He produced one of the hard copy instruction manuals and a series of charts he’d printed out of the station’s own records. “You will know about the basics of weather from your schooling. But this world you invade—for many reasons this is not a world of standard weather.”

Robertson shook her head energetically.

“Nah, you can’t depend on what I know about from school. My folks never sent me to school.”

After a moment Brunner realized he might be said to be staring, and dropped his gaze.

“Surely, some education …” he offered, daring to look up again when he heard her short laugh.

“Not so you’d call it school. The money came in, and it went out, and school was on the list for when there was enough. Never was enough, I guess. But I do a lot of reading, you know? My mother taught me how to read. Liz—Commander Lizardi—she gets me classes to study when we got time. And, sorry … weather ain’t been covered yet.”

He raised his hand, concerned she’d feel ashamed.

“School came not easy to me, either,” he offered, “for my clan also often felt the money spent better elsewhere.” He sighed, and brought his focus back to the necessities of training.

“If I am able, I will send to you information explaining why you are seeing what you are seeing. The equipment can be used that way. The important point, for here and now, is that most weather texts, most weather information we have for habitable worlds, assumes some tectonic activity, some long-term patterns even on worlds mostly ocean, for the ocean has predictable currents.”

He pulled a chart and placed it on the table so Robertson’s gaze fell upon it easily.

“This is key. For Klamath is perhaps not really a habitable world as we would like to see one. It has not enough core definition; it has not formed … say that it has not formed dependable solid plates to top the mantle. Instead, all the land is on—rafts! Some, like plates, are stuck to each other—in time, for all we know now, they may become plates. Others merely glance off each others like a transient crowd in a space station at boarding time, moving generally in the same direction but with independent velocity and goals.”

“You are experienced at swimming?” he asked suddenly, concerned that this, too might have been denied her by “folks” who had better use for their money than educating their youth.

“Yep. Gotta be able to swim to be a Lunatic. Why?”

“Because on Klamath it is as if the plates are swimming. On most mature worlds the plates remain in close proximity to each other, they are bordered and ordered. They may be said to ‘stick’ on a volcanic vent, or quake when subsurface forces collide. Most short-term motion—that is, motion over a dozen—or a dozen dozen—Standards—that motion is limited to modest amounts caused by the grinding of plates against themselves, or plates slowly being submerged or becoming emergent… But on Klamath the motion can be—and often is—more considerable. This motion may include ‘waves’ beneath the lands, making the surface bob up and down, far less stable than one would like, and altering atmospheric and ocean currents in the process.”

“Sounds complicated!” The soldier stared intently at the charts, but he despaired of her comprehension.

He sighed, perhaps too loudly, and found her gaze, faintly ironic, on him.

“So what’s this mean for what I gotta do, beside not get motion sick?”

He smiled, as her comment was clearly a joke. “Yes, this is good. You cannot fix the world or make the people not colonize it: they are there. So for you, to stabilize the populace, for the commander to succeed in her mission, you need weather warnings and weather information. For me—for the station—what you can do is to help us by reporting in as often as possible. Understand that on Klamath everything is changeable. You may camp at night at one altitude and awake in the morning, still comfortable, at another. Each report assists us all!”

She nodded. “Guess you’ll want to put that in writing to the commander. I’ll do what I can, but she’s gonna have to decide a lot of it.”

“Yes. That is well thought. I will make some notes for the commander. But for you, there is also this—another key. This one is … a manager’s key. It will permit you to leave the Stubbs on auto-function if need be, and return for it later. You might, with sufficient information, also be able to reprogram the unit for specific local necessities. This is unlikely, but you should be aware of the ranges of possibility open to you. Also, this key permits the setting of the DRAPIN, which I mentioned earlier.”

Robertson shook her head lightly, as if denying the need.

“Are you sure this thing can send a pinbeam? That’d take a lot of power!”

“Indeed,” he agreed. “It does require much power. So much so that it is an option we mention rather than demonstrate. This key, however, permits that.” He showed it to her, a small thing, made of slightly phosphorescent blue metal.

“This must not be lost. It must be kept safe and returned to me at the end of your mission. The other keys may be replaced or circumvented, if need be. This one cannot.”

He handed it to her. She held it up for frowning study.

“So it’s important? ” she murmured, perhaps speaking to herself. “Like treasure?”

“Like treasure,” he agreed, astounded anew that this valuable and rare equipment was going to war with so volatile and naive a halfling.

“Gotcha!” She slid a finger under the top seal of her uniform, and the second, as if, Brunner thought, panicked, she were disrobing!

She saw him start and laughed.

“You’re safe, Tech!”

Quick, beringed fingers reached behind her neck, pulling from beneath her collar a flesh-colored cord. Following the sinuous flow of cord came a small pouch, sliding up between the open shirt-top.

“Treasures!” she said as she pulled pouch and cord over her head. She gave him a friendly grin.

“See, all mercs gotta have someplace to keep their important stuff. Some use belts, some use secret pockets, you know, for their cash and gems and cards and stuff. Me, I’m kinda skinny, and I don’t own much cash but that’s all right, ‘cause I don’t have that many treasures, either.”

She casually dropped the pouch on the table, and flipped it open. Within were several small metallic containers and a cloth-wrapped something …

“How ‘ bout I tuck it inside here?” she said, flipping the cloth open and casually exposing—Brunner stared. A clan badge? But she had denied any knowledge of Liaden! She asked for coffee, and—but the child was speaking.

“This is my best treasure, see?” she said, while Brunner strained to recognize the half-shrouded device. “Got it from my mother. I’ll keep your key just as safe, if you understand me.”

He looked into her face, aware that she was already folding the cloth over badge and key, returning the pouch to its hiding place while he gathered words.

“Galandaria,” he said in low tones, and inclined his head.

“What’s that?” She showed no faintest hint of comprehension as she resealed her shirt, her rough Terran at odds with the artwork she’d called her treasure, at odds with her quick bright eyes, at odds with the moment.

Brunner looked away, let his mind run for a moment, cataloging possibility. This was not, as he had supposed, only an ignorant Terran halfling, but a woman acknowledging both her legacy and her isolation. Trusting him with her secret. With her treasure.

He had a moment to wonder why—but, there, the answer was plain. She was about to descend into danger, with her commander and her troop. Whatever necessity required her to act—to be—merely a Terran halfling, yet she could not allow him, a Liaden like herself, to be deceived.

“Yes,” he said in soft Terran, accepting the burden of her secret. “I see that you will keep the key as safe as your best treasure, as I would myself.”

“Right,” she said. “Got that. Tell you what, if all this works out good for you, you owe me a cup of coffee, how’s that? Tea’s all right with these cakes, but coffee would be perfect.”

He smiled at her apparent reversion to simplicity.

“I agree to owe you a cup of coffee, Robertson, and to pay promptly when we meet again.”

She nodded happily. “So, you need me to memorize any frequencies or stuff? I got a real good memory.”

“Let us first review the basics again,” he said. “This unit can function as a communicator if need be. I am, as you know, Ichliad Brunner. You will ask for me if there is need.”

* * *

Brunner was working alone in the meteorology lab when the first transmission from the Stubbs came through. This was not necessarily by happenstance. As soon as Commander Lizardi and Corporal Robertson had departed the station for their posting, he had volunteered to take what Jack called “night shift” and what the crew in general just called Slot C. There were fewer people about then and there was often work to be caught up on from the preferred “day-shifts,” of Slots A and B.

Coincidentally, Slot C was most concurrent with Miri Robertson’s expected working hours of daylight.

It took several station-days for the request to go up and down the short command chain; in the interim Brunner managed to stay at work beyond his assigned shift and to arrive before, in case there should be a problem, though what he might do, if there were—

But, as it turned out, both his care and his worry were unnecessary.

The Stubbs came online flawlessly, registering locality and altitude, barometric pressure, wind speed, humidity. Allergens were noted, as were pollutants. Cloud cover was ranged and categorized. The somewhat variable mix of atmospheric gases was logged every ten ticks, the air temperature every ten ticks, alternating with the gases. Piggyback on the databursts was a quick recording in her soft drawl: “The manuals say I should do a base test. Here it is. If there’s a problem, the manuals say you can reset remotely or have me recalibrate.”

The readings continued for a short time, and ceased in an orderly shutdown, and Brunner breathed a sigh of relief, tinged with anticipation. Now, perhaps they could get accurate—and uninterrupted!—data to work with!

Less than a quarter day later a new report came in, and that, too was an orderly report, sans voice, which Brunner regretted. He found Robertson’s willing approach to the manuals both thoughtful and interesting. Perhaps her appointment to the weather machine was not after all mere whim on the commander’s part.

Days passed, overfull of work; data came in, perhaps half the time accompanied by a recorded message from the operator. Brunner continued on Slot C, and no one complained, save the company’s accountant, who felt that he should not receive a bonus for working a shift he clearly preferred. He signed a paper, waiving his right to the Slot C differential, and was left alone to do his work.

To hear the news source tell it, the introduction of “professional warriors” had taken the heart out of the enemy or enemies. All fronts were quiet; even the reports of atrocities decreased. The enemy-or-enemies had, the news source reported, withdrawn, to pray and to take counsel of such wise ones and elders as they had. The government in Chilonga Center, in the province where Lizardi’s Lunatics had been stationed, audibly held its breath.

Brunner watched the weather, made predictions, noted his errors; he collaborated with Dr. Boylan, the planetologist, on a study of the likelihood that there was a long-term subsurface flow echoing the jet stream. The Stubbs continued to report, so whoever had been targeting the stationary weather machines seemed not to have the interest—or the means to destroy—a roving unit.

Betting pools were formed—days until the end of the war; where the next cyclone would form; which government would fall to a coup.

As always, Brunner declined to bet, but found himself importuned anyway, as those who had formed a pool on the probable length of survival of the various mercenary units inquired after the supposed “inside information” he was gaining from his contact on the surface.

In retrospect, it was a time of peaceful repose such as Brunner had rarely experienced during his tour of duty.

* * *

The first hint that things might be returning to normal came, not from Brunner’s intense study of Klamath’s erratic weather systems, nor from his rather less intense study of the news reports, but from his contact on the planet’s surface.

“Okay.” Robertson’s recorded voice sounded breathless. “Just wanted to let you know that we got through it fine, and the machine’s good. Some of us got messed up and we had to send a few off to the hospital in Chilonga Center. We had real good luck, though, ‘cause I read the manuals, and when I can I have the local prediction mode up. Caught a march on the Bluebies that way. Anyhow, we’re gonna be moving fast so don’t expect too many updates for awhile.”

What “it” had been he did not know, though he was heartened to hear that she had survived it in good health and with the Stubbs intact.

Automated reports flowed up from the surface, though there was no communication from the operator for nearly a Standard week. Brunner chose to view the arrival of the data as proof of her continued good health—after all, she had said she would be out of contact.

He went back to his work. The pressure systems had undergone a subtle and not-entirely comprehensible change. Brunner pulled archives, did overlays, ran projections, sorted and resorted the data, stretching his work shift well into Slot A.

Ten days after assuring him of her survival of “it,” Robertson sent another message, short and barely intelligible over a sound like ship’s engine cycling.

“Wow! Lotta wind!”

And indeed there had been a lot of wind as a high and a low had fought their own battle over a quarter of the planet, starting at the pole and spiraling down across the equator where they’d formed battle lines over the tortured isthmus connecting Chilonga’s embattled territories with those of their bitter invaders.

He had taken heart from that message as well; whatever fighting that may have taken place since her last contact was far from her mind at that moment.

The winds continued to grow; the shift in the pressure systems suddenly painting an all-too-cogent picture. Brunner worked longer hours still, pushing himself and the station’s resources, combing the literature.

Something … Terran would have it that something “bad” was hovering on the horizon. One hesitated to ascribe such values to the outcome of systemic interactions. And yet—something … at least different was bearing down upon them. Hints whispered to him from the altered pressure systems, from the increasing erratic winds, if only he had wit enough to understand …

* * *

The Scout stood by while Brunner teased a possible pattern from the various historical models. If the Scout recognized what he was doing, or knew how it might be done more efficiently, he said nothing, but that was the way of Scouts—they interfered as little as possible unless you failed of doing what they wanted of you. So, for the moment at least, the Scout wished him to work.

Eventually, Brunner smoothed the touch panel with a reluctant thumb, watching as the images reformed, showing as the storm moved in reverse, dividing into two smaller storms and a smudge of low pressure. He tapped the screen again, looked up to his silent watcher.

“Service? It will be a number of minutes before the information I seek appears on screen.”

The Scout sighed lightly, his hands saying something Brunner couldn’t read, and then said, quite abruptly, “While the data, which should belong to all of us, is encrypted, the words, which should belong only to the speaker and their intended recipient, are not.”

Brunner felt his face heat.

He bowed, acknowledging receipt of information.

“And this is monitored where beside my own instruments, if I may know?”

“It is recorded, as a side channel, along with all the broadcasts from Klamath.”

“This is not simply a science station, then?” Brunner asked sharply, though he had for some time suspected …

“Of course not, except as you allow the study of human systems in disintegration to be a science.”

Brunner acknowledged the point with another bow, and looked back to his screen.

“Science can be so many things,” said the Scout, speaking to the wall perhaps, or to the floor, or to himself. “It can be imprecise and immediately useful and reek of technology and action, or it can be an escape of beautiful equations and elegant systems, backed by theory and distanced by case numbers and modeled meta-statistical analysis.”

The Scout paused as the screen Brunner was watching reformed. The storm systems moved forward once more, dutifully came together, marched across the planet picking up energy, joined two into one, and again, two into one, the cyclonic motion barely apparent early on and then …

Thumb-tap.

The systems stopped moving.

Thumb-tap.

The screen now displayed four views, all tagged with the same date and time.

The top left showed a widespread storm, faltering, moving northward above the equator with its center diffuse.

The top right showed a tight-knot of mini storms first hugging the northeastern coast above the equator, then following a wide bay north.

The bottom two veered from the northern route and crossed the isthmus, where both blossomed into monstrous cyclonic storms. While the one on the right rushed eastward and then slowly dissipated, the one on the left veered deep into the Chilonga Mountains after striking the river delta.

Brunner knew the why of the blossom into major storm: on the west side of the isthmus the ocean level was considerably higher and considerably colder than on the east side. Assuming the storm survived the not inconsiderable plunge down the cliffs of the isthmus.

“These are the major models which are now at work.” Brunner said conversationally. “One and Two are most standard. Four is the “preferred” model of my predecessor. She was very climate-oriented in her approach, I think. In going back over her work and comparing it to the standard models, I find that hers were often less wrong than those models, which is interesting given the variability we think we see.”

“Less wrong is a useful trait, is it not?” murmured the Scout.

They both watched as the images ran again in hypermotion, Brunner mumbling a distant, “Indeed. In theory, it is better.”

Thumb-tap. Models One and Two disappeared from the screen. Three and Four immediately resized themselves, greedily filling the space.

Number Four played its image out, giving way to another image, which formed itself with a view of a cloud formation far to the west. That formation, shown as small storms, dispersed into a weak trough, then … the trough joined a small storm, which merged with a larger which … stopped about where Number Three began.

“My current model,” Brunner said, “is Number Three. On screen to the left is the model that predicted the current positions within this—” a touch on keypads, a screen tap, an overlay… .

The images were not identical by any means, but on a gross scale storm overlaid storm, calm highs overlaid calm highs.

“Ah,” said the Scout, executing a small bow.

“My model works from the assumptions my predecessor made initially, modified to reflect my conclusions that we have here in Klamath a planet acting more like a gas planet than a core planet, a planet whose weather is not only driven by surface and near surface conditions but by core convection and other inconvenient energy sources such as groundswell tides and the like.”

“So there might be a paper in this for you? A publication is always good for the career!”

Brunner shook his head, his attention still mostly on the screen and the predicted, coming storm.

“I am not so sure,” he said to the Scout. “The information may be owned by my employer, after all. If they care to admit that it exists. At the moment the chief is broadcasting my real-time information, but uses the old model for the official predictions he broadcasts.”

The Scout raised his hands, palms up.

“Chief Thurton values the neutrality of the station high, does he not?”

Brunner sighed. “Staff is under orders to write a letter of dissent to your involving the mercenary unit in our work. I am to report any actions I perform under your orders or in your name.”

“Yes,” said the Scout, who was pacing the long axis of the room almost as if he were at exercise. “You must, of course, follow protocols. My orders to this point amount to you doing your work, making your predictions, and sharing that information with interested parties. My actions are the same; report them as you must. In the meanwhile, you must be aware that your communications with those on the surface may be public.”

Now the scout favored him with a bow of direct instruction.

“As I understand matters you are from time to time in direct contact with the party carrying your monitor. Continue that association, and share with that group your exact forecasts. You are to make the fullest use possible of the Stubbs unit. Read the manual thoroughly, and forward information as may be required to maintain the unit’s performance. Report and forecast the weather accurately. I do not require you to seek out other interested parties to share your predictions with: simply make them, forward them to your party on the ground and to the control room where Chief Thurton must see the information shared.”

He spun, standing ready on the balls of his feet, as if he expected to need to run, or leap—

“Understand me, Brunner. In so far as you are able, insure the continued performance of the Stubbs unit. That serves the purpose of the organization which hired your company and it serves my needs as Scout-in-Place. As to the needs of the group carrying the unit … inform them that I have forbidden landings by unaccredited spacecraft, and that ongoing scheduled unmanned replenishment may go forward. I have broadcast a request planet-wide that civilian populations not be targeted and that I will permit landings on my approval only and by agreement of locally recognized authorities.”

Brunner bowed in receipt, and considered his latest predictions.

“Then I am to suggest to … Corporal Robertson … that the Stubbs should be on a protected elevation away from rivers within three Standard days and that wind speeds of up to one fourth the speed of sound are probable?”

The Scout bowed his assent.

“You are so instructed.”

* * *

“Brunner, you guys are life savers!”

“Please, if you are in a secure location do not leave it! You are only in the eye!”

A very slight delay and then:

“Oh boy, aren’t we. This has gotta be the best weather we’ve seen on this place. Feels great. Even smells Okay, kinda like ocean!”

Yes, of course it smelled like ocean… .

“Redhead, you are not in the center of the eye—this lull is very glancing. Mere moments. Eat something! And I must say it is very dangerous for to move during the storm. Please do not do it again unless threatened … You are already…”

But there, he hadn’t thought to start a threaded conversation, and the delay was small, so a thread was not really required …

“Are you crazy? I was hunkered right down here the whole time. Haven’t moved a bit except to empty water out of my boots!”

Not moved? But, the instruments were quite clear, and quite accurate!

“Say again?”

A sound: footsteps behind him. He waved for quiet.

“I said I haven’t moved!” Redhead repeated. “I felt like I was floating a couple times but there’s no water here that didn’t drain off! We’re tucked in a grain storage ranch with everything made out o’ crete! But the rest of your info is right, hey? Been working out for you?”

Indeed, the rest of the information was useful—treasure beyond price. And her report of floating; the fact that the unit reported it had moved by nearly a meter! That required study.

“It is excellent,” he told her. “You have done well, and I am very pleased!”

“Good. I’m gonna grab something to eat! Liz says a spotter claims to see a wall o’ clouds. Out.”

“Out,” said Brunner, but she had already gone. He sighed and turned away from the monitor.

The Scout stood nearby, smiling.

“The young Terrans, they are amazing. One can hear the excitement in their voices …”

Brunner frowned. Was it possible that the Scout did not know? “Terrans?” he murmured.

“Brunner, for this, yes, Terrans. Jack asked me … but no matter. Liz vouches for the child as from Surebleak. Liz is from Surebleak. Surebleak is Terran.”

Brunner bowed in acknowledgment, allowing irony to be seen, and turned back to his equipment.

“Your point, Tech Brunner,” the Scout murmured, perhaps amused. “In the meanwhile, it may be well for you to produce both local and regional forecasts, as usual.”

“I have been remiss,” Brunner said, without looking around. “In yestermorning’s recorded note from our galandaria was this message, which you have perhaps not heard.” He touched a key.

Flat silence except for the sussuration of the room’s air moving equipment, then Miri Robertson’s steady voice, “Liz ain’t too happy about these new landing regs. Says it sounds iffy as all get out. Wants to know if I can pinbeam a voice message outta here to Merc Headquarters if things get tight. Dunno what that might do to the power supply and your info.” A slight hesitation, as if she was listening, then: “Liz says relay to the Scout that any merc transport should be passed, no questions.”

Brunner looked at the Scout.

“I have not answered.”

“I hear this.” The Scout sighed.

“Ah. Well, hear also that the girl holds the master key. When she is bored she reads the manuals.”

The Scout glared—and then laughed, fingers dancing out an unread phrase.

“Yes, of course! All honor to you. Were I on a strange world which is doing its best to rid itself of humankind, encircled by enemies who are trying to kill me, I would also need light reading. Liz Lizardi hires quality help. I hear this, too, Weatherman.”

* * *

No matter how engrossing the work, a man must sometimes tend to other necessities. Brunner acknowledged that he was becoming a danger to the data when he caught himself reviewing the same data loop for the fifth time.

Dragging himself to his quarters, he fell fully dressed into his bunk, plummeting instantly into sleep.

“Ichliad Brunner! Report to the meteorology lab!”

The words reached him in the dreamless depths, senseless as stones.

“Ichliad Brunner to the weather deck, pronto. Ichliad Brunner–”

That voice roused him, and he pushed upright, still more asleep than awake. The weather deck …Yes, surely! He had told her to call for him by name—

“Ichliad Brunner to the weather-deck, pronto!” Again came the demand in Jack’s big voice; the speaker at his bedside taking up the cry; echoing those in the hall outside his quarters. The door buzzer gave tongue, followed by pounding.

Brunner threw himself across the room, slapped the door open and stepped back as Jack all but fell into the room.

“You’re needed. Sorry to wake you.”

Brunner stared. “What can possibly be worth all this—”

“Under seal,” Jack interrupted. “We’ll talk when we’re private.”

* * *

His lab room was hardly private. The planetologist’s intern huddled near the real-time monitors, openly weeping. Brunner stopped, horrified. Why had she not been given the privacy such emotion required? He looked ‘round to Jack, but that noisy person had stepped over to the aux monitors, toolbelts silent, for a wonder, as if he wished not to be noticed.

The Scout stood with Station Chief Thurton some distance from the weeping girl, his face half-averted, as if he, too, wished to grant her seclusion. Dr. Boylan, the planetologist, stood at the intern’s side, apparently taking the part of kin.

She looked up as Brunner approached, face grim.

“Ah, here you are, Weatherman. Estrava,” she said, carefully touching the intern’s shoulder, “was following up on my request for drift correction. We’ve been using the dome of the Governor’s Hall as a target, it being gold-plated and reflective in a number of useful frequencies.” She took a hard breath and nodded at the screen. “We need you to confirm a disaster.”

The monitor she indicated displayed a looping series of images, first in false-color infrared mode, then in visible wavelengths. It repeated: an area of relatively lush valley giving way to random buildings, then to an actual urban conglomeration dominated by a bright-lit structure all out of proportion to the rest. Suddenly smoke—or possibly fog—intruded, deepening from a vague white mist to a frothy greenish mass, drifting down from the hillsides, filling the valley and the town until only the top of the building remained visible. The image cut back to infrared …

“An unusual flow,” Brunner said slowly. “It seemed very dense. Were this some backworld I would say smog. But this is Klamath, after all; fluke winds might conceivably have trapped a sulfur exhalation and created such a fog.”

“Not fog,” the intern moaned, half-bent over the counter, like a bird favoring a broken wing. “Not fog. Not fog.”

Brunner turned to her, keeping his face politely neutral, which was the least he could do for her distress. He’d had little enough to do with Estrava, the planetologist having laid claim to the bulk of her hours, and she nervous of Liadens in any case.

“It’s not fog,” she said shrilly, straightening to stare directly into his eyes. “Look at it! The spectrum is wrong, the flow is wrong … people are dying!”

Brunner looked as directed, frowning at the lack of definition.

“What have we, then?” he asked the room at large, stepping forward, his fingers already on the fine controls.

It was the Scout who answered.

“Death,” he said, his voice neutral to the point of aggression. He bowed, firmly, a bow of duty required.

“As we need to know for certain, Ichliad Brunner. First, please confirm that what we see here is a poison gas. If this is the case we will wish to know of its dispersal range, potential mixing, and to track it if we might …”

“Scout, this station is to remain neutral!” The station chief gestured with his hands, not with sense as the pilots might, but conveying urgency nonetheless. “The treaty requires that we not interfere.”

”I require information!” the Scout interrupted. “Your station is here at my whim, Chief Thurton.”

“I think Phaetera might have something to say to that, sir!” the chief snapped.

Brunner turned from the monitor and raised his hands, one to each combatant, seeking instruction.

Chief Thurton drew a hard breath, turned his back on the Scout, and walked away.

“Do as he says, Brunner. You’ll give me a full report of all actions you perform for this man, and we will both sign a statement that you act under duress, as I do.”

Brunner bowed at the retreating back.

“And these coordinates,” he said to the helpful room, “do I have them?”

“In the south,” the intern whispered. “Chilonga Center.”

* * *

On civilized worlds, among civilized people, disasters are accidents or acts of nature; they are not premeditated.

In such times, a meteorologist’s declaration of disaster insures the issue of world-wide warnings and unleashes a gathering of willing assistance. Emergency plans bring together medical teams, rescue teams, housing teams …

Klamath hung below the station, uncaring, uncivilized.

Still, it was his necessity as meteorologist to confirm and declare the wind-borne poisons, the act of intentional war, a disaster.

Perhaps someone would be listening, and thus be warned and saved.

So his thoughts went, and he recorded the thing, and set thumb to it.

The Scout bowed.

“A disaster declared, I hereby interdict and quarantine Klamath as a hazard to space travelers.”

Brunner stared at the Scout.

“You cannot,” he said, hearing the protest as if it was spoken by someone else.

“I can and I do,” the Scout responded, weariness and sorrow apparent on a worn face. “Believe I do it lightly if you must.”

Brunner brushed the words aside. They were alone in his lab and had been for several hours. Brunner had backtracked the flow; the Scout, on an auxiliary machine, had taken to himself the tedious task of identifying the chemicals by their spectrographic signatures and dispersal fugacity.

“The mercenaries,” Brunner said now, arguing, gods, with a Scout! “The off-world techs serving the Chilongan government. The natives who have filed for immigration …”

The Scout slid off the stool and bowed the bow of accepting necessary burdens.

“I must,” he said, and waved unsteadily at the microphone.

“Tell the girl—you see? I take that burden, as well. Tell her, then get some sleep, comrade. You will be needed at your board soon enough.”

* * *

“Quarantined,” Brunner said into microphone, taking especial care with his pronunciation of the Terran.

“I repeat, the Scout has interdicted Klamath, and placed it under quarantine.” He took a breath, knowing his words were potentially recorded in records besides that of the Stubbs unit.

“Poison gas has been deployed against civilian targets in contravention of general usage of warfare.”

The planetologist’s equipment was powerful enough to allow him to see bodies lying on the streets, to see fires burning in the city, to watch Klamath’s fickle winds sweeping the vapors out of the city in a strong flow to the south.

Not one, but three aerosol dispersants had been loosed upon Chilonga Center. The first sank rapidly, displacing oxygen, and suffocating some quickly. The second gas, more mistlike, hovered and flowed in every breeze, torturing the lungs and eyes of any who survived, eating at their skins. The third hung higher, and featured a potential late-stage crystallization so that it might precipitate and leave a residue of skin-dangerous toxics.

Cursing the winds under his breath, he had checked the Stubbs’ last reported location, all but weeping when he found it east to northeast of Chilonga Center. Miri Robertson, Corporal Redhead—the winds blew past her. In a planetary day, perhaps two, the chemicals would have dispersed entirely, and what was left of the city could be entered.

All of this he told the Stubbs, remote and unreachable, and when he was finished, he whispered, “Please acknowledge.”

There was no reply. He told himself that it was the middle of her night; that her pattern was to report in the evenings, and sometimes very early in the morning. He told himself that she was safe, well away from the destruction in the city; that she would call, if she had need of him.

He kept the line open anyway, the microphone clipped to his shirt, the Stubbs’ uplink window open in the corner of his work screen.

In the meanwhile he started literature searches: toxic flows, aerosol dispersal, plume pollutants, plume tracking, micro-climactic poison control, history of planetary quarantines and interdictions, general usage of warfare, strategic poison, tactical toxics, history of Terran Mercenary Units.

The histories held an uncomfortable number of references to merc units being lost without record. He put them aside for later reading and turned his attention to those things he might do that would increase the chances of one particular mercenary unit surviving its odds.

* * *

His work was twice interrupted by crew looking for updated information for the on-going betting. He dealt with them—not as they deserved—locked the door, disabled the bell and returned to the literature. Eventually, he found a treatise specifically on defensive meteorology and the tracking of dangerous atmospherics. In the information about aerosols there were unpleasant images, but also some useful approximations he could add to the station’s regular monitoring.

He might even be able to—but motion distracted him, and then sounds.

Information was flowing from the Stubbs to his monitor; from the speaker came sharp cracking sounds, then—

“You there, Brunner?”

He touched the microphone. “Here, galandaria.”

“Good! Hey, nothing like a little gunfire to get you focused, right?” Despite the cheery phrasing, she sounded … breathless. Worn. Brunner frowned, closing his eyes so that he might hear her better.

“Yeah, that was bad, what happened in the city. We lost a couple of ours in the hospital over there. I—not the way I’d wanna go, y’know? Anyhow, business—Liz wants to know what that means if we get a recall, that quarantine. She sent it upline to our employer but no answer yet. Got anything you can tell me? Before I forget—this Stubbs? It’s great! Got some dings in it but it took a couple for me and bounced ‘em right out. Pretty open here, don’t think Liz is gonna keep us—Right. Gotta go. I’m glad you was there. Out.”

She was gone, pushed by her necessities, and he had not even said—What? he asked himself. Go carefully? Be alert? Don’t breathe tainted air?

Perhaps he should have demanded a fuller accounting of the damage to the Stubbs—but to what end? A glance at the screen told him that the self-test had registered no warnings, so the station’s unit must be intact. Unlike Redhead’s unit, which had “lost a couple of ours …”

As to Commander Lizardi’s query—certainly, there was nothing he, caught between the station chief and the Scout, could tell her. Chief Thurton was adamant in neutrality, while the Scout … while the Scout played whatever game the Scout was embroiled in.

What he could do was have available the best possible wind charts, produce the most accurate weather forecast, and not forget that down there were people relying on him. On him!

* * *

Liz didn’t say a word: just nodded as she went by.

And what was Liz gonna say anyway, Redhead thought, not much more than half worried. Skel was a Lunatic, she was a Lunatic … and … and. Damn. She sighed and finished sealing up her uniform.

She’d drawn first clean-up, and now here was Skel already, washed up himself and holding a cup of coffee out to her like it was a prize. That was nice, she thought. Warming. So she took the cup like it was a prize, grinned at him, and worried a little more.

There was plenty to worry about, and not just maybe Liz not liking it that she’d partnered up with Skel. Folks had been skittish before word about Klamath being under blanket quarantine had gotten into the general need-to-know pool. Now—hell, Liz was skittish, Skel was skittish, Auifme was downright dangerous, and the liaison the Chilongan government’d given them was scared out of his prayer beads. ‘Course, he’d been that way since day one, on account of being stuck all by his lonesome with a buncha Unpious, Outsiders, Orbiteers, Freelovers, and—damn if there wasn’t a dozen more not-exactly-appreciative names the man had laid on the Lunatics. Scandal’d said it was a good thing they were on his side, else he’d really be calling in the long guns, which had made the knot of ‘em crouched together over quick rations laugh, and the liaison rattle his beads.

Now Skel, Redhead thought, turning her mind to cheerfuller things, he’d kinda surprised her last night; caught up to her right after she’d tucked the rig in with proper camouflage and getting ready to tuck in herself. Sat his pretty tall self down right there beside where she’d been going over her vitamins to make sure she was up to date and said it right out.

“Hardly like it’s a fancy invite, Redhead, but you know, we get along right well and there ain’t no time presently for Liz to approve us a proper Hundred Hours to get all perfumed and slinky and everything.”

She’d blinked at him, not believing, on account of there was an unofficial moratorium on asking Miri since the Grawn brothers had cut each other awhile back about who was going to ask her … and she’d have told them both no, anyhow. Sorry about them, sort of; died in that damn hospital the liaison got them sent off to.

But Skel’d said his piece, pointed out that weren’t neither of them on guard schedule, and that he did have coffee, smokes, and stringent cloth too, among other supplies what could clean the sweat off and give them some distance from this land that moved like water and the ‘way too many crazy people who were trying to kill them.

She’d smiled, felt her heart beating faster—and faster again, when he lost a bit of his serious and smiled, too.

“Hundred Hours is right expensive,” she said. “Don’t know I could buy in to it …”

He’d laughed, and relaxed some more, like she’d said something right.

“Oh, hell, I’d pick up the Hundred Hours. I mean, I know what a newer ‘cruit’s got to worry with, ‘spense wise. But like I say, as is, even if we get to town down here ain’t none of these folks’ll rent us a side-by-side lunch seat much less a big soft room with a big soft bed …”

He’d paused, looking some tentative, and she was sure feeling the same. It was funny, kinda, to see him that way when he could pick up four launch tubes and a long-arm and go wading into battle. She liked Skel fine—always had, and she wouldn’t mind … but the man had a right to know.

“Not sure,” she said, glancing down at her boots, her uniform slacks, her shirt-front. “Umm … Not sure I can give you the best time, see? It’d be learning on the job mostly for me, kinda, not like … I mean.”

He didn’t say anything but he’d rearranged himself, getting cross-legged, and close enough she could see the scrapes on his boot soles and the slot where he’d been knocked off his feet the other day, the bullet just creasing the shoe. Hell, if the shot had struck true he could have been back there in Chilonga Center with the Grawns.

“Your call, Miri. We can bunk up here if you want, or I got me a spot with three ways out and some quiet, down in a little hollow. You want, you can just sleep.”

She smiled and realized that she was smiling so low and slow she was laughing, too.

She looked into his eyes then. Still smiling.

“Got coffee and stringent, huh?”

He nodded, just his eyes smiling, and it came to her, forcibly, that she didn’t want to sleep all alone, with just the weather machine to wake up to.

She stood up and stretched, as much like a cat as she could, before reaching a hand down to him.

“Let’s see who snores first.”

* * *

“‘Morning.” Robertson’s voice was softer than usual. Brunner touched the volume control, increasing the gain slightly. “Smokey down here,” she murmured. “Been that way the last three days; getting worse, seems like …”

On the station, Brunner nodded, and carefully did not sigh.

“There are large fires burning in the grain belts on both the major continents,” he told her, keeping his voice merely informative. She had no need, after all, to carry the burden of his anger. Idiots, fools, and—but, no. That was for later. Now, there was there were other necessities to be served.

“Some of the forests also seem to have been set on fire. I see plumes all over the planet from installations and communities that have been … set afire.”

“Yeah, they asked us to start burning things awhile back. Ain’t in our job description. Seems they got some kind of fetish ‘bout fire cleaning things up—you know, purifying.”

Robertson coughed; Brunner pushed a button to download a satellite image to the Stubbs’ screen.

“Your location is the blinking green dot,” he said. “The other green dots are your most recent report points. The valley directly ahead is very smoky—you can see that there are four distinct plumes which then merge… I believe that all of the major communities in your area have burned or are burning; certainly the crop fields have burnt.”

A pause, broken by her sigh.

“Guess we won’t capture much there. We was supposed to be moving on one of them towns to meet … well …”

He thumbed the plate, waited.

“Huh. What’s this about winter? It got pretty cool last night, even for a girl from Surebleak. I’d have had damn frosty toes without help … Hey! That looks ugly as all get out!”

She was multi-threading, though there was scarcely need—or maybe, he thought, there was. Who knew how long she had until the order came to move? Threading was an efficient way to share information.

So. “Winter does come,” he said, picking up each thread in turn. “A very strong winter on much of the planet, according to the records. The snowcaps triple in size at the poles. But there are still eighty to one hundred planet days until that is a concern for you. Yes, it is ugly. Easily one hundred and fifty major fires in both hemispheres; on the plains up north there is effectively a single fire half the width of the continent.”

A sound came out of the speaker, as if of a boot against rock, followed by a murmured question, Redhead’s soft, “I dunno …”

A new voice emerged from the speaker, crisp and tight.

“Commander Lizardi here. My weather reporter says it looks like the locals are burning themselves out of house and home. If the Scout is available relay this to his attention. News of the quarantine has been a catalyst for major upheaval within power structures. Violent upheaval, even by local standards. My ground station for our tactical satellite has been destroyed by ground forces, and the Chilongan government that hired me has been in transition this last five-day, leaving me with no current contact up-line despite reports that the north is bringing a major invasion force down on the continent. If the government that hired me is gone, I need to withdraw. Repeat: We have no assurance of contracted withdrawal at this point. We also have attracted a few dozen off-world non-combatants who travel in our train. The Scout has my contact radio frequencies and I expect them used appropriately.

“We’re moving now. Lizardi out.”

* * *

“Brunner, from this point on you will have an assistant on duty with you at all times while you are in the meteorology lab.”

Chief Thurton stood beside his own desk in his own office, hand clenching and unclenching nervously.

“An assistant?” Brunner stared, wondering if he looked upon madness, or only exhaustion.

“We have no such an assistant available,” he pointed out. “Shall you assign the intern’s hours to mine, it might be possible.”

“The intern … is on sick-call. She is … unreliable. I note that I don’t have your letter on file. I need it as soon as possible. You—through the orders of the Scout, or by your own choice—are on the verge of violating our neutrality.”

“Indeed,” he murmured, keeping his voice calm, his posture non-argumentative. “By your direction I follow the Scout’s necessity. And the station’s—am I not to preserve the function of the monitor?”

“Liz Lizardi is a combatant, as is the operator of the equipment. You should not be carrying messages of a tactical nature for the Scout from Lizardi!”

The chief spun, paced; he stared at the monitors with their images of smoke-streaked atmosphere.

“Am I,” Brunner asked carefully, “relieved of the command to follow the Scout’s orders? The equipment on-world was supplied for our use by the Scout.”

Abruptly, the chief sat behind his desk, still if not at ease. He closed his eyes, and spoke softly, enunciating each word with great care.

“Until such time as we are able to assign an assistant for you, you will record any and all activity within the laboratory, you will forward the text of any and all communications with the ground, with the Lunatics, as soon as it is completed. I have found a dozen or more conversations you’ve had with that soldier in the files, contacts you’ve never mentioned… .”

Brunner bowed, keeping the wave of frustrated confusion in check with an effort. This conversation was far too similar to the senseless interrogations regarding melant’i, proper conduct, and “civilized behavior” that his halfling self had endured from delm and nadelm to be borne with true calmness.

“It is as you say, Chief. The conversations were brief and part of the record. It seems … profitable … to be in touch with the one operating the unit, and in fact to ascertain that the operator is intact enough to operate it properly. The unit is in a war zone, and I am told I am responsible for it!”

The chief opened his eyes.

“I see. In fact, your motives are pure and your thought wise.” He took a hard breath. “Allow me to be specific. Do forward messages as they occur. Do not initiate any conversation with the ground which are not in response to their queries or actual operational necessity. Do not contact any other ground units or respond to any outside requests for information; all such must go through my office. Do not argue with the Scout, but if he gives you further instructions, report them to me for clarity before carrying them out.”

Brunner bowed again and turned to—

“Brunner—” The chief called him back. “Maybe you don’t understand your situation—the precarious situation of this station with regard to the … situation on the planet. As a result of the Scout’s declaration of quarantine, the so-called legitimate planetary government has vanished, giving rise to two entities who now claim to be in control. A third has announced its willingness—and ability—to destroy ‘all interlopers in the system.’ At one point this was a civilized world and they had means to back that threat up. A space station, as I am sure I don’t need to tell you, is a very, very vulnerable habitat.”

Brunner bowed once more, speechless. The chief collapsed against the back of his chair, boneless with emotion and waved an incoherent hand.

“Go!”

* * *

Redhead shut the Stubbs down and pushed up off her knees. Skel looked ‘round from where he’d been watching for her, his face black with ash.

“Get ‘im?”

“Just static. I think that roll down the hill might’ve shook something loose,” she said, pulling the now-familiar burden up over her shoulders, and settling it with a wince. Truth told, that tumble hadn’t done her a lot of good, either. Skel’d wrapped the ribs for her, but there wasn’t much else to do about the bruises and contact burns than ignore ‘em.

“Best let’s catch up,” she said. “I’ll try again tonight.”

* * *

There was activity in the Chilongan isthmus. Heavy equipment working between the mismatched sea walls. Brunner upped the magnification, trying to see what they were about, conscientiously recording to the planetologist’s queue.

Could they be digging? he wondered. But what—

Alarms went off, not just in his lab but all over the station, raucous noise bouncing against walls and ear drums.

Brunner spun away from his screen, trying to catalog the racket—alarms only, no instruction to abandon ship, or report of sections sealed, only—

Jack, clanking in at a run, a device of some sort in his hand.

“What is it,” Brunner yelled, over the unabated clamor.

“Neutrons! Look to your station screen!”

Brunner spun back, slapping the keypad as the alarms reached a crescendo, faltered, died.

“High Energy Particle Alert” flashed across the station information screen. “Check badges now.”

“Jack here, we’re fine in Science A.” A glance showed him listening intently before he said, “Then recalibrate. It’s not an error.”

Brunner snatched the badge from his pocket, confirmed that it was a perfect, unblemished white, spun back—

Jack waved him ‘round again. “Take a look realtime—someone’s shooting off big stuff!”

The alarm gave tongue again; ceasing almost at once.

“Are we attacked?” Brunner demanded, his fingers calling up satellites and long-range scans.

“Dunno,” Jack admitted, flipping through his beltside inventory. “We’re looking secure right now. Bridge didn’t mention incoming.”

Jack walked around the lab, casually, fingers still busy along his belts. “Yeah, this’ll flush out what tech’s left, I’m guessing …”

The alarms blared again; Jack flashed his scanner, touched his collar, listened, then wandered over to stand next to Brunner.

“Not aimed at us,” he said, as the alarm screamed into silence. “Air bursts, off on the limb. Mostly neutron and gamma stuff but our shielding’s up to it … you’ll have some tracking to do.”

“But, the radiation! They’ll kill everyone!”

Jack made a noise like a laugh without energy, and patted the top of Brunner’s monitor as if it were a pet in need of reassurance.

“Nah, now. Only if they do it right. Likely they don’t have enough N-bombs to do everybody in that way. Gotta hand it to ‘em, though, between the gas, and the nukes and burning everything that’ll take a flame, they might’ve figured out how to manage it, anyhow.”

Speechless, Brunner brought the tracking screen to full magnification, moving the satellite to cover the area of the Stubbs’ last report, while he fingered up the Stubbs’ screen. Even as the window came live, data began to flow. Brunner closed his eyes against the wave of relief, took a breath and touched the send button.

“Miri Robertson, please alert. Miri Robertson …”

The response was as instantaneous as the minor lag allowed. “Brunner! Am I glad to hear your voice! Tried to get you earlier, but the machine wasn’t getting anything but static! Anyhow, we’re ready for a forced march outta here. Locals are gone crazy; had a bunch attack us with sticks … carrying candles like they was going to light us out of the way. Another bunch just sat down in front of us and shot their own brains out …”

“Galandaria, they are using nuclear weapons on each other.”

A pause; a long, long pause …

“Say again, Brunner.” Absolutely serious, her voice, all trace of childish exuberance extinguished.

“We are recording,” he said, keeping his voice calm, so calm, for her sake. Jack shifted at his side, making room for the Scout.

“… we are recording nuclear weapons blasts,” Brunner said into the microphone; “high energy particle counts. I have not had opportunity to analyze, but …”

“Right. Hold that there. I’ll see if I can get Liz here to … damn!” There were sounds, popping, hisses, explosions. “Bastards coming over the hill! I’ll call!” The speaker went dead.

“Redhead!” He slapped at the switch, knowing it futile. On the screen, the instrument reports flowing in from the Stubbs cycled from active, to collate, to archive.

* * *

Jack was still, as it turned out, in the weather room when Brunner returned from his nightmare-riddled off-shift. He lounged in Brunner’s chair, feet propped up on the instrument stool. He was awake, as were the monitors, and seemed none the less for the wear. Brunner’s mood, already black, darkened.

“Jack, I see now what makes you so valuable to this station. You never sleep and you are always concerned of things you have no need to know!”

Jack grinned and bowed a meaningless, half-reclined bow.

“We’re alike that way, aren’t we? And yeah—my sleep center took a hit when I was on a mission, back when I was the age of your redhead down there. Well, pretty much all of me took a hit, tell the truth. Got put in an autodoc for about a week … and came out mostly better, ‘cept I can’t sleep more’n about three hours at a time.”

Brunner shook his head, looking around at the busy screens.

“What happened?” he demanded.

“Well, I survived and found a job using my unique talents …”

Brunner bristled, strode over to his main screen.

“I know,” Jack said, rising with a minimum of clank and clatter. He bowed; a surprisingly apt bow of a colleague relinquishing activity to an equal. “It ain’t funny, but it’s my only defense right now.”

Sighing, Brunner returned the bow. “Now tell me: Down there—what has happened?”

Jack rubbed his face wearily. “They’re killing each other. Not a peep from our weather station. Every time the terminator hits a new planetary time zone, bombs go off. Looks like somebody’s answering somebody else back. There’s been a couple of pretty big bombs go off up north, random times, like maybe they had to be delivered in person. I think there’s been more gas, too, but it’s hard to tell with all the other … Anyhow, I saved it all for you.”

Brunner stared at the screens full with smoke, fire, doom and destruction. He leaned against the counter, pushing hard to counteract the shaking.

“To what can they aspire?” he whispered in Liaden. “What can they achieve?”

“I guess,” Jack answered, in quiet Terran, “that they can be right.”

Still shaking, Brunner took his seat, riffled screens, counted seventeen marked explosions on the charts. He had no way of knowing dispersal rates at this point but many were already thinning rapidly. One in the north was very heavy, and he zoomed the map in to take a closer look.

“Was the south attempting to destroy the rest of the farmlands?”

Jack looked over his shoulder, shook his head.

“That’s centered on a small range of hills. Might’ve been the Chilongans were after a base, a treasure house—something buried for protection.”

The door opened, admitting the Scout. He waved toward the wall and Brunner reluctantly put the image of the whole hemisphere on the big screen, with the terminator moving relentlessly west.

“That could be bad downwind,” said the Scout, shockingly matter-of-fact. “We’d need twelve dozen automated Stubbs, to begin tracking. Perhaps we could get by with six dozen if we rule out a need to …”

“Rate they’re going at it,” Jack broke in, “won’t be any reason to track it but science.”

“We shall see. I have spoken to the chief, who informs me that the station cannot accept more than ten dozen refugees, and that only with the assurance that there be no local interference and that ships will be on the way to offload them soonest.”

“No local interference? Surely …” Brunner was watching the clock and the terminator on screen, bringing the satellite online to the old coordinates …

“Nothing there,” Jack told him. “Trees, some. Burn marks. Couldn’t catch anything moving but the IR isn’t that good …”

“There!” the Scout shouted, not quite as loud as the alarm.

Jack muttered something, his belt clanked briefly and the alarm shut abruptly off.

“What are they doing?” Even from here there were noticeable points of light, all concentrated.

“Carpet-bombing. Nuclear bombing on the isthmus.”

The alarms sounded again as two very bright spot blossomed, beeped as several more …

… and stopped.

“… here. Dawn shows us clear; we blew the bridge and …”

“Miri!”

Brunner slapped at the switch.

“Miri!”

“Got static, Tech, are you … There, gotcha. Yeah, it’s me. Most of us got through, but we picked up some damage. The Stubbs, it bounced a couple with my name on ‘em.”

The station alarm sounded, stopped.

“… so none of ‘em are dependable. Hey, sounds like you got some hoorah going up there.”

“Miri, Miri, do you know they are still using nuclear weapons? Several dozens or more. All over the world. Many, thirty degrees northeast of you. The …”

“Right, we thought something was going on. Locals suiciding, station control ain’t answering—doesn’t acknowledge.”

The Scout made a small sound, and Jack said, “Why you think I’m down here? Tried to answer the phone, stupid old man that I’ve come to be.”

“No,” the Scout said sharply, “look at the isthmus!”

The low sun angle and remains of expanding clouds made the seeing difficult; but the intent appeared clear. The excavation he had noticed so many days ago had been completed—perhaps by the bombing—and stretching from one ocean to the other.

Brunner took a hard breath. “Miri, it is good that you are far from a coast,” he murmured, his fingers keying his cameras to record, while Jack moved away. “We shall need to speak with Commander Lizardi.”

The alarm beeped, but barely. Around it, he heard Jack paging the planetologist.

“… with the wounded. I’ll grab her when I can. Be there, right?”

“We will be here,” Brunner promised. “Next orbit.”

* * *

Dr. Boylan was …delighted.

“Do you see what they’ve done? They have removed the isthmus, and that … and that has done something unprecedented on an inhabited world. There are shock waves registering on the seismographs, and not simply the explosives. They’ve significantly altered the actual surface structures … and they’ve created a triple tsunami as well! Something else is going on—but that will take days to confirm, and perhaps millennia to conclude!”

Brunner closed his eyes against this ghoulish enthusiasm while trying to visualize the changes, the—

“I believe the flow of water has upset the balance of the underlying plates,” she went on, “and may have even broken the link! They’d be free to float …”

“Brunner! We will need as much as you can get in the way of gas analysis, for they may well have released the oceanic methane clathrates. Oh, that’s a delicate balance indeed, and given the odd sediment formations here, and the subsurface temperature variations, we could be looking at a cascade of undersea landslides and quakes, reinforcing a continental redistribution …”

“The jet streams,” Brunner managed to get in, “should not be greatly affected, but the currents … much of my database will need to be rebuilt, and we have no reliable reporting scheme …”

Boylan fizzed on, lost in the beauty of the cataclysm. “Imagine! A complete change in the ocean currents occurring nearly instantly! Storm systems and climate disrupted on the spot! Given the elasticity of the plates, who knows but that we might get volcanism out of this?”

“The people,” Brunner said, forcefully. “The survivors …”

Boylan’s lips straightened. She looked at him, and pointed at the missing isthmus.

“What we need to do now is study and record the processes and phenomena that have been unleashed,” she said firmly. “The people will have to be left to historians, don’t you think?”

Brunner’s glance sought the Scout, who took a breath and bowed low—excessive respect for one far exceeding the bower’s humble estate.

“Dr. Boylan,” he murmured, honey-voiced. “Your enthusiasm for science is well known and manifest. I wonder if you might have the means among your programs, or”—he bowed to Brunner as might one to a comrade—”if you, Ichliad Brunner, might have among yours, a means to predict where these triple tsunami might strike, and when? Perhaps we are best placed to offer warning, if not solace, to those who still live.”

* * *

There was no response to Brunner’s call on the following orbit, and nothing on the automatics indicating that the Stubbs was online. Chief Thurton, apparently again against objections, permitted the station to broadcast a multiband warning to the world below once the Scout pointed out that he might do the same from the comfort of his own ship, if the station preferred not to.

As to specific warnings, that was barely possible. A tsunami travels transparently in open ocean, its wave a rapid but nearly invisible swell in an already tumultuous world. They had no resources to determine speed, nor even to insure that the first burst of monster wave against nearby shores had continued beyond the initial coastline.

Eventually Jack was pressed into service with the satellite, sampling coasts and islands visually, with his observations of specific sites added to the warning the scout gave. What lives were affected by this they could not tell: the surface spoke not at all to them, along any of the regular bands. Periodically he returned to view the isthmus area where a few sandy shoals amidst the deep gash of a river of darker water triumphantly flowing from the west were all that was left of the former barrier.

“An army of liberation?” Jack asked heavily of the room. “Is that what was here?”

“Does it matter?” Boylan answered impatiently. “They are beyond concern at this point, are they not?”

Brunner held to his tasks and said nothing, working as if he could prevent further disaster by the strength and purity of his research.

Eventually, the Scout returned, bearing with him a station-issue portable.

Bowing a bow of respectful request to equals, he waved the portable as if it were a child’s rattle or toy.

“The main computer was able to share with me demographic information reported by planetary authorities, and later by those splinter groups claiming authority. Some of it conflicts, some of it is probably purposefully wrong. I would like to use overlays of the various records you have of the last Standard, with particular emphasis on the past three days.”

This was said to the room at large.

Jack looked at Boylan, who was tending her screens, working as if the words had not been said.

Brunner sighed and bowed, finding it within himself to add the flourish which brought his acceptance close to that of accepting a comrade’s necessity.

“Yes,” agreed the Scout, “there is some of that, isn’t there?”

“Some of what?” asked Boylan, raising her face from her work.

“Must be a Liaden thing,” Jack said, rolling his eyes, and nodded at the Scout. “How can I help?”

* * *

Liz was talking to the Scout via the Stubbs, and Liz was not happy. Redhead hovered nearby, one eye on the machine and the other on the horizon. The air was bad, pollution and radiation levels high—she saw it all on the screen as the Stubbs did its upload.

“The shuttles that brought us down might still exist,” Liz was saying, sounding like she’d be mad if she wasn’t so damn tired. “So what? They’re hellengone back down where the city used to—”

“In that case,” the Scout interrupted. “They do not exist, my friend. Nothing exists there anymore.”

Liz rubbed her face.

“I’ve broadcast a plea for assistance,” the Scout continued, “but Klamath has not been a good neighbor these last dozen years and it is painfully clear there is no immediate commercial advantage to be had.”

Liz shook her head. “Merc unit here. I don’t have much in the way of bargaining chips, but I do have some off-planet resources. Beam Merc Headquarters, tell ‘em Lizardi’s good for the fare …”

Redhead saw it first, the tell-tale wobble in the land.

“Quake, clear and down!” She was parched, and her voice didn’t travel; Skel bellowed a repeat before going down flat.

Exhausted Lunatics ran from under tree and makeshift shelters. You didn’t want to be under anything when the wave came through and you didn’t want to be standing, either—in fact, you couldn’t; it was like trying to stand on a tarp stretched out over the sea with the tide coming in.

Whomp!

Redhead was flat when the roll hit, and Liz, already sitting cross-legged, bobbed around as the dirt groaned and a few more trees fell, and that part was over.

Now came the hard part for her: the ground felt unsteady and swollen under her, like it was thinking about splitting open or folding over, or …

The second stage passed, too, and she sighed into the scorched ground before pushing upright. Liz was still at the Stubbs; she swept her hand out toward the scattered Lunatics—

“Injury check!”

Redhead rose unsteadily and hinted at a salute with her right hand while grabbing up the staff she’d picked up from down-wood. Her speed and size conspired, giving her a chance to get through tree-fall and such in a hurry. The circuit here was familiar, and this time there were no new casualties among the troops.

The civilians … there were still a few out there, and as long as they didn’t actively shoot or throw rocks it didn’t matter if they came along. They’d already been on short rations and shorter morale when they’d stumbled on the Lunatics and their grasp of Trade and common Terran was less than good. Some of them still grabbed for their amulets and lucky pieces instead of hightailing to open land … and there were a couple more among them injured.

She got back to the Stubbs in time to hear an exasperated Liz snap, “Tidal? We’re a good three days’ march from anything approaching shore side, assuming I can still read a map. Unless things have changed …”

“The tsunami made some new dents, but nothing that extreme,” the Scout offered. “The under-plates themselves are doing something we can’t quantify yet. The planetologist and the weatherman are working to define—to predict. Moment … Ah. Tech Brunner shows me that your location gained altitude in the last upheaval. Higher by about the height of your redhead, I think.”

“That’s interesting,” Liz grated. “But it doesn’t get us out of here.”

The line buzzed empty, then the Scout was back. “It does not,” he admitted quietly. “Give me the headcount at your next check-in—your people and the civilians. I do not wish to commit insufficient transport—and I would prefer a better landing zone.”

That, thought Redhead, sounded like he was going to get them transport—and apparently it sounded like that to Liz, too.

“Will do,” she said, sounding easier. “Here’s your connection!”

Liz waved her over. Redhead muttered a quick report: “Lost three of the locals overnight but everybody else came through fine. Might’ve been a sprained ankle there … but that’s livable.”

Liz nodded and moved away, hand up to grab somebody else’s attention.

Redhead sat down and punched the “talk” button.

“Redhead here.”

“Here’s Tech,” she heard, followed by his calm, unflappable voice. It was like easing in for a swim after a hot, horrible day, his voice; the water so cool it felt like silk …

“Redhead, you are untroubled by the earthquakes?”

She laughed, hand to face.

“That’s not true, Brunner. I hate ‘em. I feel like the whole damn world’s trying to shake me off it! And that’s when the locals aren’t praying for me one minute and shooting at me the next.”

“You have a good commander, Redhead,” he murmured. “I think you will not have those problems much longer. If you have a portable, or paper to hand to record this … we think you can expect waves of about the same strength as you recently experienced at approximately every nine standard hours. I stress that this is approximate. Recent events are—unprecedented, which makes prediction … difficult. So, there will be a resonance, if we are right, a larger kick-in-the-pants, as Jack calls it, perhaps every fourth or fifth. Also, there will likely be random sharp waves.”

“Got it,” she said, memorizing what he told her; she’d lost her portable, with her books and games and all—gods, it seemed like years ago, at that firefight at—

“And so,” Brunner was continuing, “the rest of the information is that in the short term we see no major precipitation. This is good; it keeps some of the fallout radiation above you. You are not under the jet currents carrying the worse loads yet. The long-term is much harder.”

“Snow?” she offered.

Brunner laughed.

“Not snow, no. What is happening is that we have new water flows in the ocean, new and unstable. This will affect the … the … mesoscale events, the regional weather and possibilities for local and regional. Weather we cannot predict so well. We are um … perhaps aided in that we know where you are and will be able, to some extent at least, to concentrate our efforts in predicting for you. It would be best for us and for you, if we can receive frequent updates. They needn’t be non-stop, but perhaps a reading each orbit or two that we travel overhead …”

“That’s what—about fifteen times a day?” She chewed her lip. “I’ll see what we can do. Might need to add somebody to the talk list … but if mostly you need the unit switched on, we ought to be good for that.”

A pause then, and then Brunner’s voice came as if he was partly turned away from the mike.

“Yes, we will monitor at all times, but will expect voice communication as you need, else three times per day. Perhaps you should take our tide warnings and we will set a schedule from there?”

“I can do that. Send away!”

* * *

Brunner woke, his body already calling for tea and chernubia. He kept time now by the next time he was needed at the microphone, or what sort of weather was imminent. It happened that this time, his waking and first meal coincided with the day’s first scheduled report from the surface, where Lizardi’s Lunatics slowly moved through the smoldering remains of what had once been a vast forest toward an abandoned hilltop farmstead, hoping to find shuttles waiting to bear them to the station.

That there would actually be shuttles—that sat between the Scout and the station master.

He heard raised voices as he approached the weather room, one of them Boylan’s, one the Scout’s. Then Jack chimed in and the level rose.

“We have to go in!”

“There’s nothing we can do.”

“The chief insists that we cannot land.” That was the Scout, and it hurried Brunner’s steps. Cannot land? But—

“It’s disturbing the science!” Boylan shouted. “We knew from early on there was little chance …”

Brunner ran, bootheels noisy against the floor.

“What has happened?”

His three associates fell silent. The Scout bowed, slowly, as between equals.

“I see we need not wake you for this news.”

Jack stepped up, ushering Brunner toward his seat.

“I slept late and had a meeting with the intern,” said Boylan defensively, “and when I arrived, we were beyond range already.”

Brunner turned to face her, his stomach twisting. “What has happened?”

She turned away from him. It was the Scout who leaned forward and touched the pad, started the recording. There was noise, bursts of sounds that once he would have mistaken for thunder.

“Tech! Recon squad found us a nest of leftovers. Liz tried to talk to ‘em but you hear what they’re saying. Hold them ships till you hear from us cause it looks like they got themselves some anti-air stuff. Bastard’s tried to sneak in through … damn. Out.”

”Last orbit?” Brunner demanded, though he could see the time on the scan. “This happened and no one told me?” He spun, coming up out of the chair so quickly the Scout fell back a step.

Boylan turned to face him. “What could you have done?” She shouted. “Nothing! There’s nothing you can do for them, Brunner, and the sooner you stop pretending—and him, too!—the better, for you and for the mission! Mercenaries are paid to die!”

Breath-caught, Brunner took a step, his hand going out of its own accord, snatching up a coffee cup left on the counter—

Jack moved, clinks subdued, caught Brunner’s shoulder and pried the cup from his hand.

“Sorry, Tech.” The hand squeezed his shoulder, perhaps meaning comfort, then Jack turned, cup yet in hand as he nodded to the planetologist.

“Let’s get some breakfast, hey? We’ll be able to work better after we’ve had something to eat.”

Boylan looked at Jack, then at Brunner, her eyes wide and her face hard.

“Later today,” she said, and her voice was soft. “I marked it in the event file. Later today the tides will be bad. Ugly. I’m not sure they’re survivable. I’m sorry, Brunner.”

He stared at her, vision spangling. He blinked and felt the tears, hot down his cheeks.

“Right.” Jack took Boylan’s arm and steered her toward the door.

“Coffee. Coffee’ll help us both, and company, too …”

Weeping, Brunner watched them leave, then turned back to his instruments, tapping the event file up.

“The times are there,” the Scout said quietly. “I believe that the quakes are due six orbits from now. Before that, there is the enemy. With the right weather, with luck, perhaps they may sneak past to a place of safety. It would be wise of you to prepare a forecast, my friend. I go to see if calls for assistance will be answered.”

The Scout bowed, gently, and Brunner replied, “Comrade.”

* * *

The civilians were dead; the gun took the couple the land had let live. Liz pulled what was left of the Lunatics back some, and sent scouts out, looking for a way around trouble. Joey came back, reporting no joy. Auifme didn’t come back at all, which Redhead guessed amounted to the same thing.

“We got no good choices,” Liz said. “Weatherman upstairs says there’s bad weather coming—worst we seen. Weatherman’s a cheerful boyo, but he’s not being cheerful about this. Wants us to get to a safe place pronto, by which I gather he means off-planet and maybe out-system.

“In the meantime, the Scout’s guaranteeing transport, but we’ve got to make the rendezvous point before that weather hits.”

Scandal shook her head. “Hell, Liz, that ain’t no choice; it’s one choice!”

There were a few laughs from around the circle. Miri finished up her half of the last ration bar in her pack, had a drink, and passed her water jug to Skel. They’d stripped down to necessaries some while back, taking just enough to keep ‘em to the rendezvous. That was before they’d run into the crazies with the Forsbo 75, o’course, not that anything they’d had left would’ve answered it for good.

“There’s a little obstacle between us and the rendezvous, in case you hadn’t noticed,” Skel said to Scandal, when Liz didn’t.

“So, we run for it,” she answered, pushing her helmet up off her face with a grimy forefinger.

“It’s an option,” Liz allowed. “I’d like to up our odds some, though. I’m thinking in terms of a diversion. Something to draw the gunner’s fire while we’re sneaking past in the direction we need to go.” She looked ‘round at them, taking her time.

“I’m looking for a volunteer.”

Miri took her water jug back from Skel and snapped it onto her belt. Outside the circle, a baby wind twist swirled into being, stirred the dust, threw a couple stones and dissipated. Inside the circle, nobody said anything.

“I’ll do it,” she said, and heard Skel draw in a hard breath, exhaling it on a laugh.

“Hey, no, now. Stealing my thunder, Redhead?”

She shook her head at him, but she was looking at Liz. Liz, whose face had gone still, eyes narrowed; who’d gotten her off of Surebleak and given her a fighting chance.

Well, and sometimes you fought, and sometimes you lost. Even she knew that.

And, besides, she didn’t intend to lose.

“Makes sense,” she said to Liz’s hooded eyes. “I’m smallest. I’m fastest. Got the best chance of getting in, doing the job and getting back out.”

Liz took a breath. “You got a distraction in mind, I take it?”

“Yes’m.” She nodded. “I do.”

* * *

“Tech Brunner, I have news which may … ease your burden somewhat.”

Brunner turned from his screen. The Scout was disheveled, even unkempt. He was, however, smiling. Brunner felt his own heart lift in response, which was surely not wise, but hearts were not known for wisdom.

“What has happened?” he asked.

“We have shuttle craft fueled and standing by, we have pilots volunteered from among the crew.”

“Ah. And the permission of Chief Thurton, you have that, as well?”

“Pending receipt of a message from Phaetera headquarters. If the hour comes upon us and the message as yet unreceived, we go. This by the chief’s own word.”

Brunner’s knees wobbled. He sat abruptly on the stool.

“This is … an astonishing reversal,” he said slowly, and took a breath.

“Earlier, when I spoke to her—they are still pinned. Commander Lizardi had pulled back, and sent recon to seek a way around.” He took another breath, remembering. “She said, this morning’s count was twenty-seven. The civilians … they did not survive the night.”

The Scout inclined his head. “All honor to them,” he murmured, then straightened, eyes bright. “We have been in contact with others who are also making for the rendezvous point. We will take any and all who meet us, but … I fear we will not be able to wait for those who are not there.”

“Understood,” Brunner whispered. He cleared his throat. “Understood.”

* * *

“Tech? Ichliad? You there?”

“I am here, galandaria.” As if he could—would—be anywhere else until this was over, however it came …

He leaned his head against edge of the monitor, the plastic cool against his skin.

“I wanted to tell you,” Miri Robertson said, her voice as clear as if she stood next to him in the weather lab. “Couple things. First, you done real good by us; we wouldn’t’ve got this far without you helping us so much …”

Brunner closed his eyes, hand fisted on his lap. “Child …”

“No, hey, listen. And I gotta tell you—having you on the other end of this thing, talking to me, an’ all? You didn’t have to do that and it—I don’t guess I can say out how much it helped, so you’re gonna just hafta believe it did. A lot. We sit down and get that coffee, after this is all over, I’ll try to ‘splain it better, okay?”

Brunner swallowed. “Okay …”

“Good,” she said. “That’s good. Now, the other thing I got to tell you? We’re gonna be moving real soon. Gonna strike for the rendezvous point—run like hell, that’s the plan. Good one, huh?”

“Indeed. A most excellent plan.”

“It’s got a lot going for it, mostly being the only plan we got,” she said, sounding amused. “But, see, the Stubbs here. I’m gonna—”

“Leave it!” he said violently. That she should worry over mere equipment when—He took a breath.

“Galandaria, listen to me. Set the unit to automatic and leave it. I will gather what data I may, while it functions. Promise me that you will do this.”

“No … can’t. I—Brunner. Look, I need this thing, okay? What I wanted to tell is—you’re prolly gonna lose the signal. Don’t worry ‘bout that, right? Promise.”

Gods, gods. He took another deep breath, and when he spoke, his voice was calm, never hinting at the tears running from closed eyes.

“Of course, you will do as you deem wise,” he told her. “You have never given me cause to doubt your judgment. Now,” he said, more briskly. “You should know that the Scout has just recently assured me that there will be ships at the rendezvous point. They will board any who come, but they will not wait, galandaria. Do you understand me?”

“Got it,” she said cheerfully. “Right in line with the plan, huh?”

“Yes,” he murmured. “Run like hell.”

* * *

“Get ‘im?” Skel hunkered down next to her and held out a square of chocolate.

“Did. Told me to get my ass to the rendezvous point or else.” She nodded at the chocolate. “You better have that.”

“Already did,” he said, and if he was lying—which he prolly was—he was good. “Saved this out for you. Least I can do, huh?”

“Thanks.” She took it and gnawed on a corner while she pulled up the Stubbs’ manual, ran the search and pulled up the page.

“You tell ‘im it ain’t likely you’ll be with us to meet the pilots?” Skel asked harshly.

She looked up at him, shaking her head. “Not planning on getting done just yet. You?”

“What are you planning, then, if you don’t mind sharing with a friend?”

She nodded at the screen, gnawing on her chocolate. “This thing here? It’s got a power supply capable of powering a pinbeam.”

Skel sat back on his heels, face attentive. “Does it, now?”

“That’s what it says here.” She tapped the screen. “An’ if I was to do a series of something stupids, like it warns me here in this manual never to do? Then it might give up all its power at once.”

Skel didn’t say anything. She gave him a look and a grin. “Want your chocolate back now, don’t you?”

“You got everything you need to pull this off?”

She nodded, and reached ‘round with her free hand to pull the grubby cord up over her head. The key was right where she’d put it, nestled next to the enamel disk her mother’d given her. She palmed it and let Skel put the string back over her head, and tuck the pouch away.

“You tell ‘im up there you was gonna blow up his equipment?”

“Told him he was gonna lose the signal, and not to think anything ‘bout it.”

“That’ll be a comfort,” Skel said dryly, and Miri sighed.

“I’ll make it up to him. Now, gimme a minute to read this part again, right?”

* * *

The door opened and Jack strode in, tool belts clanking.

“Tech,” he said, nodding, and wandered over to the supply cupboard, belt clanking, casually opening a hatch that was coded to Brunner’s thumbprint, and placing something within it.

“I see that I am wise to lock important items away,” Brunner said.

The big man shot a grin over one shoulder. “Little testy? Well, you got a right, I guess. We all do. Just gotta remember that I hold the overrides. You’re safe from everybody but me.” He closed the hatch and walked over to the monitor shelf, hitching himself up on the stool.

Brunner sighed and turned back to his screen. “If you are here for a purpose … ?”

“Come down to see how the work was going, is all. Heard from that girl of yours lately?”

“Indeed. She informs me that they intend to make rendezvous. I have assured her that the ships will be there.”

“Did you, now,” Jack murmured, and Brunner threw him a sharp look.

”Will the ships be there?” he demanded.

“Said so, didn’t you? Now, you might be interested in knowing that the chief, he got his answer from the company. And—following the letter of his instructions, y’know, just like he ought—he’s had the Scout arrested and thrown in the brig. I expect to be—yeah, here it is, now.”

Footsteps rang in the corridor outside; the door opened and three people in Phaetera security colors entered the room. One stood by the door, stunrod held ready, the other two advanced on Jack, who docilely held out his hands to accept the restraints.

“Phaetera Company orders Jacumbra Edgil removed from his position and the company payroll. His access to the station is restricted and he will be removed from the station at the earliest opportunity.” The security guard looked up from the portable from which she had been reading, and looked hard into Jack’s face. “Phaetera Company also wishes you to know that there will be no involvement in the situation on the planet below. Promises of rescue or succor made by Scout Commander Kon Rad yo’Lazne and/or Jacumbra Edgil are not binding on Phaetera Company.”

What? “But—” Jack’s shoulder lifted minutely and Brunner stopped himself, biting his lip. Jack rose at the prompting of his guard, bound hands held awkwardly in front of him. The other guard looked to Brunner.

“We apologize for disturbing your work, Technician Brunner.”

“Jack—”

“See you, Brunner! Hey, it’s about time I got a vacation. Don’t expect the Scout to be such good company, though …”

He passed through the door on the heels of his guard, the others following.

The door closed, leaving Brunner alone with the equipment.

* * *

Getting in close enough to kill the gun, Redhead thought, as she rested behind the scant cover of a charred bush, that was gonna be tricky.

But not half as tricky as getting back out before the Stubbs blew.

Liz, she’d laid down the law, and it was the scariest thing Miri had heard so far in her life.

“Soon’s Redhead’s diversion goes off, we’re running, and it’s every hand for themselves, you hear me? If your partner falls and don’t get up, run. If I fall—run. If you get hit and fall and it ain’t fatal—get up, damn you, and run!”

Miri figured she’d be a little behind the general race, what with having to set the Stubbs and all. She had the route to the rendezvous set in her mind, so that was okay. Skel, he’d wanted to stick with her, but she’d told him to look out for himself, like Liz’d said, and she’d see him at the shuttles, or for sure on the station, after.

Time to move. She took a breath in, deep, got her feet under her, and moved.

* * *

Brunner locked the lab door, went to the cupboard, set his thumb in the lock and pulled the door open.

Calmly, and not at all surprised, he removed the non-station communication device and a data stick.

Returning to the monitors, he cleared one, inserted the stick, and touched the “talk” button on the communicator.

“Jack?” Cautious. Low.

“Brunner,” he answered serenely. “I am the meteorologist of record. You and your compatriots are in place and willing?”

“We’re willing, sir, but the dock’s locked up.”

“Security?”

“Not now.”

A schematic blossomed on the screen as the feed from the datastick kicked in. Brunner looked at it, understood what he was to do, and spoke into the communicator.

“You can move at once.”

“Yessir, but—”

“I will take care of the airlock and the bay door. If anyone should ask, you do this on under my orders, which you believe I am able to issue. You understand this?”

“Yessir.”

“Good. The airlock will cycle in three minutes from my mark. Mark. What is your name?”

“Jamin Fowler, sir.”

“Jamin Fowler, fly well. The weather will be unsettling on planet, bear in mind that it will soon be worse. Be quick, and bring everyone you can.”

“We aim to do just that, sir.”

“Good,” Brunner said. “Good.”

He glanced over at the weather screen, saw the window for the Stubbs open, and data begin to flow. Surely not! he thought, suddenly not calm at all. There was no time now to stop and—

The data continued to flow, he reached out, touched the speaker plate—

Static from the speaker was abruptly cut off. On the screen, the data flow ceased, and the window reformed, displaying the legend:

NO SIGNAL. CACHING HISTORY. ARCHIVING. DONE.

* * *

Day 54, Standard Year 1393

Solcintra, Liad

“We had managed,” the Delm Lysta said, “to quiet the problems you have caused. We brought you home to the clanhouse, fed you, clothed you, kept you from prying eyes and wagging tongues. You have, in return, tended our inner gardens, and for the most part you have been respectful.”

His delm turned on him suddenly. Brunner recognized the play, and the actor whose stance was but poorly emulated.

“Tell me why you thought, what gave you the least reason to assume, that you would be permitted to broadcast your name to the world now? You fall yet short of the ten standards we had agreed to retain you in house for your own protection. Have you no sense of propriety? Is it that you specialize in disasters?”

The delm pounded a key, sweeping the on-hold play from the wall-screen taller than he and replacing it with:

Scouts Confirm Meteorologic Concerns over Blast Aftermath read the teaseline, above a wonderfully colorful and overwrought full motion graphic representation of the beam blast and the resultant dust plume. Below that was his paper, exactly as he had written to yo’Lazne, detailing his concerns regarding trace timonium and other radioactive by-products, the assumptions of dispersal difficulties, the recommendation that nearby residents be tested for pollutants at least and perhaps treated to a prophylactic stay in an autodoc.

There was more. He was quoted from his letters of testimony regarding the investigation into the actions of Phaetera Company in the matter of Klamath, his certifications were listed. As he had given his opinions in his melant’i as a professional and an expert, he was signed as I. Brunner, Master Meteorologist, with neither clan nor even city of residence appended.

His analysis, including jet-stream particulate distribution, fall-out rates, half-lives, everything he’d sent to the Scout, were included by link.

Brunner sighed and turned to his delm.

“By warning the people of Liad of the peculiar nature and dangers of the blast plume, and showing potential areas of concern, I have shamed the house?”

His delm stamped feet, twice. Brunner wasn’t certain of the play from which the gesture was borrowed, though the mood he knew far too well. The delm being a forever hopeful playwright, all actions were seen through another author’s eyes.

“Ten Standards. Ten Standards you were to remain silent to the world, and then to remove yourself to a quiet occupation. This morning already I have had three comm calls and a piece of mail inquiring if is the clan home of I. Brunner.

“We have an orderly house.” The delm sniffed. “And we will have an orderly house. This—” waving energetically at the wall “—is not a quiet occupation, do you understand? I am willing to acknowledge you ten years a gardener, and to divert a portion of the trust to set you in that service.”

Brunner bowed, acknowledging that he’d heard.

The comm line blinked; the delm ignored it in favor of staring toward the door toward the outer halls, where a rarely heard chime echoed discreetly.

“This, if this is more of your doing we shall …”

The what of the doing was interrupted by yet another comm call; this one at least was known to the house for the comm emitted a quiet chirchirchir, stolen from the sounds of chiretas closing out the last act of A Clan Dissolute, the extended critical version.

The delm said “Answer” and the comm dutifully did so.

“Cousin,” started the voice, and Brunner winced. “Imagine my surprise …”

“Hold Cousin, there’s a knock.”

Brunner winced again: Act II, Scene 6 of The Interminable as echoed in Act I, Scene 4, of the current rage False Melant’i.

Verena stood at the door when the delm opened it. A polite if rapid bow followed, and a sweep of words.

“There are visitors to see Ichliad. They ask by name and they have …”

A stamp of feet.

“Ichliad does not receive visitors. Not from friends and not from the curious! This house does not permit.”

Brunner still stood, wondering if the child would break and run. He was pleased to see that she did not, nor did she look at him.

“My delm, please. I have cards.” She showed them, two, fanned between small fingers. “Also, the lady sends this—” She raised her other hand, showing a slightly phosphorescent blue key.

Brunner’s stomach went into freefall.

Lysta snatched the cards, reached for the key, but Verena stepped sideways, extending her hand to Brunner.

“The lady said that I should place it in Ichliad’s hand, for she had promised to bring it back to him, when her mission was done.”

He moved, received the key, and stood for a moment staring at the imprinted Stubbs logo in archaic Terran script.

“She died,” he said, perhaps to Verena, perhaps to his delm. “On Klamath. I—she was not listed among the survivors and—”

“Korval!” His delm’s voice carried shock without artifice. “We cannot receive Korval. They are—”

“… thrown off planet for being bad boys and girls,” an ironic voice concluded in backworld Terran. A redheaded woman in working leathers stepped into the room neatly between Verena and Lysta, followed by a slender, dark haired man wearing a battered pilot’s jacket.

“Hi, Brunner,” the woman said to him, gray eyes measuring him, head to toe.

“Redhead,” he whispered. “Is it you?”

She grinned, and he saw the halfling soldier. “‘Fraid so. Amazing what some people’ll do to collect a debt, ain’t it?”

She reached behind her, took the man’s arm and brought him forward. “Ichliad Brunner, I make you known to my lifemate, Val Con yos’Phelium Clan Korval.” Now she spoke Liaden. Her accent was Solcintran, pure and perfectly clear.

Korval Himself bowed, a bow most exquisite in its exactness and in its brevity: The bow of one owing a debt beyond paying.

“Ichliad Brunner, I am most glad to meet you,” he said softly.

“And now that you have met him,” Lysta said sharply, “I will ask you to remove yourselves from this clanhouse.” The cards were thrust out imperiously, exactly the famous gesture performed by Nadelm Casaro in A Clan Redeemed. Brunner closed his eyes.

Korval turned and bowed again, delm to delm. He seemed unaware of the attempt to return the cards.

“Lysta, forgive us for coming to you in such a state of disarray,” he said smoothly. “There is a long history between my lady and Meteorologist Brunner; many events to be told over, several Balances to be crafted and weighed. You will have heard the news; we do not have much time here.”

Val Con glanced at them, his free hand executing a sign Brunner took to be “Continue.”

“Too long and too short,” Redhead murmured from her place next to Brunner. She sent him a quick look from beneath her lashes.

“You and me got a lot to talk over, like the man says,” she continued, as Korval walked Lysta over to the other side of the room, still talking, his posture one of concerned respect. “So, quick question—you looking for work?”

Brunner blinked. “Work?”

“Yeah, work. ‘Cause, see, where we’re going, we’re gonna need a weatherman, and I want to hire the best there is. I’ll tell you right out, the weather ain’t as interesting Klamath’s, but we’re figuring to set satellites, warm the place up. Going to need some studies done, and …”

Did he want work? he asked himself, and almost laughed. His fingers itched for a portable, so that he could begin making notes. And yet—He lifted his head, watching his delm speaking with Korval.

“Your choice, Weatherman,” she murmured, and he did laugh, then, loudly enough that Lysta turned to stare. “And look, I mean we can get you going today, if you want. But really, just say no if you don’t think it’d be a fit. You’ll have to work with some pretty strange folks, like us, and some mercs, and some Scouts, too.”

He raised a hand a moment, and held the key she’d brought back to him to eye level.

“I think, I need to know something first. How is it that your name was never on the station rescue list?”

“Well,” she said in Terran, “I got rid of that gun that was holding us down and then … I took some damage. When they brought me up, they didn’t bring me in station. While the crews were getting Jack and the Scout out of the brig they just took me right to the Scout’s doc. I really did mean to bring that thing right back to you!”

He sighed and it turned into a slow smile and a gentle laugh. “Scouts, mercs, strange people, Redhead and her partner. And odd weather …”

Redhead bit her lip as he paused, vaguely hearing something his delm was saying to Korval about how Solcintra’s theater could be improved if new plays were sometimes brought to stage …

“Yes,” he said, and bowed to her. “Indeed, I would very much like to have work. And very much, I expect it will be a fit.”

Christmas Eve at Harvey Wallbanger’s: A Harry the Book Story

Written by Mike Resnick

Illustrated by Laura Givens

So we are sitting around Joey Chicago’s 3-Star Tavern, with the wind howling outside the front door and sounding just like Velvet Voice Vinnie singing off-key. I am nursing an Old Washensox, minding my own business, which of course is dependent on whether Aqueduct comes up muddy on Christmas Day. Gently Gently Dawkins has been studying the crossword puzzle in the newspaper for the past twenty minutes, trying to come up with a four-letter word for “stupid,” when Benny Fifth Street suddenly remembers what night it is.

“Hey, Joey!” says Benny. “Did you ever patch that hole in your roof?”

“It ain’t snowing on you, is it?” shoots back Joey Chicago from behind the bar.

“That’s good,” says Gently Gently, looking up from his puzzle. “I wouldn’t want no reindeer falling on top of me.”

“Right,” agrees Benny. “Then it’d be ‘Off, Dancer! Off Prancer! Off all you other horned nags!’ instead of ‘On, Dancer! and so forth.’”

“Are you sure there was a Prancer?” asks Gently Gently.

“Absolutely,” says Benny. “There’s got to be, if it’s going to rhyme with Dancer.”

“That is all very well and good,” says Gently Gently, “but I don’t remember nothing rhyming with Cupid or Rocket.”

“There ain’t no Rocket,” says Benny.

“Sure there is,” says Gently Gently. “There’s Dancer, Prancer, Donner, Vixen, Cupid, Cupcake, Dandy and Rocket.”

“I got a double sawbuck that says some of them are not in the sleigh-pulling business, and that I can name more of Santa’s reindeer than you can,” says Benny.

Gently Gently slaps twenty dollars on the bar. “Okay, wise guy,” he says. “You’re faded.”

Benny frowns, trying to remember his childhood, when he probably knew the names of the reindeer as well as I know the morning line at Santa Anita. Finally he clears his throat and says: “Dancer, Prancer, Donner, Vixen, Buster, Blitzen, Gemini and Comet.”

“I don’t remember no Blitzen,” says Gently Gently.

“Of course not,” says Benny. “That’s why you are losing the bet.”

Gently Gently turns to me. “Boss, who’s right?”

“Neither of you,” I tell him.

“Put in your twenty bucks and take your best shot,” says Benny, who is getting more than a little warm under the collar.

“I do not make bets,” I said. “That is for suckers. I book bets, which in case it has slipped your mind is how I pay your salaries. But I will name the reindeer anyway: Groucho, Harpo, Chico, Gummo, Zeppo, Curly, Moe and Larry.”

“You’re all wrong,” says Joey Chicago. “You’re forgetting Rudolph—though I cannot imagine his nose gets much redder than Gently Gently’s after he has downed a couple of Old Peculiars and a chaser.” He grabs the forty bucks and sticks it in his pocket. “Anyway, I guess that makes me the winner.”

Benny holds out an empty glass. “If you’re going to keep the money, I should at least get a free refill.”

“Check the walls,” says Joey. “Do you see any signs posted to the effect that this is a charitable institution?”

“Where is your Christmas spirit?” demands Benny.

“I left it in my other suit,” says Joey.

Just then, before they can come to blows, or more likely curses, Dead End Dugan walks through the door. I don’t mean through the doorway; I mean through the door. We have to make allowances for Dugan, who is a little more powerful and a lot less noticing since he became a zombie.

“I been looking all over for you, Harry,” he says.

“That is probably why you haven’t found me until now,” I reply.

“Bet-A-Million McNabb owes you a lot of money, doesn’t he?” says Dugan, and I notice that Benny and Joey have backed away, because when you’ve been dead and occasionally buried for the past five years you just naturally are not about to put any perfume companies out of business, or even any cologne companies for that matter. Gently Gently, who is rarely operating on more than two or three of the eight cylinders God gave him, keeps sniffing his drink, trying to figure out where the smell is coming from.

“Yes,” I say. “He drops ten large betting on Horrendous Howard to knock Kid Testosterone out by the fifth round.” I shake my head sadly. “Horrendous Howard might pull it off, too, if he doesn’t trip and fall on his head going back to his corner after the first round. Last I hear, he still thinks he is King Arthur and he will not eat off any table that has corners on it.”

“This is all no doubt very interesting,” said Dugan, who as far as I can tell has not recently been interested in much besides visiting Madame Bonne Ami’s House of Exotic Comforts for the Recently Departed, “but you should know that even as we speak he is playing five-card stud with Loose Lips Louie.”

I do not need to hear what Dead End Dugan will tell me next, because like almost everyone else except maybe Bet-A-Million McNabb, I know that Loose Lips Louie acquires his name by beating every member of a battleship’s crew out of their savings in a single night, and his specialty is five-card stud, which indeed he has used to sink more than one ship’s crew.

“In fact,” Dugan is saying, “he is taking such a bath that about twenty minutes ago he has to change his name to Bet-A-Thousand McNabb.”

“I have to get to him and collect my ten thousand dollars before he loses it all to Loose Lips Louie,” I say. “Where is this game going on?”

“At Harvey Wallbanger’s Social and Sporting Club for Gentlemen of Quality,” says Dugan.

“Isn’t that where Morris the Mage hangs out?” says Benny.

I frown. “Come to think of it, yes, that has become his home away from home.”

“Do you suppose he is helping Louie to win?” continues Benny.

“I don’t know, but we might as well play it safe and take our own protection along.”

“Where is he?” asks Benny.

“In the men’s room, where he always is,” says Joey Chicago. “He doesn’t like to be disturbed.”

“He will have to live with it,” I say, heading off to the men’s room, where I find Big-Hearted Milton seated on the floor as usual, surrounded by five black candles and reading a book.

“Why are you bothering me when I am studying the ancient grimoires?” he says, slipping the book into a suit pocket.

“Come on, Milton,” I say. “I see the title before you can hide it, and it is Meter Maids in Bondage.”

“Some grimoires are less ancient than others,” he says defensively.

“Get up,” I say. “We have work to do.”

“Obviously someone has welched on a bet,” says Milton as we emerge from the men’s room and rejoin the others. “Who was it?”

“Bet-a-Million McNabb,” I answer.

“Bet-a-Million McNabb always makes good his losses,” Milton assures me.

“Even as we speak, he is playing five-card stud with Loose Lips Louie over at Harvey Wallbanger’s establishment,” I tell him.

“A taxi will not do,” says Milton suddenly. “We need a nonstop jet plane.”

“It is only three blocks,” I point out.

“Do you know how much he can lose to Loose Lips Louie in three blocks’ time?” says Milton. Then he adds: “Has Louie got a protector in his corner?”

“I do not know for sure,” I answer, “but if so, there is every likelihood that it is Morris the Mage.”

“That twerp?” laughs Milton. “Why, he couldn’t put a spell on his own mother!”

“I would not be too sure of that,” says Joey Chicago. “The last I hear of her, she is in a cage on the moon.”

“Maybe McNabb put the money aside,” suggests Benny hopefully. “No one will ever bet with him again if word gets out that he won’t make good his marker and pay his bookie.”

“How much do you think he will have left to bet after Loose Lips Louie gets done with him?” I shoot back. “Come on! We are going to Harvey Wallbanger’s!”

“And a Merry Christmas to you, too,” mutters Joey Chicago as the five of us walk out through the space where the door used to be.

* * *

Harvey Wallbanger’s Social and Sporting Club for Gentlemen of Quality manages to put three lies in a single title, because it is not a social club unless you are of a mind to pay fifty dollars or more for a very short term date, it is not a sporting club because all of the games are rigged and the drinks are watered, and the only gentlemen of quality are those who give the place a wide berth.

We walk in the door, and suddenly I think maybe the place is on fire, because there is so much cigar smoke that I can barely see my hand in front of my face, and finally I realize that it is not my hand but that it belongs to something that is sort of green and kind of scaly but is mostly big, and when the smoke clears a little I realize that it is attached to Gregory the Gorgon, who is the muscle that protects Harvey Wallbanger’s establishment from unwanted intruders, which is to say from those who can spot a crooked deck or a rigged roulette wheel.

“Hold it right there,” says Gregory. He points to Dead End Dugan. “No zombies allowed.”

“Why not?” I ask.

“What if I have to chastise him?” says Gregory. “What can one do to a malingerer who is already dead?”

I turn to Dugan and tell him to wait outside.

“Can I just stand here in the doorway?” asks Dugan. “The smoke keeps the flies away.”

“This is not in the playbook,” says Gregory. “I shall have to get a ruling from the Supreme Authority,” which could be Harvey or God, but by the strictest interpretation of the term is probably Mrs. Wallbanger. “You may stand here until I return.”

“Thank you,” says Dugan.

“Just don’t start doing a bunch of dead things until I get back,” says Gregory as he shuffles off, and I can tell by Dugan’s puzzled expression that for the life of him—or maybe it is for the death of him—he cannot think of any dead things to do, other than standing there without breathing.

“Come along,” I say to Milton and Benny and Gently Gently. “We must collect from Bet-a-Million McNabb while he still has something to collect.”

We begin walking through the many rooms of the establishment, each of which features a contest that under other circumstances might be called a game of chance. There are a number of lovely young ladies selling drinks and cigarettes and occasionally themselves, and what they lack in clothing they more than make up for in personality.

I hear a bunch of jolly laughing up ahead, and who should I run into but Nick the Saint, who is decked out in his Christmas best.

“Hi, Harry,” he says. “Merry Christmas, ho ho ho.”

“Hello, Nick,” I reply. “Are you not supposed to be making your rounds this evening?”

“Yes,” he says. “This is my night, ho ho ho. I just thought I’d stop off for a drink first, and see if there were any elves to recruit.”

“I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings,” I say, “but the young lady you are resting your hand upon is probably not an elf.”

“You never know,” says Nick. “But just the same, I trust news of this will not make its way up North?”

“My lips are sealed,” I say.

“Mine, too,” adds Big-Hearted Milton.

“I owe you one, Harry, ” he says, and then adds “Ho ho ho.”

“If you are planning on staying here for another fifteen minutes, you can square your account with me,” I say, and then I tell him how, and he agrees, and I can see he plans to spend at least fourteen of those fifteen minutes exploring every possibility that the young lady next to him is an elf in disguise.

I leave him explaining exactly the kind of Christmas present he plans to give her once his sleigh ride is over, and finally we come to a small room, and there is Bet-a-Million McNabb sitting across a table from Loose Lips Louie, and behind Louie is Impervious Irving, who calls himself Louie’s financial advisor, and in truth I suppose putting people who want Louie’s money into the hospital does Louie’s finances more good than even twenty motivated stockbrokers.

“Gentlemen,” says Impervious Irving by way of greeting, “I do not wish to be anti-social, but you are intruding in a private room and more to the point are interrupting a private game.”

“We shall tarry no longer than is necessary,” I say, “but I have a prior claim on ten large from Bet-a-Million McNabb.”

“I am desolate to hear this,” says Loose Lips Louie, who appears to be anything but desolate, “but he became Bet-a-Hundred McNabb about five minutes ago.”

“I am having a terrible run of luck, Harry,” says McNabb, “but it is due to change any minute.”

“In this place?” says Benny. “It’ll change about as soon as Impervious Irving changes his socks, which means seven years of bad luck will seem like a blessing by comparison.”

“Boss, do I have to stand here and take this?” demands Impervious Irving.

“I believe I can solve your problem,” says Big-Hearted Milton. He makes a sign in the air and mutters something that has a lot of syllables and almost no vowels, and suddenly there is a poof! and Impervious Irving is somewhere else, though where I do not know for another minute. Then Loose Lips Louie yells for Morris the Mage, who comes in from the next room, still holding his poker hand.

“Morris,” says Louie, “this goniff has vanished Impervious Irving. Bring him back!”

Morris closes his eyes and starts chanting what sounds like a song they cut out of a show that folded on its pre-Broadway tour, and then he snaps his fingers and says “Abra cadaver” and suddenly Impervious Irving is back in his accustomed position just to the right of Louie’s chair.

Irving glares at Milton and says, “If you are going to vanish me to a bathroom again, next time make it one that’s got a magazine to read.”

“I’ve hexed it so he can’t transport you again,” says Morris. He turns to Milton. “You can still make him disappear, of course, but do you really want to be in the same room with an outraged but invisible Irving?”

Milton waves his hands wildly. “Begone!” he says.

“I was just leaving anyway,” says Morris, and vanishes.

I notice that Milton is wearing a great big grin on his face, and I ask him why.

“When Morris comes in here he is holding a full house, jacks over sevens,” says Milton. “But when he leaves he is holding a pair of fours and nothing else.”

“Let us get back down to business,” I say. “Bet-a-Hundred McNabb owes me ten thousand dollars.”

“I don’t deny it,” says McNabb. “But even more than I don’t deny it, I don’t have it. It all resides within Loose Lips Louie’s vest pocket, unless some of it has fallen onto the floor.”

“This is the truth,” confirms Louie. “I am afraid you are too late, Harry.”

“I have a prior claim on the money that is in your pocket,” I say.

“Then file your claim with Bet-a-Hundred McNabb,” says Louie.

“I do not slake my thirst from empty glasses,” I say, which I think is a brilliant rejoinder, but I can see that neither Louie nor Irving understand it, so I point out that I could get more blood from a turnip than money from McNabb.

“What the hell,” says Louie. “This being Christmas Eve, I will give you a chance to win your money back from me.”

“I never bet,” I say. “Betting is for suckers.”

”Losing is for suckers,” says Louie. He flashes some of the money he has rescued from McNabb’s clutches. “Winning is for”—he searches for the bon motte—”winners.”

I stare at McNabb, who still doesn’t know he is a sheep, let alone that he has been fleeced. “All right,” I say at last. “What did you have in mind?”

“How about a nice friendly game of five-card stud?” suggests Louie.

“I have lost my trust in this establishment,” I answer.

“Oh?” he says. “When?”

“When we still lived in caves,” I say.

“What do you suggest then?”

“I am sure you will agree that we are the two most prodigious intellects in Harvey Wallbanger’s, if not on the face of the entire planet,” I begin.

“Yeah, that seems a reasonable premise,” says Louie.

“What if we engage in a mental contest instead of a game of chance?” I say.

“I lost a toe in the war,” he says, “so if it’s a mathematical question, the answer can’t be any higher than nineteen.”

“No, you only have to count to eight for this one,” I reply.

“I don’t want you to think I distrust you, Harry,” says Louie. “But I distrust you, Harry. First you tell me what the contest is all about, and then I’ll tell you if we have a bet.”

I stare at him and say, “I will bet you twenty large—the ten you took from McNabb, and ten more for my trouble—that I can name more of Nick the Saint’s reindeer than you can.”

“Don’t do that, Boss!” says Gently Gently. “You tried it at Joey Chicago’s and got it wrong.”

“We learn from our mistakes,” I tell him.

“Not always,” says Gently Gently. “After all, I’m still going out with Sylvia.”

“Well, it works in principle,” I say.

“I just read the poem about Nick and his reindeer to my nephew,” says Louie. “So if you get ‘em all right and I get ‘em all right, all we’ve done is waste a bunch of time.”

I am waiting for Big-Hearted Milton to catch on, and finally he does, and just like Sandy Koufax or Roger Clemens he hurls his high hard one into Impervious Irving’s brain, where it has a lot of breathing room, and Irving says, “I got an idea, Boss.”

“I hope it’s a small one,” says Louie. “You got to take it easy with a new discipline.”

“You gonna listen or not?” asks Irving.

Louie looks up at Impervious Irving, who is maybe eight feet tall and almost as wide, and he says, “I am always happy to hear your thoughts on any matter, if for no other reason than that they constitute a considerable rarity. Now, what is your idea?”

“Make him agree that you win on ties,” says Irving. “If you each get three right, or six, or all eight, you win.”

“It is a wonderful idea, especially for a beginner,” says Louie, “but Harry is a sophisticated man of the world. He will never go for it.”

“It is late and I want my money,” I say. “I accept your conditions.”

It is a shame that Louie is not born a hundred and fifty years ago in Tombstone, because Doc Holliday and Johnny Ringo never reach for their guns half as fast as he reaches for my hand to shake it and cement the conditions.

“You all saw that we shook on it,” he says. “Now, since I am a generous and genial host and this is my private room, I will allow Harry the Book to go first.”

“Okay,” I say, clearing my throat. “Here goes. Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Donder, Blitzen, Cupid and Flyaway.”

Loose Lips Louie emits a delighted laugh. “I don’t even need to invoke Irving’s rule. The reindeer are Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Donder, Blitzen, Cupid and Comet.”

“Nosir,” I say. “They are Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Donder, Blitzen, Cupid and Flyaway.”

“You are wrong, Harry,” says Louie. “There is no reindeer called Flyaway.”

“There most certainly is,” I say, “and you owe me twenty large.”

I wait for Milton to hurl a second idea to Impervious Irving.

“Boss,” says Irving, “Nick the Saint’s in the next room. Why don’t we just pull him in here and ask him?”

“I’ll get him,” says Benny.

“I do not trust any of Harry’s toadies anywhere near him,” says Louie. “Irving, go get him and bring him back.”

“I am not a toady,” says Benny heatedly as Irving leaves the room.

“Oh?” says Louie. “And what are you, then?”

“I am one of Harry’s flunkies,” replies Benny with a note of pride.

Irving is back a minute later. He has Nick the Saint in tow, and Nick has his young lady in tow.

“What can I do for you gents, ho ho ho?” asks Nick.

“We need you to settle a disagreement,” answers Louie.

“Okay, but it’s got to be quick,” says Nick. “I’m already late getting started on my rounds.”

“It won’t take long,” says Louie. “What are the names of your reindeer?”

“Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Donder, Blitzen, Cupid and Flyaway,” says Nick. “I thought everyone knew that.”

“Morris!” screams Louie, and Morris the Mage appears a few seconds later. “Morris, he says one of his reindeer is named Flyaway. Is he lying?”

Morris stares at Nick for a minute, mutters a spell, snaps his fingers, and nibbles a breath mint.

“He’s telling the truth,” says Morris.

“Well, if that’s all,” says Nick, “Elmer here and I have to be going.”

“Elmer?” says Gently Gently, kind of blinking and staring at the girl.

Nick nods. “She’s my newest elf,” he says. “And this way if I happen to drop her name in front of you-know-who, there won’t be one of her usual scenes. Well, Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.”

He and Elmer leave, Morris vanishes, and Loose Lips Louie glares at me.

“I don’t know how you did it, Harry, but I’m going to find out.”

“I wish you as much luck as you wish McNabb,” I say. “And now, my twenty large, please?”

He mutters such a complex curse that Morris pops into existence and Milton vanishes for a moment, and finally he shoves the money across the table to me.

“So am I off the hook, Harry?” asks McNabb.

“At least until you’re Bet-a-Thousand McNabb,” I say. “Come on back to Joey Chicago’s with us. I’m buying.”

McNabb joins us as we walk to the exit, which was the entrance on the way in, and we pick up Dead End Dugan, who still has a puzzled expression on his face, and I know he has not yet thought of any dead things to do, and a few minutes later we’re all standing at the bar at Joey Chicago’s, sharing a bottle of Comrade Terrorist vodka, and Big-Hearted Milton explains to everyone in the place how I do a favor for Nick the Saint and in exchange he changes Comet’s name to Flyaway, and everyone seems to be having a good time, until I hear Benny Fifth Street start yelling and a minute later Gently Gently Dawkins is yelling back.

“What’s the problem?” I ask, when they finally pause for breath.

“We are having an argument about the Seven Dwarfs,” says Gently Gently. “Benny says they are Bashful, Sleepy, Sneezy, Dumbo, Doc, Grumpy, and Marvin, and I say …”

I find myself wondering if Nick has room for one more oversized elf on his sleigh.

Fossilized Gods

Written by J. Simon

Illustrated by Chantelle Thorne

Henry Goss smiled coldly. His father thought he lacked ambition. The old fool, wallowing in his wealth, as if money were the only power. There were far vaster worlds than boardrooms and banks to hold under one’s dominion. People, too, could be owned. Like Professor Harrington, the world’s foremost expert on fossilized gods, who had no idea what power lay under his fingertips. That prissy graduate assistant, Walter something, from whom he’d copied most of his work. Even the professor’s daughter. She’d been cold so far, but power could change a great many things—voluntarily or not. Henry Goss did not lack for ambition. He simply aimed for a total solution.

The Royal Museum was deserted at this hour, as it always was. Henry’s key (stolen from prissy Walter) got him through every door. The back rooms were jammed to the rafters with old gods, or what was left of them. An African mask captured Henry’s gaze and held it, filling him with an unreasoning rush of awe and dread. Oh yes, there was power here! He hurried down the aisle, struggling to ignore the magnetic pull of ancient idols, massive stone figures, painted icons. Mounted animals seemed to watch him with their dead eyes. Even the great brass bottles, forever bound by Solomon’s seal, radiated an eerie sense of presence. Far in the back he found it—an unnaturally cold obelisk of black stone, carved with the merest suggestion of tentacles and eyes. All he’d needed was a note forged in the professor’s handwriting to have Walter locate it for him: An elder god, a force of raw fear and wonderment from the dawn of humanity, yet one empowered and nearly awakened by the famed author and his following. That was quite good enough for Henry Goss.

Henry didn’t bother with black candles or inane ritual. He made a small cut in his wrist, allowed a few drops to fall, then closed off the bleeding with a handkerchief.

“There’s more where that came from,” he said. “But make no mistake—you exist at my sufferance. You want worship? You can have it—on my terms and under my control. I can be very generous with those who understand their … place …”

Henry’s pocket felt heavy and wet. In fact, it seemed to have gotten filled up with a faintly greenish jelly. Stepping back, he felt his shoes squish with a similar clammy wetness.

“Listen up,” he said sharply, “you don’t seem to understand your position here. Cross me and I’ll personally wipe your name from every book that hack’s ever written. If you … guh …”

Henry gagged as more of the greenish jelly oozed out of his mouth. Choking, he grabbed for the obelisk—and stared, despite himself, as a little worm of a tendril emerged from the cut on his wrist and waved around.

The obelisk cracked with a sound like thunder. Something was emerging. Something was very much coming back into the world. Henry tried to run, but by then there wasn’t much left to run with.

* * *

Professor Harrington dressed immaculately, expected total obedience, and ruled his students with the terror they deserved. Take that fellow, Walter something, who thought he knew so much. Five attempts to publish papers! He’d put a stop to that. Professor Harrington wasn’t sure which were worse, the papers that disagreed with him and were therefore wrong, or the ones that agreed with him and were therefore stolen from his own work. He preferred his students frightened and a little obsequious. Take Henry Goss—handsome, intelligent, well-spoken. Now there was a fellow who understood fossilized gods, who agreed with all the professor’s many ideas! What a shame Samantha hadn’t taken to him yet. Well, in time …

The cafe didn’t do much business in the early afternoon, which was fine with Professor Harrington. A cup of coffee, a bit of quiet, notes for his next monograph on chronodeific encephalization. Actually writing tests … administering them … grading them … he left to Walter. Let the lad be useful for something. Professor Harrington sipped his coffee. A bit odd that it was so dark out all of a sudden. Where had all those storm clouds come from, anyway? For that matter, why was a gigantic, well-dressed slug oozing away from the Royal Museum on a trail of greenish jelly? And why did it remind him of Henry Goss?

“Professor!” someone shouted. At that moment, a mighty flash of lightning struck, momentarily illuminating the clouds. There was something in them. Something huge. Alien. Beyond description, though it gave the flash impression of a daisy chain of monstrous squid.

“Professor!” came the cry—Walter, of course, come to invade even this sanctum of caffeinated peace. “Someone let out a re-energized Ur-deity exapted to a horror/destruction/grotesquerie axis by means of literary pseudo-worship!”

Professor Harrington blew air out his cheeks. “Always grandstanding, aren’t you, boy?”

“But sir!”

The professor fixed the lad with a gimlet stare. “I’ve seen the like plenty of times. It’s no more than some bored housewife’s bad dream, possibly aided by special mushrooms and obsessive re-reading of Revelation. An altered-consciousness reflexiplexor quasi-power. Stop believing in it and it’ll stop believing in you.”

“But sir!” Walter insisted. Professor Harrington sighed. The boy wanted so badly to be important, but he just didn’t have a sense of perspective. Chasing after South American kachina-spirits, trying to bottle them in dolls before the coyotes could mass to attack, that was a challenge. Baiting an angry hippo so you could collect the Golden Tic-Bird of Naraiba riding in its mouth, that was science. Carefully arranging ropes to let three hundred natives simultaneously open Chirontep’s tomb and dilute the death-curse to a mere three-hundredth strength head cold, that was intellect. Still, if the boy was going to go around believing in some pathetic, paper-thin deity, it might just gain substance.

“Fine,” the professor said. “I’ll gather a couple dozen frat boys into the stadium and get them to unbelieve the new god out of existence. A free keg of beer ought to do it.”

“But sir!”

“That will be all, Walter.” Paying for his coffee, Professor Harrington shook his head and headed toward Frat Row.

* * *

Walter Hittenmiller knew that what he lacked in looks, physique, and breeding were more than made up for by a total lack of charm. He was invisible. Exploited, perhaps, but also free to pursue his own interests with practically no outside interference. He took the threat of the elder gods seriously. Not the gods themselves: The idiot authors who had to romanticize eldritch forces of inexplicable horror and creeping madness and thereby both shaped them and gave them power. This had been coming for a long time.

Too bad he still didn’t have any idea what to do about it.

Walter dashed back to the museum, almost falling on an inexplicable trail of jelly. He spent half an hour making calls, leaving messages for anyone who might be even vaguely helpful. That done, he hurried back downstairs. Fighting the god seemed impossible, at least directly: Perhaps he’d find inspiration among the collections.

Leering idols mocked him, but told no secrets. Shimmering blobs of coalesced metaphysics just sat there, waiting for someone to believe in them. Petrified saints proudly displayed their agonies, but none rose to bless him. Struggling to keep calm, Walter decided on a more systematic search, working his way up through the ages. Stone age, bronze age, Sumerian, Egyptian …

Samantha Harrington was hanging around the Egyptian collections, as she so often did, her green eyes dancing with amusement above a catty smile. Walter despaired, as he always did, of getting the professor’s daughter to notice him—all the more so because that smile aroused a pesky flutter of hope in his breast. “No” is absolute. It’s “maybe” that keeps hurting.

“Hullo, Wally,” she purred.

“Hi, Sammy. You got any way to kill off a real bitch of an elder god?”

“You should call Zelazny. He’s tops on man-god relations.”

“Can’t. Merged with a raksha and soared off on a tour of the universe.”

“What about his exorcism manual? A Night In The Lonesome October?”

“No good. Entry’s already occurred. We’ve got an elder deity, partially re-shaped by modern literary worship …” Walter snapped his fingers. “Hold it! Re-shaped. Maybe that’s the key!”

Samantha uncoiled from the sarcophagus she’d been perched on, slinking over to him. “It’s a little late to start writing books about the elder gods of happy giggling flower kittens.”

“Ew,” Walter said. “No, it’s like this: Necro has been resurrecting those arrogant Greek guys to give talks for years. What if we resurrected one of this god’s original worshippers? Maybe old Squid-Bag would throw off the modern taint and go back to being a basic earth-force!”

“That’s pretty flimsy,” Samantha objected. “Primacy doesn’t imply potency where a large and temporally entrenched readership is concerned.”

He gave her an odd glance. “Well, it’s better than doing nothing. And I think I know just a little more about gods than you, hm?”

“You think?” she asked, batting her eyelashes.

“Anyway, I’d better get going. I have to rouse someone in Necro, then ask Archeo for bones of the proper region and antiquity. Stay here! It’s too risky to go outside!”

He ran for the door. It looked bad outside—black sky with a greenish-yellow tint—but he didn’t have much choice. He didn’t even notice Samantha’s green eyes, slitted like a cat’s, tracking him as he ran out the door.

* * *

Samanthahotep curled up atop the sarcophagus and started to purr. Playing with mortal minds was so easy. Enchanting the Professor to think he had a daughter was just good business, since she remained tied to her mortal remains and therefore the museum. Henry Goss she’d considered gutting for tennis rackets until he solved the matter for her. But Walter … Walter made her smile. Someday, perhaps, she’d let him see her true form. Then again, maybe not. He wasn’t really high-priest material, and he spent enough time staring at her bosom as it was. Hard to tell what he’d make of a nude woman with a cat’s head. Well, she could afford to be patient. She had until the end of time to gather a handful of believers and restore what little glory she’d once had as an Egyptian princess of minor and brief divinity.

Still … what would be so bad about having just one odd little high priest, if his worship was given with a sweet and joyous heart?

“Miss Harrington?”

The voice belonged to a gigantic, rough-necked, one-eyed man with a staggering array of knives, daggers, guns, and mystic wands slung on his person. Samanthahotep sprang from her perch and bounded up to him, genuinely delighted.

“Iggy!”

“That’s Lord Eagleton to you, missy,” he said warmly. “I got a call from this kid, says there’s a god fixin’ to cause some trouble—not that I wouldn’t’a noticed the sky soon enough myself. I wasn’t your father’s chief safari guide all those years for nothin’. I figger I can take ‘er out—if I’ve got the right ammunition. You got any saint’s bones? Big ones?”

“And how!”

“Mm-hm. How’s about little gods, whole, about the size of bullets, say?”

“I think we can do you.”

She led Iggy along towering dark shelves packed with muted, dormant powers, collecting all manner of relics for him to shoot at the new god. After Walter, Iggy was the one mortal she took unalloyed pleasure in knowing. He’d fought a thousand malicious spirits and had a ripping good yarn to go with each of them—yet for every story he told, there were enough intriguing hints to make you hunger for two more. She was happy to help.

It wasn’t until Iggy lumbered out into the dark that Samanthahotep realized how nervous she was. Look what I’ve come to, she chided herself. A god—pacing the floor like a short-lived mortal? That’s not the way of the Eternal. Patience. Fleshly creatures come and go in the blink of an eye. To care is only to be hurt. Accept their worship in austere isolation.

Except that Wally and Iggy were both out there, now. She could lose everyone. Even her bombastic, grandiose, sometime-father didn’t deserve that.

“So it comes to this,” she sighed, and stalked off toward the Greek collection.

* * *

Something like a giant slug assaulted Eagleton as he left the museum, but it was well-dressed and seemed more intent on getting past him than causing trouble, so he let it go. Hurry, hurry, hurry, he reflected. On safari, you start when you start and get there when you get there. Leave it to civilized man to invent time cards and bus schedules.

The sky was blacker than zombie piss, rougher than that little Thai bitch with the diamond eyes and icepick fingernails. Eagleton smiled grimly. Not that he liked trouble, but he was only comfortable in one of two places—out in the field, or in the club telling stories. He had a great drafty house all to himself, trophies mounted on every wall, and he was miserable there. He found himself sitting. Drinking. Waiting. Waiting for the next safari. Waiting for the club to open. Waiting the next identical day to dawn so he could wait it out, too. But this, now …!

As Eagleton passed the stadium, he heard ragged, drunken singing, accompanied by howls of laughter.

“Ain’t no such thing as a squid god

Squishy squashy wishy washy squid god

Imagin-ary cali-mari

Fight for good old U., rah rah!”

As he watched, tendrils of purest black curled down out of the clouds. In a matter of moments, eighteen brightly clad young gentlemen were hoisted screaming into the sky, though the screams, to be fair, didn’t last long. Professor Harrington ran bellowing for the cathedral across the street, proving wonderfully spry for a man of his age, and made it with half a second to spare. The bones that came clattering back down from the heavens, Eagleton noted with a detached interest, were quite dry.

His house was just as he’d left it—a mess. He headed straight for the armory, which some people would have called the dining room. All four walls were racked floor to ceiling with rifles of varying designs, all of it watched over by the mounted head of a fair-sized black bird. He wasn’t sure it was THE Raven, but it talked to him occasionally, so he allowed it its place of honor.

“How’s about it?” he asked. “Think I can stop that bastard with the pope-gun?”

The bird’s glass eyes swiveled to look at him.

“You’re screwed, Iggy.”

“Thanks.”

Eagleton grabbed down one rifle after another, tested their heft, loaded them with the stuff Sammy had given him. This was going to be tough. But oh, what stories he’d tell if he won!

Ignoring the Raven’s impertinent wink, he slung a bundle of rifles over his shoulder and charged back into the fray.

* * *

Mhurban-Zchtbir regarded the little life-sparks it had dreamed into being. Turn them this way, and they made a noise like so. Turn them that way, and they went out (Ia! said the goat-horned Being of a thousand tongues, words wreathed in meteors and flame, Shayugar al nyarthoth! Ia!) Valleys of crystal chimed not with sound but with the color of sound, and it was well. Mountains of gold rang not with thunder, but with the implications of thunder, and this could not be permitted. Mhurban-Zchtbir dreamed of tiny trembling sparks whose dreams, in turn, were of it …

* * *

Henry Goss wasn’t feeling himself lately, but somewhere in the quaking remnants of his brain lurked some extremely nasty, piggish thoughts. A dented brass urn lay in front of him, the stopper undone and the seal of Solomon broken. A great muscular man with doglike ears and a ruddy complexion stood over him, sulfurous smoke rising from his body.

“Let me guess,” the djinn thundered, “restoration of form, absolute power, and enslavement of your enemies’ wives and daughters? Those are your three wishes? Right then. Let’s start with power. And since wealth is power, I’ll just make you rich. Say, the yearly salaries of ten thousand Roman soldiers.”

Something didn’t sound quite right about that, but his mind was too scattered to grasp it. Henry waved his eyestalks agreeably.

“Just two things you should know,” the djinn continued amiably. “Sammy’s my friend, and Roman soldiers were paid in salt. Enjoy.”

There was a silken rustle as of a huge drift of powder falling. Henry the slug looked up, but by then it was far too late.

* * *

Professor Harrington’s clothes were no longer immaculate, but his expression was no less austere as he huddled in the side door of the great cathedral.

“I was right all along,” he told Father Dworcas. “Those young idiots were having fun singing that song. Fun! If the god ceased to exist, they’d cease getting beer and have to stop singing. They wanted it to exist! They committed suicide! I suppose I should have come to you first, Renford, but I hadn’t realized how far the debasement of today’s youth had progressed. Though I suppose that Walter fellow should have been a clue. You should hear some of the things he’s been teaching my class …!”

“A rather large man with rather a large amount of guns just went by,” Father Dworcas said reasonably. “Perhaps it would be, hm, charitable to let him have a try at it first.”

“Don’t be a fool, Renford. The new god is harmless. It hardly even exists. As the world’s foremost authority, I can assure you we’d be at more risk of contracting leprosy from licking stamps. Ah, excluding stamps from Molokai.”

Father Dworcas nodded grimly. Donning a gilt-laced skullcap, he lifted a heavy wooden cross to his shoulder and shuffled into the street, eyes downcast. Professor Harrington followed at a safe distance. Father Dworcas began chanting:

“There is no god but God! God is all and ho-ly. There is no god but God! God the one and on-ly. Nothing else exists! Naught but fakes and tri-icks!”

A single black glob of writhing tentacles arced down from the sky and shwacked right into Father Dworcas’ vestments. His eyes focused on it for the briefest moment.

“These tangible gods are a bitch,” he said, just before the thing leaped at his face.

Professor Harrington stepped back. Where Father Dworcas had been was only a tangled mass of black tentacles which bore, instead of suckers, oddly seeing eyes. “Damn it, Renford!” he shouted. “Disbelieve it! Brush it off, man! It’s nothing!”

Other writhing globs began to rain from the sky, though they remained small and quiescent. Professor Harrington sighed.

“Why do I have to do everything … ?”

Rolling up his sleeves, giving his neck a businesslike twist, the Professor strode forward to teach this unwanted visitor a little something about divine retribution.

Walter puffed his way up the cobbled streets, leading a bewildered savage by a rope. It hadn’t occurred to him that the ancient bones might belong to a girl, but Archeo had thankfully been on hand with a vintage mastodon bikini that had been found in sediments of similar age. Actually inducing her to wear the fetid thing had stolen yet more precious minutes. Too bad she wasn’t actually going to be any use against the new god.

The young savage stared in open curiosity at the city, but seemed quite comfortable with the concept of a large metropolis. Her language, when she spoke, showed considerable sophistication. He’d asked Archeo for a proto-human ape-man, a worshipper of primal forces, and they’d screwed up.

By the time Walter rounded the corner of Broadbent Cathedral, the sky was raining weird squiggly black things. Halfway down the street was a larger cocoon of carnivorous godstuff, and next to it—

“PROFESSOR!” Walter shouted, dropping the girl’s rope. “PROFESSOR, DON’T!” He broke into a dead sprint, dodging the feebly waving blobs in the road.

Professor Harrington shot him a single look of contempt, drew himself up to his full height, and stuck both his hands into the seething mass. Like a flowing river of leeches, it poured up the professor’s body. In moments there was nothing left but a small, glistening pile of something vaguely like soap.

“Ulp,” Walter said, turning around. The road behind him was littered with thrashing horrors, and they didn’t look so feeble now. They were growing, getting bigger and faster and much, much nastier. Fangs and weird stinging spines were starting to sprout from various points of their anatomy, and every one of them was crawling toward him with the easy patience of a stalking predator. His few remaining avenues of escape closed off even as he watched. In all, Walter decided, he’d rather not even know what was scraping toward him from behind …

Samanthahotep hopped lithely down the museum steps, tail waving as she beckoned her team onward. Well, a team of one, anyway. Most of the dormant gods had ignored her attempts to rouse them, but rubbing an old helmet had produced a giant Norseman who seemed quite willing to follow her into battle. Samanthahotep smirked as she imagined the next day’s headlines. ‘GOD DESTROYED BY GODS!’ the papers would blare. ‘Super God Power Team saves universe! Face of Samanthahotep appears on burnt piece of toast!’

“Hee hee!” she snickered. This was going to be sooo easy. It was raining ____sat the moment, which she felt lacked class, so she decided to get it over with.

“All right, folks! Everything you’ve got! Attack!”

Grock, God of Thunder, flexed his immense arms and tossed back his long blond hair. Sparks flew between the horns on his helmet and a huge crack of thunder boomed down the street with no visible source.

Samanthahotep glanced at him. “Hey Grock, great stuff, but maybe you should try some lightning?”

The giant Norseman looked hurt. “Grock god of thunder!”

“Oh, for the love of …”

Just then, Iggy ran past, bellowing something incomprehensible. Samanthahotep gasped. There—just down the street—Walter was right in the middle of a converging horde of ____s!

“WALLY!” she screamed. She didn’t think, didn’t try. One moment she was just standing there, the next she was surrounded by an honor guard of blazing herons. “Oh boy,” she muttered. “After four thousand years, I finally get a Talent. I wonder what the hell it’s good for?”

The slithering ur-things lunged at Wally. There wasn’t any time, no time at all. Samanthahotep closed her eyes and sprang into a single endless leap, jumping straight into the heart of darkness.

Nothing touched her. Nothing stopped her. Eventually she landed.

“Hello,” said Wally’s voice, only a bit shaky. “I don’t meet a lot of flaming cat-headed women, so this may sound like a bit of a come-on, but … do I know you from somewhere?”

Samanthahotep opened her eyes. Just then, her newfound Talent deserted her. The blazing wall flickered out, the horrid black things resumed closing in, and their deathly chill told her they could hurt even her. Not kill, no, but to spend eternity trapped inside the frigid darkness of the evil one …

Wally stepped in front of her, as if he could shield her with mere flesh. Teeth bared, Samanthahotep searched for some way, any way out …

The pope-gun thundered, both oversize barrels firing saint’s bones with total authority into the thing above—but nothing happened. A slightly raised eyebrow was the only change in Anthony Eagleton’s expression. He tossed the pope-gun aside, drew the next rifle, and unloaded into the most vulnerable-seeming spot in the monstrosity above. Still nothing. Eagleton gave his head a good shake. When a hippo surprises you in the middle of the Thames, don’t feel compelled to fight it with a picnic basket—run like hell for a real gun! He wasn’t prepared for this thing, wasn’t ready to take it out. Retreat wasn’t cowardice—it was sanity.

Eagleton edged backward, a rifle cradled in each arm, watching for any encroaching horrors—and almost tripped over a brown girl in a fur bikini who was crouched fearfully on the periphery of hell. Hardly taking his eye off the raging god, he helped her up, aimed her down Lancashire Road, and gave her a swift swat on the rump.

“Go on!” he shouted when she failed to run. “Get out while you can. Go!”

A blaze of light flashed past him. There—right in the middle of the whole thing—a young man made his stand, and joining him was a catty little goddess who, for all her strangeness, looked somehow familiar. It was obvious that the odds were hopeless. They were as good as dead.

“Oh hell,” Eagleton muttered. “How did I always know it was going to end this way?”

And then he was charging directly into the mouth of hell, guns blazing, shouting wordlessly. Time slowed down. Fire and smoke and thunder cleared his path.

Eagleton halted in front of the other two, shedding a pair of spent rifles. He wheeled around just in time to see the way behind him surge shut. He had one rifle left. One gun—one shot.

“I can tell you where to shoot!” the young man cried. “I’ve spent my life studying these things! But can you hit it?”

Eagleton grinned. “Young feller-me-lad, trust me to know my business, aye?”

“Wait!” The cat-girl-goddess laid her slender fingers on his rifle. “I don’t have much power, but … oh!” she said, startled, as his whole rifle began to glow. “Oh my. Where’d that come from?”

“There!” the young man pointed. “Between the third and the fourth eye!”

Hell was falling, bringing the sky with it. Eagleton couldn’t stop laughing. What a story he’d have to tell. He brought up his rifle, checking his aim …

The sparks bit back! Mhurban-Zchtbir roiled …

It wasn’t the blackness of night—no—it was the blackness of the End Time, come to eat them all. Bhutir Salama threw herself at the cold stone street and prayed, to what she knew not. Not the earth-gods of her childhood, for the crops had failed and her family starved. Not the temple-gods of her youth, for the slavers had whipped her and whipped her until she died a young death despite all her prayers.

Bhutir didn’t know how she’d come back to life, only that the priests had treated her as impersonally as if she were a cold, dead thing. It was the funny-face man who, despite all his anxiety and hurry, had been warm and kind to her. It was the huge one-eyed man who had tried to save her instead of escaping himself. Now the two of them huddled under the falling sky, a little cat-headed goddess posed around them as if to hold off leviathan on her slender little arms. Suddenly, Bhutir knew to whom she must pray. She threw herself on the ground, arms flung forward. As the two men had given themselves for her, she gave herself to the goddess. Save them. Save the ones who found a way to be kind even in the most evil of times. Save them, Goddess, and I am yours forever.

“—there!” came the gabble of word-sounds she did not understand, “between the third and the fourth eye!”

There was a sudden light. There was a thundercrack that wasn’t a thundercrack. Bhutir cracked open an eye and snuck a peek.

Blackness. Utter horror. An utterly ab-natural perversion of all that is life and goodness. And around it, a rather nice frame of oiled cherrywood.

“That,” said Walter Hittenmiller, “is the ugliest trophy head I’ve ever seen in my entire life.”

“I know,” Eagleton grinned, “but it sure beats that ratty old Raven all to hell. Speaking of which, given that my wife worships your wife, I thought it would be politic to ask—Amazon expedition, this spring, photographing butterflies, orchids, and gods. You in?”

Walter smiled and touched the reliquary of powdered bone that hung around his neck. A cat’s snickering laugh echoed through his mind.

“Yeah,” he said. “We’re in.”

* * *

Second Banana

Written by Way Jeng

Illustrated by Nathan Carlisle

I have two rules. First, never get mixed up with a girl who wants you to call her a guy’s name. Second, always know what you’re getting yourself into. It figured that breaking the first would lead to breaking the second.

“Benny, we have a problem,” I said once I switched my monitor to the outboard cameras and zoomed in on the target.

“What’s the what?” Benny’s high-pitched voice came back. God, she’s annoying.

I looked over my shoulder and saw Benny humming and tapping away at the command console. Her long blond pigtails swayed side-to-side in time with her bobbing head. She looked as happy as ever, without a care in the world.

“The target …”

“Yup?”

I hesitated for a moment and searched for exactly the right words. “Benny, have you looked up the target’s registry?”

“File says it’s a Whiting-class cargo ship. You just get in, plant some explosives, sneak out, and Bob’s your uncle. Total cakewalk.”

“Are you sure about that? Did you check the registry?”

Benny didn’t say anything right away, but she raised a finger to her mouth and tried one of her more cute and bewildered looks. I attempted to rub my temples, but my helmet robbed the action of any soothing qualities.

“Benny, did you check the registry?”

“Well, no.”

I suppressed the urge to moan. One look at the ship told the whole story. Coming up on the broad side I could see it all. Two forward torpedo tubes, one aft. Six batteries of anti-fighter particle cannons. Two large-bore rail guns running along the hull. Take that and multiply by two for the other side. I’d seen photos, datasheets, and a lot of apocryphal nonsense that nobody believed but made for good talk over a beer. Except I stared at the proof on my viewscreen.

“Benny, switch to the forward camera view and tell me what you see.”

“No way! They don’t call it active stealth for nothing! I’ve gotta keep updating the interference matrix or they’ll—”

“Humor me and read what they wrote on the side. It’ll only take a second.”

A brief moment passed, then Benny said, “Huh. Would you look at that? G.S. Implacable.”

“It’s a Hekatonkheires-class destroyer!” I whipped around in my seat. “You knew, didn’t you? You knew all along! Don’t lie to me, Benny.”

Benny shrugged. The faux confusion melted away. “I could’ve asked for permission or forgiveness. This was the only way to get you to come.”

“It’s a warship!” I said. “A warship, do you hear me? A ship of war! You said this is a job from Assertive Solutions, a freighter sabotage job!”

“It is. Kinda. It carries cargo, doesn’t it? Guns and stuff?” Benny said in that sticky-sweet voice she has. “Okay, fine. You want to split hairs? It’s a sub-contract from the Azat Navy. But it’ll be fine. Contract says we just have to disable it. Take out the engines, bring down the power plant … Whatever we want, as long as it’s dead in space long enough for the Federal Army to land on some planet.”

“That’s not what we talked about.”

“Hey, a ship’s a ship. In for a dime, in for a dollar. Am I right?”

“Easy to say when you’re not the one who has to do the job.”

“Easy to do the job when you have legs that work.”

Benny stared back at me with the same cheerful expression as always. I couldn’t help but look at her legs. It was easy to forget her disability when we had hardly enough room in the boat to stand up, much less walk about. The fact that she kept her legs in tip-top shape via daily electro-stim treatments made it even easier to forget. All that made me feel even worse that I did forget every now and then.

The ship loomed large in my viewscreen, larger than any other ship I’d seen in years. Nightboats aren’t big vessels. Ours was barely big enough for two people, or three if they didn’t mind getting to know each other well. The Implacable could have swallowed our tiny boat dozens of times over without even trying. I watched it grow larger as we approached, and eventually it filled the entire screen.

“Do you want the money or not?” Benny asked. “We can definitely, certainly, no question about it, pay off our markers if we just did this one little job. I promise.”

No doubt Benny had already signed the contracts. No doubt she’d already collected the advance. No doubt she’d blame it all on me if anything went wrong.

“You’re always saying we should do our part in the war,” Benny said. “You know, there is one going on, if you forgot.”

As if I could ever forget the war.

“I am going to teach you a whole new meaning of pain when I get back,” I muttered as I turned around and sat down.

Benny set the boat to scan for viable entry points. “Looking forward to it, Chief,” she said.

“I’m not any kind of petty officer anymore,” I reminded her, not that it ever stopped her. It always reminded me of how much everything had changed since I left the Navy. At least it beat “Mr. Hyuen” and “Hey You.”

I checked our range to the gigantic ship before me and saw we’d make contact in a few minutes. Radiation emissions from the Implacable were still well inside normal parameters. Between that and the fact that they hadn’t reduced us to space dust, I felt pretty good about Benny’s ability to keep us hidden. She might be a thief, a swindler, and a pain in my neck, but her knack for electronic warfare never disappointed.

The boat automatically engaged my seat restraints and powered down the non-critical systems as we approached the Implacable. First the gravity disappeared, then my monitors went down, and finally the lights dimmed. I took the moment of down time to switch on my suit’s entanglement-com microphone.

The boat entered the Implacable‘s artificial gravity just before a sudden jerk and the buzz of the hullcutters announced that we’d reached the mission area. I stood up and patted my stealthsuit down one last time. Feeling the contour of each weapon, spare magazine, grenade, and piece of equipment helped me focus. Finally, I slung an Akagi particle sub-machinegun over my shoulder and declared myself good to go. A veritable eternity passed, then the boat chimed to signal it was done cutting an entry point. The hatch opened to reveal the Implacable‘s darker hull.

“Status on the hull sensors?” I checked the seam between the boat and the Implacable. The two appeared perfectly fused, almost as though the engineers had designed the ship with our parasitic invader in mind.

“Spoofed,” Benny answered. I glanced up at her seat, and she gave me a thumbs-up. “Perfect pressure integrity. Get shakin’, bacon.”

I nodded and attached a pair of fusion grips to the hull cutout. It’s the part I hate the most. The ship looks for an entry point with minimal heat and EM, but I never know what I’ll open up into. I took one grip in each hand, pulled, and set the slab of metal down at my feet as fast as I could without making a sound.

The hatch opened into darkness, but I whipped the SMG to my shoulder and scanned for the enemy regardless. I held my breath, listening for a voice, footfall, or clink of metal.

Nothing.

I flicked my helmet’s light amp filter on and once again readied my weapon, but I saw nothing except the dim outline of cargo slabs. I tossed my vest through the half-meter aperture before climbing in myself.

“Back in a bit,” I said. Strapping the vest back on came next. Then I stuffed the punched-out piece of hull back in the hole and surveyed my surroundings.

The cargo bay measured around ten meters tall and close to twenty meters on each side. Stacks of cargo slabs took up the vast majority of the floor space, though two-meter avenues cut between the piles at regular intervals. My HUD showed clean atmosphere, so I switched to outside air and took a deep breath. The dank, slightly stagnant smell of rarely used rooms and active seal indicators on the cargo slabs made me feel a little better. At least we probably wouldn’t get caught by some lucky fool tripping over us.

“Do we have a map?”

“Yup. Scored one from Vidao. Would I leave something that important to chance?”

“Vidao?” I asked. He was the logical choice, of course, but the idea of going even further into his debt made my stomach churn. “How much did it cost?”

“Where else was I supposed to get one? Did you want the map or not?”

I swallowed down the first three answers that came to mind and made my way to the blast door leading out of the cargo bay. “I’m at eight, three, six,” I read off the green stencil letters at the top of the door. “Where’s the engine room, and how do I get there?”

“Uh, okay. That’s deck eight, block three, frame six …”

“Come on, Benny. Pick it up.” I stared at the eldritch letters and wished I could read more Gwendish, but that was one of the languages I could never get the hang of at the Naval Defense Language Institute.

“Okay, okay, I got it. You go forward to frame two, up a deck, aft to frame nine, then …” Benny paused and sighed. “You’re not gonna like this. It’s like a maze down there.”

“That’s because it’s not a freighter,” I said. “The crew lives around the ship, not the other way around. But can you get me somewhere directly over the engine room?”

“Yes.” Cool, confident, and classic Benny.

“All right, then.” I extended my arm and held the com near the door’s locking mechanism.

A mass of hair-thin filaments extended out of the device and pierced the lock’s casing. I pressed the release once I heard the locking pins disengage and stepped through.

The connecting corridor outside the cargo bay extended in both directions. Conduits and pipes ran along the sides of the walls and practically plated the ceiling with tubes. Bulkheads broke up the smooth floor every few meters, but stepping over them had become second nature to me.

Let me make it clear right upfront that I hate sneaking through ships. Yeah, it’s important. Yeah, I spent years learning how to make my way across the grilles, up the stairs, and through the hatches without being seen or heard. I’m practically a ghost in a stealthsuit. But it’s nerve-wracking work, constantly looking around for the slightest sign of movement and straining your ears for the hint of life. It’s not so bad on a cargo ship, because they rely on the computers so much that a few guys can run the whole show. Warships, on the other hand, run a much higher crew density. I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn the Implacable boasted four or five crewmen per deck.

But a job’s a job, so I went through the whole miserable deal; I glanced around corners before moving, watched for the crew, held my weapon at the ready, followed Benny’s directions through the maze, the whole shebang. I went forward two frames, up two decks, aft four frames, down one deck, over to the next block …

“Coming up on a room,” Benny said. “Take a stroll through and turn a left coming out the other side. There’s a staircase you can take to deck eleven.”

I paused by the side of the hatch to the compartment Benny advised me to cross through. “What’s inside?” I asked.

“Laundry storage.”

I’m not much for taking shortcuts, but I didn’t mind one if it took me out of potentially inhabited corridors and put me in a room full of empty uniforms. I sidled up to the hatch, extended my arm, and watched as the door opened before the lock pick could do its thing.

The guy who came out wasn’t too tall, for a Gwendin, but even so I only came up to his shoulder. He had the bulbous eyes, the bald, vein-ridden skull, and everything. It’s hard to believe they were ever human, but you know what they say about aggressive gene-modding.

He screamed something in that awful gurgling the Gwendin pass off as a language. I screamed something along the lines of, “Benny, I’m gonna kill you.”

I stepped away from the wall and saw three more Gwendin sitting at a bench on the far side of the room with steaming trays of food lying on the table before them. Then I really felt the need to scream.

One of the other Gwendin ratings cried out. I fired my weapon, raking the Gwendin standing before me with deadly fire, but by the time he fell his crewmates had already triggered the alarm. The lights went from a soft white to red, and klaxons sounded all around me.

I took off faster than a hummingbird on go-juice and pitched myself over the railing of the first staircase I came to. I fell a few decks—a bit farther than it sounds because the Gwendin give themselves so much headroom—hit the ground, and rolled to my feet.

“What’s the panic?” Benny asked.

“It’s a mess hall!” I said. “Laundry my ass! It’s a frickin’ mess!”

I turned the first corner I came to. I had to lose myself, not go anywhere they might expect me, and definitely avoid going anywhere near the boat. A couple hatches blocked my way, and using the lock pick cost me precious seconds.

“Relax, Chief. You’ll be fine,” Benny said in her most soothing voice. It only scared me more.

I stopped at a T-intersection and paused to catch my breath. I couldn’t hear any signs of the Gwendin around me, but that didn’t mean a lot in the din of the klaxons. Writing on the floor and walls offered information about how to get to my destination, but I had no idea what they said or how to interpret them.

“Benny, the next time I ask you for directions, you’d better know where I’m going.”

“I misread the blueprints, okay? How many times do I have to say I’m sorry?”

“Once would be good enough for me. How do I get to the engine room from deck twelve, block two, frame four?”

“From where you are now, head port to block seven. At frame six you’ll find—”

The rhythmic clang of boots on metal interrupted Benny’s directions. I brought my SMG to bear on the sound and fired off a quick burst. Sparks flew off the wall and pipes. I dove for cover around one of the hatches just in time for a crewman to return fire. I peeked my head out and fired off a few more bursts, but I couldn’t tell how many Gwendin were onto me.

“I’ve got company,” I informed Benny. How did they arm themselves so fast? It didn’t matter. For all I knew they had hidden small arms lockers throughout the ship. They had enough places to hide them amongst the panels, displays, wire junctions, and conduit patches.

The crew and I played cat and mouse for almost a minute. First I’d peek my head out and hose off a few bursts, then they’d return the favor. We blew holes in a few of the pipes. A clear liquid shot out of one and some kind of viscous green goop oozed out of another, but a glance at my environmental hazard indicators showed it didn’t pose any danger other than making the battlefield more annoying.

Instincts honed over years of service in the Navy told me to stay on the move. My stealthsuit would keep the ship’s internal sensors from pinpointing my exact location, but the longer they knew where to find me the greater the chances that they’d overwhelm or trap me.

I turned the corner to lay myself enough cover to withdraw, and something punched me in the stomach.

Years of training had given me the reflexes to throw my body to the side and evaluate my condition. The pain subsided quickly. It went from a lancing pain to a burning ache within seconds. I looked down and saw a darkened patch of burnt flesh. Fortunately for me, my vest and suit took most of the blow. The shot hit me just underneath the ribs on my right side, ironically where I kept my medical kit. It had saved my life, if in an unorthodox manner.

“I’m hit, but not bad,” I announced.

“Oh my god! How’s the suit?”

I pushed my gun around the corner and squeezed off several blind bursts to buy time while I checked myself out. The wound looked fully cauterized, so at least I probably wouldn’t bleed out.

“I need out of here. Where—”

“Dex, we’ve got a problem,” Benny said. “You have to get back here.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’ve got real problems down here, Benny! Take a number and get in line.”

I leaned out, fired until I emptied the gun, and took cover to reload. An Akagi gets almost sixty shots to the magazine, but that capacity doesn’t mean as much as it sounds like. The pitter-patter of point explosions against the hatch continued with new vigor.

“No, I’m serious. You have to get to the boat—”

“That’s the last place I need to go.” I slapped a fresh magazine into the SMG and pulled a grenade off my vest. “Benny, I think I’m somewhere in …” I glanced up. The numbers swam before my eyes, a sure sign that I needed to take a breather before too long. I squinted until I could zero in on at least one of the numbers. “Block seven, frame eight. Can you get me to a dispensary?”

“Sure, Dex, but if you don’t get back here right now I’ll have to—”

“I don’t care! Just find those directions!”

I twisted the primer on the grenade and leaned around the hatch, my SMG in one hand and the grenade in the other.

BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! Chuck.

Pieces of debris and shrapnel flew past me a moment later. The sound of small arms fire halted. I took the chance to take off down the corridor and peeled off a few bursts behind me to discourage pursuit.

“Where am I going?” A few shots landed near me, but throwing another grenade made them think twice.

“Down!”

“Where?”

“Here!”

I pitched myself down another gap between staircases. I’d never been so glad the Gwendin built everything big in my life.

“Keep going. Two frames forward, then it’s the second door on your right,” Benny said.

I sprinted the rest of the way, taking quick hops over the hatches, and ducked inside the dispensary. I checked the room for any sign of the Gwendin, then engaged the door’s internal lock before finally allowing myself to take a deep breath.

“Okay,” I sighed, “I think I lost ‘em, but not for long. It won’t take them long to figure out my suit’s torn. We’ve got maybe one chance to—”

“Dex, you have to scrub the mission.”

I rummaged through several shelves of useless supplies before I found a trauma patch and wasted no time slapping it against the hole in my suit, incidentally sealing the gaping tear. The pain eased as the patch’s computer diagnosed the burn and administered a painkiller. I didn’t feel a hundred percent, but I called eighty-five good enough for my purposes.

“I’m not scrubbing anything. We need a way to disable this ship.”

“Never mind that! We’ve got a problem.”

“No kidding,” I said. “You want to write me up a list? The engine room’s a no-go. Look at schematics. I’ve got some demolition sticks and surge charges. Are there any systems I can overload to cause a cascade failure?”

“I don’t know,” Benny said in a quick, singsong voice. “The torpedo room and sickbay share some air vents, but you’d have to be a python to get there. Anyway, we’ve got bigger issues.”

“What bigger issues? You keep going on and on, but I don’t hear you—”

“The boat’s gone,” Benny said. “I’m sorry.”

It took a second for the words to register in my mind, for them to make sense. My first instinct was to laugh, to tell Benny to stop joking. But there was no mirth in her voice. I couldn’t hear the smirk on her lips.

“What do you mean, the boat is gone? Where did you go, Benny?” I asked. “What did you do with the boat?”

“I had to detach! They had crewmen coming for the boat. They came in the cargo bay and shot at me, and—”

“How?”

“I don’t know. Found the spoof? How am I supposed to know?”

For exactly one moment the entire world, everything that I could see, touch, smell, taste, or hear, turned red. I smelled red, touched red, and tasted the raw sensuality of crimson. I felt dizzy after the moment passed and had to take a deep breath before I could process my situation.

On a warship all alone. Surrounded by the enemy. Damaged stealthsuit. Wounded. No way home. No rescue team to come get me. Benny apologized.

“Roast me on a stick and sell me on Fleet Day! How am I supposed to get home, Benny? How am I supposed to get home?”

“Dex—”

“I don’t want to hear it!” I said. “This is not a game, do you hear me? You can’t leave me here stranded. Now come back and—”

“Come back and what?” Benny asked. “No way I can get close enough to dock again. They’re running full-spectrum scans. If I power up, they’ll find me for sure and blow the boat to smithereens! You gotta find your own ticket off.”

“Don’t try to pull that on me. You think you can trick me into a job like this, then leave me high and dry? Think, Benny. Stop trying to get me killed, because one of these days it’s gonna work. God, do you get your jollies watching me get in trouble?”

“I told you to come help me! I tried to tell you, and you wouldn’t listen. It’s all about you, isn’t it? I know I’m the second banana in this team, but I did my part. Who got you to a sickbay even though she was trying to disengage from the hull with bad guys coming for her? If you—”

I shut the com off. A sinking feeling in my gut told me I should apologize, or at least made sure I asked Benny how to get to the engine room before cutting her off. That left me with a pretty big cat to skin, and not even one way to do it. I didn’t want to abort the mission, but what options did I have? Getting myself off the ship in one piece without help would take enough luck that I didn’t want to push it by trying for more. I wanted to go home, no questions asked. If Benny wanted to finish out the contract, then she could do it herself. Her one suggestion about the air ducts was hopeless. I could have never fit through.

But staring at the air duct and listening to the whir of the fans gave me an idea. I started by looking around the room for anything that could help me. Most of the medical supplies were useless. I found bottles of distilled acid, a pressurized oxygen canister, some diagnostic reagent packs, and innumerable bottles of chemicals whose contents I couldn’t read.

Then I finally hit the jackpot in the form of three boxes full of particulate active carbon. Perfect for a wide variety of filters, but also serviceable for creative mayhem in the right hands. I tore them open and ripped the grille off the room’s ventilation duct so I could pour the dust inside. The flow of air inside the duct started the carbon flowing, but just in case that didn’t do the trick I pushed it along by stuffing the tube from the oxygen tank into the duct and twisting the release knob to full open. The final touch, a demolition stick with a four-minute timer, went in last. My improvised fuel-air explosive wouldn’t disable the ship, not by a long shot, but I didn’t care about finishing the mission. It was Benny’s gig, and if she wanted it done so bad then she could do it herself. I set my suit back to internal atmosphere, replaced the grille as best I could, and ran.

It wouldn’t take the crew long to realize that I’d done something to the air supply. I doubted they’d know exactly what, but the carbon dust would make them cough. For all I knew they’d think I laced the air with some kind of chemical agent, and then they’d get really mad.

I raced down the corridor to the outer hull and a ticket off the ship. I stopped when I reached the boundary between blocks seven and two just long enough to look back and make sure nobody had followed me that far. The coast looked clear, and my suit’s chronometer told me I had almost a minute left. I pulled the hatch closed behind me and kept running.

Two crewmen found me just after I exited the block, of course positioned between me and the outer hull. I knew I couldn’t stop, not even long enough to buy myself a tactical retreat. The block’s life support systems might blow out once my bomb blew, and the block would certainly become uninhabitable, but sooner or later the crew would figure out my fireworks had a lot more bark than bite.

The crewmen both raised pistols and fired a few shots at me. One came close enough that I could feel the heat of the particle column passing by my head through the suit, but I stood my ground. My weapon spat dozens of deadly packages. The grip became hot to the touch, even through my suit, but I continued firing.

My chronometer beeped to give me a ten-second warning, and I braced for the impact. The explosion that followed almost knocked me to my feet, but it gave me the chance to charge forward and close some distance in relative safety. I ran as fast as my legs would take me, praying the bomb distracted them enough to throw off their aim.

The noise from more point explosions battered my ears once I passed them, and I fired my weapon behind me as I ran. I didn’t bother to aim or even look back; I just sprayed and prayed. My legs were starting to turn into jelly by the time I hit the end of the corridor and found a life pod. I twisted the hatch open, expended the last of my ammunition behind me as I stepped through the opening, closed the hatch, and pulled the lever to eject from the ship.

* * *

I’m not sure how long I floated in that life pod. I didn’t care. For all I knew, the Implacable would find me within minutes and reduce me to my component atoms. It takes a lot more than disabling a distress beacon to hide oneself from a warship. I sprawled on the floor, waiting for the end, wishing I could have at least thought of some way to take Benny with me.

It took several minutes for me to realize that I hadn’t died. To be honest, the news came as a bit of a disappointment. A small lance of pain shot through my gut every time I breathed in, and I felt a little nauseous. Pretty soon men would come looking for me. The ones I owed money, plus the new friends whose contract I’d broken. In the past I could’ve counted on Benny to think of a Plan B. Now I didn’t even have that.

Bad. Worse. Worst. To be honest, hitting rock bottom didn’t feel as bad as I thought it would. It even felt a little good, and then the entanglement-com on my wrist vibrated.

Benny.

A fresh wave of nausea hit me as I switched her back on.

“Dex? Are you there? Still alive? Can you hear me, Chief?”

“Yes. Would you shut up already?”

“One of these days you gotta tell me how you did it. It looks like something cooked off the torpedo room. I can see some fires inside. How’d you get in there?”

I sat up against the life pod’s wall. “Torpedo room?” Realization dawned on me a moment later. I closed my eyes and laughed. “Benny, you wouldn’t believe me even if I tried to explain it.”

“Oh … Okay.” Benny’s sullen tone brought a smile to my face, but also a twist to my stomach.

“Have you collected our pay yet?” I asked before either feeling could get stronger.

“Yup. I just finished certifying the deposit.”

“And our markers?”

“Settled. We’re back in the black, Chief.”

In the black. I’d dreamed of those words for longer than I cared to remember. I thought when I finally heard them I’d feel elated, on top of the world. Instead, it felt like a bit of a letdown.

“Hey, Dex … I’m sorry.” Benny’s voice sounded off. Flat, dull, not like her at all.

I opened my eyes and took off my helmet. “What are you talking about, Benny?”

“You were counting on me and everything, and then I couldn’t get the job done when it counted the most. I guess you really don’t need me after all.”

“You’re not an idiot, so don’t act like one. I don’t want you around any more than I want a few extra holes in my head, but I do need you.”

“Don’t patronize me! I know I messed up. I don’t need your pity, okay?”

“No, I was wrong.”

“Huh?”

“I was wrong,” I said in a louder voice. “I’m sorry. I know you only did what you had to do. I …” I hesitated, because even though something’s true doesn’t mean it’s not galling. “I shouldn’t have said any of those things. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t need me to blow up that ship.” Benny’s voice quavered. I wondered what she looked like, what she was thinking. I always thought of Benny as confident to the point of blissful arrogance, but at that moment I didn’t know what to think.

“It was your idea,” I said.

“Huh?” Benny asked.

“I took your idea for sabotaging the air vents and rigged a fuel-air device. I didn’t think it’d blow the whole ship up, but …” I shrugged. “Anyway, it was your idea. I couldn’t have done it without you. Thanks.”

“Ummm … Okay. So, we’re still friends?”

“Yes, Benny. We’re still friends. Pick me up before I change my mind.”

“Great!” I could almost see Benny grinning like an idiot. “Now that we’re friends again, I’ve got this little job for you. I mean us.”

“Another job?” I pressed the trauma patch on my abdomen and felt a shooting pain. At least she could have let me convalesce.

“Yeah, well … Remember when I said we were in the black?”

“Don’t tell me—”

“It was only a little fib!”

“Little fib? What if I’d gone on thinking I was paid off?”

“The universe would have punished you for not making up with me, courtesy of Vidao’s thugs. That’s how karma works. Anyway, I got good news. I lined up a new job, one that’ll definitely, certainly, no question about it, pay off our markers. You and me, Chief. Between the two of us, it’s a total cakewalk.”

“Benny, I am going to teach you a whole new meaning of pain when you pick me up.”

“Looking forward to it, Chief.”

* * *

The Art of Memory

Written by Barry N. Malzberg and Jack Dann

Illustrated by Karl Nordman

The car, a l958 DeSoto, last of its line, spins out, and hits the guardrail with terrific impact. Even before my head has gone through the windshield, I know that it is over. Done.

“And in that night I awoke to find myself in a dark and deserted place …”

That is Dante. Alighieri’s the name. As I lay dead in the wastes of the car, arms broken to fit, the smell of blood a miasma in the air, my head aching, pounding, I think: How could this be? My heart is unmoving within me. From the carcass of the car faint thuds and hissings, the sounds of re-accommodation. I think of the Divine Comedy, nothing so divine about it, and of Dante, who was as much the fool as I had been. Dante had met his precious, prescient Beatrice when he was nine; by the time he turned eighteen she had spurned him, left him bereft of that “Which was the goal of all desire,” and then in l290 had insulted him even more greatly by expiring.

Expiration.

Bereft, bereaved Dante. Bereaved me. I am done for.

“And in that black night I awoke to find myself in a dark and deserted place … “

Who will mourn me? Who do I leave bereaved?

My wife Janice will be so. She won’t know where the checkbook is. She won’t know the passwords to get into the laptop files. I tried to tell her … Lord knows how I tried.

It comes to me that this rictus planted on my face would look like a smile to any witness. There is much about which to smile. Death is not only absolute, it is painless and here I am, a pain-free fifty-seven-year-old pisher advertising executive newly dead. Ten minutes ago, well no. But now? Now, in the steam and huddle of the wrenched DeSoto I can face everything. Death is the great compressor, squeezing circumstance to manageability and compressed, I can feel my essence, congealing around the ruined heart.

So I look around, considering it all. If I could breathe, I would have thought, “Breathing everything in.” Can I smell? Indeterminate. I can remember smells. Memory without passion, without pain, is perhaps a sort of omniscience. One becomes little more than a witness to one’s life and everything, then, is changed.

I peer from side to side, trying to understand the situation. If I could breathe I would have retained control, but I do not appear to be breathing.

A white and yellow ambulance with a hairline crack in the rear window roars along the highway, no siren, gumdrop red light rotating. The highway has been closed. Traffic is being redirected. In and out of their cars people are yammering on cell-phones. But I’m right here, still here, a presence, a part of the ghostly landscape rising from the blood spot on the highway, about four inches from the median. I’m here and I’m there as they strap me on a gurney and take me to the ambulance. In the ambulance I’m just an anonymous corpse. But here I am—

—I am standing.

I’m standing and dressed as if my Anderson & Shepard double-breasted suit, Holl shirt, green silk tie and Ramon Torres ostrich-skin loafers have become part of me: loose flags of tattooed flesh. The DeSoto—an antique bought for too much a few years ago out of a misguided humor—is a crushed accordion; but then, even as I assess this, it becomes in a flicker exactly what it was before the accident: well-restored, cleaned, and serviced. I wedge my way in there. The door clangs on me. I always thought of this DeSoto as a refuge, which I could take anywhere and be free, a refuge against my life itself; but the difficulty is that I was wholly deluded, I could never have been free in this car, any more than I could have been free anywhere. More than physical reconstitution is being managed here.

I had exited through the side window, I remember, and been impaled on a sheer metal rail torn from the frame. Somehow being crucified had felt, still feels, right and just. As we were in life, so we are in death. Not that in being crucified I had any great heights from which to fall.

But here I start the engine and I drive away. There is no one to stop me or even notice.

Life—or rather death—is filled with possibility and in fact promise. Indeed, perhaps I am alive after all. Maybe this is merely a concussion. Perhaps I am being given another chance or simply misunderstood the situation. I feel a surge of gratitude to whatever source has accomplished this, although I do not believe in the existence of a higher, controlling intelligence. I do not in fact believe anything except the sound of the big engine throbbing, the soft clatter of radial tires, the soughing of wind flowing wretchedly, and the ubiquitous, infinitely gray LA freeway extending forever, sprawling, launching me.

Home, I think, go home. Take me home, you poor dumb, dead Dante. Go home to your own Beatrice. Go home to Janice and fuck your brains out.

I had not realized that dying would make me so horny. My erection presses against the tautness, this post-traumatic erection warm and pulsing. Take me home, I think.

It shouldn’t be long because there isn’t another car going either way on the six-lane highway. There is just grayness, the median strip and the DeSoto.

And, of course, me.

Horny as hell and dead as road-kill.

* * *

Trees blur, the highway blurs, all passage blurs, but in the car death makes all these spaces warm and safe. I am not so much driving as being driven, and outside the barren highway has become a vast tent pitched over desire. I think of Janice, of all I had wanted to say and would have if I had known where the DeSoto would bring me that morning … but it is not so much the saying as the doing which overtakes. I want to screw her, enter her very heart, create an erection so enormous that it will touch and dangerously displace her heart. An erection so enormous—impelled by death, by that hangman’s noose draped now upon me—that it will reach to her center. Small puffs of cartoon steam seem to purr from my groin, the little abscess of the car fills with steam, and I think of Janice lying against me, of the sounds which I helped her make.

Oh, it was all such a long time ago.

Suspended, then, hanging in that space, the soundless gel of the car dense and swaddling, I find at the center of my new purpose raw necessity and past that an agenda. I have plans. I have clearly defined plans, even for a dead man. Never in fact have I had so many plans as those which now assault me at this moment: a little schedule of accommodation that will be met, places to be revisited, contacts to be made, but all of that only after Janice, after the screwing. Death congeals into a helpful arrangement of priorities.

Lights prowl the highway; I seem to have been overtaken by light, and I think of myself again as a figure in a cartoon, steam from the pants, lights through the window, hurt in the head. At the end of this journey: Janice, and with her the commencement of true and meaningful plans, which will then vault me past all this and into a newer life (or colder death) more certain than any I have ever known.

In that suspended place, fixed on anticipation, but placed now only in that deadly quiet, it is as if my father appears in the car, seated beside me, legs casually crossed, eyes staring madly through the windshield. His hands flutter with what surely must be the effort of travel.

He is pretty much, the old man, as I remember him on his deathbed twenty years ago, although certainly in a more advanced state of composition. Still, for a corpse, he looks terrific. He has retained most of his hair, and the mad light in his eyes shows an uncharacteristic enthusiasm. He was always distracted. He always had places to go. He was always half out of the room even when he was in the room. “How are you doing?” he would ask, and his lips would move, and he would stare at his watch, at the door. “Well, that’s very good,” he would say. “We must discuss this later.”

But now he seems more sedentary, fixated in a way he never was before. “It isn’t going to work,” he says, “I know exactly what you’re planning, but it can’t happen. There’s a catch to the whole business. I mean, you can come back, but you can’t come, if you follow what I’m saying here.” He coughs, shrugs his shoulders and stares out the side window. “There isn’t enough speed to save. Believe me, I have been here for almost twenty years now, and I haven’t been able to change a thing. Not in me, not in the situation.”

“So what do you want?” I ask,. our first conversation in almost two decades. “Why are you here? If there isn’t enough speed to save, why did you come back?”

“I didn’t come back,” he says. “You call this coming back? I’m just filling in the time. Dead is dead, a big hammer on the head. Then you just try to amuse yourself.”

“A hammer? Whose hammer?”

“I told you not to marry that woman, didn’t I? She’s too cold for you, always complaining. I know the type. Saw it early.”

“It didn’t seem that way at the start,” I say.

Die in a highway crash, get resurrected to live a partial after life and what do you find? You find your father beside you, questioning your judgment as if forty years had not passed.

“Dad,” I say, “You live your life the best you can. It’s not for anyone to judge.”

“You’ve judged me every moment of your existence. You never let it go, never.” He shakes his head, shakes his hands and peers out the window, squinting. “Sons of bitches. They promised fifteen minutes and now I have to go back after five? Well, what the hell is the difference? I couldn’t ever tell you anything anyway.”

“I listened to everything you had to say.”

“And laughed at it,” he says, distracted. “I told you about that woman. I could have saved you most of it. Also if you weren’t driving antique junk, and if you had checked your brake fluid level, which I remind you should be part of your ordinary life, you would have had enough torque to spin out of it instead of driving right into that bus. But no matter,” my father says, “No matter, you were ready to end it all anyway.”

And he dematerializes.

Gone, the father! He has disappeared as quickly and mysteriously as he had arrived, and through the windshield I can see the familiar dead-white strip malls that form the gateway to my neighborhood. Surely at this moment Janice is also there, waiting, beginning to worry, some faint sliver of warning neutralizing her restlessness and contempt, bringing her alert to the inference that this is not an ordinary evening. I think of her anger, throbbing at the margins and wonder if my lustful dead thoughts are simply part of the common apparatus of death itself.

Into the drive, off the engine, trudge from the DeSoto, and I enter the blue glazed front door of our Greek revival home on Antioch Avenue … perfect Antioch Avenue with its huge lawns and blue-glazed swimming pools and just underneath, the trembling reach of the unspeakable. The unspeakable here or there, it is one Earth, isn’t it?”

“I’m home,” I say coming through the door, and Janice steps from the study that aligns the dining room and blinks at me.

“Oh,” she says. “You’re here after all. I was worrying, I didn’t know—”

“Didn’t know what?” I say. “What didn’t you know?” She is flawless, staring back at me: white, white and gold, all of this streaming from her; and I notice that she’s wearing the heart-link ankle bracelet I had given her when we were engaged, and that she is barefoot.

“Pregnant and barefoot,” I mumble, grinning. Death has seemingly energized me at this moment: I feel free and light and young—yes, light as in weightless, but I can perceive the numinous light around me, the world itself glowing.

It occurs to me that this must after all be heaven and that Janice—the best version of her I have seen in years—must be a wingless big-breasted cherub. An Angel.

“I’m not pregnant, Nathan.” But she stands stock-still, thinking. “Although I suppose I could get pregnant here. I don’t know that it has ever happened, but there’s always a first time.” She giggles.

“What didn’t you know?” I ask again, determined.

“That you were dead,” she says matter-of-factly, as if I died everyday. “You don’t look dead, not really.”

“Neither do you.”

She smiles, that perfect, placid, oceanic smile that I first fell in love with when she appeared in a shaft of light at a Sunday afternoon cocktail party. “Oh, I’m very dead, my darling. You’ll learn.”

“What will I learn?”

“That being dead is alive.” Another smile and she steps toward me, arms extended. I respond reflexively. I can smell her perfume; surprisingly, I can feel her, and then suddenly I am standing alone as if not I but she had just dreamed that moment and torn the dream away. She is standing before me, looking sadly at me, as if … as if I’d died.

“You’re not very substantial,” she says.

“Well, you look pretty substantial to me,” I say, and I move toward her then, put my arms around her, and I feel a slight vibration in the touch of her skin, at the touch of her dress—but it is a memory. I am not so much touching then as recollecting touch. I don’t so much feel as stumble toward some recollection of that; and I inhale, trying to breathe in her scent, her perfume.

But there is only emptiness. Remembering how she smells, I cannot quite move past that thin perception. Stripped of erection and desire, I am flooded by memory alone.

She pulls away from me, pity in her eyes. “You’re not quite dead,” she says, “are you?”

Well, yes, I am. So it would seem. Senselessly, numbingly, flaccidly dead. Nothing there but doomed assertion, dead in the exposed light.

There is nothing to say. I turn and leave the house. “Where are you going?” she asks, “Do you really think that this is the answer?” Her voice is bright, tinkles like that of a hostess. A tour guide for the underworld.

There is no answer, I think, but I do not say this.

Now there are some who might say that it is humiliating to be sexually rejected by one’s own wife, particularly if one is dead and represents, then, no threat—but, on the other hand, being not quite dead can have a depressing effect upon congress. Janice’s position, tilted that way, is certainly justifiable; conjunction would be a spooky position. Also the news that I am not quite dead has apparently become common knowledge. So Janice would, however unfairly, be viewed as some sort of variation of a necrophile. There is no possibility that she could in the aftermath pretend she thought I was completely dead. “How could I be expected to know the difference?” just isn’t a valid excuse.

Little puffs of dust and steam encircle my shoes as I trudge to the DeSoto in which I died (or half-died), knowing that once again I am justifying Janice, granting her excuse for the inexcusable.

There is, after all, the matter of commitment. Death would not buy her out of marital obligation any more than it would buy her out of claiming the Estate. This thought, in its ugly practicality, impels me ever more rapidly; but I find as I near the DeSoto that it is not quite in the abandoned state of its desertion. It is, instead, encircled by a crowd, some of them strangers, others dimly remembered, college classmates or colleagues, a quick and scattered roster of my career. They stare at me bleakly, gesture, whisper to one another of my presence. More strangeness this, as I raise a hand. “Are you living or dead?” I ask. “Where is this happening?”

No reply. They do hear me, it would seem. My father comes up from the rear, puts a confidential, paternal arm around my neck and shoulders and guides me to the car. “You might as well get out of here,” he says. “There’s nothing more for you in these places.”

“Why? How do you know that?”

“Because I’m your father, obviously. Because before you were here I had checked out the situation. Believe me, I know this territory better than you. It’s a stinker.”

“So what does that make you?”

“It makes me exactly what you always took me to be … that man you could never understand. You’re not going to understand it here either. You know why? Because death doesn’t make you any wiser. It may give you the last word, but you’re still no smarter. Am I right?” He gestures to the crowd. “Tell him I’m right. He never listened to me.”

They look at him without interest. Someone in the middle—it must be fat Jack my first mentor who taught me every expense-account trick I know—makes a derisive sound. “You tell him,” Fat Jack says. “You keep him on the straight.”

“I knew that man,” I say. “That man taught me everything I know, and everything I know is wrong.”

“Don’t change the subject,” my father says. “Face the bench, kid, they’re going to pronounce the sentence.”

“You changed the subject all my damned life,” I say, pushing him aside and yanking open the car door. Cushions ooze toward me like blood as I move behind the wheel. I have absolutely no idea where I am going or what I might think this means. “You never settled on anything; you were never home.”

“Well, then, you studied me well. The same applies, son. For one thing, you can’t even decide if you’re dead.”

It is a strange thing to consider at this moment but never, I think, have we communicated quite so well. Death seems to bring a higher state of alertness, although it is no good for sex. “Fat Jack and advertising ruined your brains, son,” my old man says. “They turned you into a louse.”

Fat Jack had forced me to the l958 DeSoto. Working the campaigns for an auto manufacturer, I had come to understand that the engineers had surrendered to the stylists, the cars—which Fat Jack taught me to insidiously undersell, no campaign makes explicit promises when the unsaid could be anything—had profound defects. Steering wasn’t balanced properly for front wheel drive and overcompensating drivers would receive their final reward by being hurled through a guardrail or off a mountain. I’d better drive something old and heavy, I thought. If we’re lying like this then all of them are lying, and then all of these new cars are killers.

The scandal had been building in my last weeks there; someone had turned over internal memos to the Government.

But it was I in the l958 DeSoto who went hurtling first …

Well, this time I will be more cautious. Assume nothing, protect everything. Cautiously engaging the ignition, dropping the car into gear, I call from memory all of my considerable driving skills, all of the weight and simultaneity of memory.

The gathered crowd salutes me with curses as I move the car, my own gestures beseeching them to move fade to inconsequence as I turn cautiously toward the highway entrance a hundred yards from my house. Auburn City-link Highway, one of the great conveniences, although the heat and dust of near traffic on summer weekends was occasionally unbearable. Behind me, like memory itself, the house; ahead of me the highway.

Driving, I think of the nature of death and the nature of being alive and wonder if there is any difference, or whether it is merely a matter of perception. On some of those intense summer nights, traffic streaming from upstate to the corridors of downtown, Janice and I would close the windows, swaddle ourselves while naked in the dangerous air conditioning, and exchange confidences as we exchanged with one another. I could at those times feel the world burning. Surely if that had happened, it could happen again. “We lift above the night, we are Shiva, consumer of worlds,” I would whisper. Did we? Could we?

It seemed plausible at the time …

But what is plausible now is Highway #9W, that dangerous road: two lanes, blind turns, no-passing zones occurring and recurring like strobes. 9W which I fight with all the tenacity of the newly dead until, sprinting from a blind curve, I find a sports car oncoming in my lane, sliding quite helplessly toward impact. I yank the wheel and dive for the shoulder, that small, pale strip overhanging a suddenly disastrous cliff, and just like last time the car loses purchase and slides past the shoulder and into the air.

But unlike last time, I am able to find a thread of traction before the wheels definitively soar from the ground. But I know better now. I force myself to stop trying to intercede, to control the event. I allow the car to resume its slide off the road into emptiness. It is a terrifying yet exhilarating drop to that clang of rage and fused metal. The car bounces, tears, collapses around me, and then is still.

This time I seem able to emerge.

Although I breathe, it is really the steady, reassuring syncope of death.

I step from the vehicle and stand alone at the side of the road. There is no traffic, and my state is one of absolute and perfect emptiness. I neither think nor feel, but what I do is trudge. I trudge the thousand yards of road I had driven and the hundred yards to the house. Two cars pass, but they are of little concern, just two more whisks of death: more syncope. I walk toward my home. The vaporous crowd has succumbed to the night. Janice stands at the open door, her body an arc of inquiry. “Hello again,” I say. “I could have lived. But this time I didn’t. I was able to save it. To save us.”

She says nothing, locked in that interrogatory posture. Living or dead? Caring or uncaring? Seeing me or not? Her face is implacable, unassailable. In her cool and stricken gaze I find myself refracted only as an impediment to her field of vision, and then as I move past her into the house, feeling her breath upon me, I come to understand that living or dead—

—That living or dead, it is all the same.

My fate has overtaken like a deadly animal. My future lies as did those crushed entrails earlier somewhere on that road I have trudged. I sit on the leather couch before the large-screen television, and Janice sits beside me. We greet one another. We make brief reference to the events of the day. We watch “I Love Lucy” reruns from the l960’s. It’s just as it had been. We laugh, and I touch her hand tentatively. Yes, I can feel her, and, emboldened to embrace, I feel her up as we used to call it.

But she is stone. She is stone, and I am a mirage. An apparition.

I can’t help myself. I laugh, and that’s all I have: vibrating air.

I’m still just as I have always been.

Probably not dead.

Probably not alive.

Probably not here.

A Holy Terror

Written by Ambrose Bierce

Illustrated by Steve Adams

I

There was an entire lack of interest in the latest arrival at Hurdy-Gurdy. He was not even christened with the picturesquely descriptive nick-name which is so frequently a mining camp’s word of welcome to the newcomer. In almost any other camp thereabout this circumstance would of itself have secured him some such appellation as “The White-headed Conundrum,” or “No Sarvey”—an expression naively supposed to suggest to quick intelligences the Spanish quien sabe. He came without provoking a ripple of concern upon the social surface of Hurdy-Gurdy—a place which to the general Californian contempt of men’s personal history superadded a local indifference of its own. The time was long past when it was of any importance who came there, or if anybody came. No one was living at Hurdy-Gurdy.

Two years before, the camp had boasted a stirring population of two or three thousand males and not fewer than a dozen females. A majority of the former had done a few weeks’ earnest work in demonstrating, to the disgust of the latter, the singularly mendacious character of the person whose ingenious tales of rich gold deposits had lured them thither—work, by the way, in which there was as little mental satisfaction as pecuniary profit; for a bullet from the pistol of a public-spirited citizen had put that imaginative gentleman beyond the reach of aspersion on the third day of the camp’s existence. Still, his fiction had a certain foundation in fact, and many had lingered a considerable time in and about Hurdy-Gurdy, though now all had been long gone.

But they had left ample evidence of their sojourn. From the point where Injun Creek falls into the Rio San Juan Smith, up along both banks of the former into the canon whence it emerges, extended a double row of forlorn shanties that seemed about to fall upon one another’s neck to bewail their desolation; while about an equal number appeared to have straggled up the slope on either hand and perched themselves upon commanding eminences, whence they craned forward to get a good view of the affecting scene. Most of these habitations were emaciated as by famine to the condition of mere skeletons, about which clung unlovely tatters of what might have been skin, but was really canvas. The little valley itself, torn and gashed by pick and shovel, was unhandsome with long, bending lines of decaying flume resting here and there upon the summits of sharp ridges, and stilting awkwardly across the intervals upon unhewn poles. The whole place presented that raw and forbidding aspect of arrested development which is a new country’s substitute for the solemn grace of ruin wrought by time. Wherever there remained a patch of the original soil a rank overgrowth of weeds and brambles had spread upon the scene, and from its dank, unwholesome shades the visitor curious in such matters might have obtained numberless souvenirs of the camp’s former glory—fellowless boots mantled with green mould and plethoric of rotting leaves; an occasional old felt hat; desultory remnants of a flannel shirt; sardine boxes inhumanly mutilated and a surprising profusion of black bottles distributed with a truly catholic impartiality, everywhere.

II

The man who had now rediscovered Hurdy-Gurdy was evidently not curious as to its archaeology. Nor, as he looked about him upon the dismal evidences of wasted work and broken hopes, their dispiriting significance accentuated by the ironical pomp of a cheap gilding by the rising sun, did he supplement his sigh of weariness by one of sensibility. He simply removed from the back of his tired burro a miner’s outfit a trifle larger than the animal itself, picketed that creature and selecting a hatchet from his kit moved off at once across the dry bed of Injun Creek to the top of a low, gravelly hill beyond.

Stepping across a prostrate fence of brush and boards he picked up one of the latter, split it into five parts and sharpened them at one end. He then began a kind of search, occasionally stooping to examine something with close attention. At last his patient scrutiny appeared to be rewarded with success, for he suddenly erected his figure to its full height, made a gesture of satisfaction, pronounced the word “Scarry” and at once strode away with long, equal steps, which he counted. Then he stopped and drove one of his stakes into the earth. He then looked carefully about him, measured off a number of paces over a singularly uneven ground and hammered in another. Pacing off twice the distance at a right angle to his former course he drove down a third, and repeating the process sank home the fourth, and then a fifth. This he split at the top and in the cleft inserted an old letter envelope covered with an intricate system of pencil tracks. In short, he staked off a hill claim in strict accordance with the local mining laws of Hurdy-Gurdy and put up the customary notice.

It is necessary to explain that one of the adjuncts to Hurdy-Gurdy—one to which that metropolis became afterward itself an adjunct—was a cemetery. In the first week of the camp’s existence this had been thoughtfully laid out by a committee of citizens. The day after had been signalized by a debate between two members of the committee, with reference to a more eligible site, and on the third day the necropolis was inaugurated by a double funeral. As the camp had waned the cemetery had waxed; and long before the ultimate inhabitant, victorious alike over the insidious malaria and the forthright revolver, had turned the tail of his pack-ass upon Injun Creek the outlying settlement had become a populous if not popular suburb. And now, when the town was fallen into the sere and yellow leaf of an unlovely senility, the graveyard—though somewhat marred by time and circumstance, and not altogether exempt from innovations in grammar and experiments in orthography, to say nothing of the devastating coyote—answered the humble needs of its denizens with reasonable completeness. It comprised a generous two acres of ground, which with commendable thrift but needless care had been selected for its mineral unworth, contained two or three skeleton trees (one of which had a stout lateral branch from which a weather-wasted rope still significantly dangled), half a hundred gravelly mounds, a score of rude headboards displaying the literary peculiarities above mentioned and a struggling colony of prickly pears. Altogether, God’s Location, as with characteristic reverence it had been called, could justly boast of an indubitably superior quality of desolation. It was in the most thickly settled part of this interesting demesne that Mr. Jefferson Doman staked off his claim. If in the prosecution of his design he should deem it expedient to remove any of the dead they would have the right to be suitably reinterred.

III

This Mr. Jefferson Doman was from Elizabethtown, New Jersey, where six years before he had left his heart in the keeping of a golden-haired, demure-mannered young woman named Mary Matthews, as collateral security for his return to claim her hand.

“I just know you’ll never get back alive—you never do succeed in anything,” was the remark which illustrated Miss Matthews’s notion of what constituted success and, inferentially, her view of the nature of encouragement. She added: “If you don’t I’ll go to California too. I can put the coins in little bags as you dig them out.”

This characteristically feminine theory of auriferous deposits did not commend itself to the masculine intelligence: it was Mr. Doman’s belief that gold was found in a liquid state. He deprecated her intent with considerable enthusiasm, suppressed her sobs with a light hand upon her mouth, laughed in her eyes as he kissed away her tears, and with a cheerful “Ta-ta” went to California to labor for her through the long, loveless years, with a strong heart, an alert hope and a steadfast fidelity that never for a moment forgot what it was about. In the mean time, Miss Matthews had granted a monopoly of her humble talent for sacking up coins to Mr. Jo. Seeman, of New York, gambler, by whom it was better appreciated than her commanding genius for unsacking and bestowing them upon his local rivals. Of this latter aptitude, indeed, he manifested his disapproval by an act which secured him the position of clerk of the laundry in the State prison, and for her the sobriquet of “Split-faced Moll.” At about this time she wrote to Mr. Doman a touching letter of renunciation, inclosing her photograph to prove that she had no longer had a right to indulge the dream of becoming Mrs. Doman, and recounting so graphically her fall from a horse that the staid “plug” upon which Mr. Doman had ridden into Red Dog to get the letter made vicarious atonement under the spur all the way back to camp. The letter failed in a signal way to accomplish its object; the fidelity which had before been to Mr. Doman a matter of love and duty was thenceforth a matter of honor also; and the photograph, showing the once pretty face sadly disfigured as by the slash of a knife, was duly instated in his affections and its more comely predecessor treated with contumelious neglect. On being informed of this, Miss Matthews, it is only fair to say, appeared less surprised than from the apparently low estimate of Mr. Doman’s generosity which the tone of her former letter attested one would naturally have expected her to be. Soon after, however, her letters grew infrequent, and then ceased altogether.

But Mr. Doman had another correspondent, Mr. Barney Bree, of Hurdy-Gurdy, formerly of Red Dog. This gentleman, although a notable figure among miners, was not a miner. His knowledge of mining consisted mainly in a marvelous command of its slang, to which he made copious contributions, enriching its vocabulary with a wealth of uncommon phrases more remarkable for their aptness than their refinement, and which impressed the unlearned “tenderfoot” with a lively sense of the profundity of their inventor’s acquirements. When not entertaining a circle of admiring auditors from San Francisco or the East he could commonly be found pursuing the comparatively obscure industry of sweeping out the various dance houses and purifying the cuspidors.

Barney had apparently but two passions in life—love of Jefferson Doman, who had once been of some service to him, and love of whisky, which certainly had not. He had been among the first in the rush to Hurdy-Gurdy, but had not prospered, and had sunk by degrees to the position of grave digger. This was not a vocation, but Barney in a desultory way turned his trembling hand to it whenever some local misunderstanding at the card table and his own partial recovery from a prolonged debauch occurred coincidently in point of time. One day Mr. Doman received, at Red Dog, a letter with the simple postmark, “Hurdy, Cal.,” and being occupied with another matter, carelessly thrust it into a chink of his cabin for future perusal. Some two years later it was accidentally dislodged and he read it. It ran as follows:—

HURDY, June 6.

FRIEND JEFF: I’ve hit her hard in the boneyard. She’s blind and lousy. I’m on the divvy—that’s me, and mum’s my lay till you toot. Yours,

BARNEY.

P.S.—I’ve clayed her with Scarry.

With some knowledge of the general mining camp argot and of Mr. Bree’s private system for the communication of ideas Mr. Doman had no difficulty in understanding by this uncommon epistle that Barney while performing his duty as grave digger had uncovered a quartz ledge with no outcroppings; that it was visibly rich in free gold; that, moved by considerations of friendship, he was willing to accept Mr. Doman as a partner and awaiting that gentleman’s declaration of his will in the matter would discreetly keep the discovery a secret. From the postscript it was plainly inferable that in order to conceal the treasure he had buried above it the mortal part of a person named Scarry.

From subsequent events, as related to Mr. Doman at Red Dog, it would appear that before taking this precaution Mr. Bree must have had the thrift to remove a modest competency of the gold; at any rate, it was at about that time that he entered upon that memorable series of potations and treatings which is still one of the cherished traditions of the San Juan Smith country, and is spoken of with respect as far away as Ghost Rock and Lone Hand. At its conclusion some former citizens of Hurdy-Gurdy, for whom he had performed the last kindly office at the cemetery, made room for him among them, and he rested well.

IV

Having finished staking off his claim Mr. Doman walked back to the centre of it and stood again at the spot where his search among the graves had expired in the exclamation, “Scarry.” He bent again over the headboard that bore that name and as if to reinforce the senses of sight and hearing ran his forefinger along the rudely carved letters. Re-erecting himself he appended orally to the simple inscription the shockingly forthright epitaph, “She was a holy terror!”

Had Mr. Doman been required to make these words good with proof—as, considering their somewhat censorious character, he doubtless should have been—he would have found himself embarrassed by the absence of reputable witnesses, and hearsay evidence would have been the best he could command. At the time when Scarry had been prevalent in the mining camps thereabout—when, as the editor of the Hurdy Herald would have phrased it, she was “in the plenitude of her power”—Mr. Doman’s fortunes had been at a low ebb, and he had led the vagrantly laborious life of a prospector. His time had been mostly spent in the mountains, now with one companion, now with another. It was from the admiring recitals of these casual partners, fresh from the various camps, that his judgment of Scarry had been made up; he himself had never had the doubtful advantage of her acquaintance and the precarious distinction of her favor. And when, finally, on the termination of her perverse career at Hurdy-Gurdy he had read in a chance copy of the Herald her column-long obituary (written by the local humorist of that lively sheet in the highest style of his art) Doman had paid to her memory and to her historiographer’s genius the tribute of a smile and chivalrously forgotten her. Standing now at the grave-side of this mountain Messalina he recalled the leading events of her turbulent career, as he had heard them celebrated at his several campfires, and perhaps with an unconscious attempt at self-justification repeated that she was a holy terror, and sank his pick into her grave up to the handle. At that moment a raven, which had silently settled upon a branch of the blasted tree above his head, solemnly snapped its beak and uttered its mind about the matter with an approving croak.

Pursuing his discovery of free gold with great zeal, which he probably credited to his conscience as a grave digger, Mr. Barney Bree had made an unusually deep sepulcher, and it was near sunset before Mr. Doman, laboring with the leisurely deliberation of one who has “a dead sure thing” and no fear of an adverse claimant’s enforcement of a prior right, reached the coffin and uncovered it. When he had done so he was confronted by a difficulty for which he had made no provision; the coffin—a mere flat shell of not very well-preserved redwood boards, apparently—had no handles, and it filled the entire bottom of the excavation. The best he could do without violating the decent sanctities of the situation was to make the excavation sufficiently longer to enable him to stand at the head of the casket and getting his powerful hands underneath erect it upon its narrower end; and this he proceeded to do. The approach of night quickened his efforts. He had no thought of abandoning his task at this stage to resume it on the morrow under more advantageous conditions. The feverish stimulation of cupidity and the fascination of terror held him to his dismal work with an iron authority. He no longer idled, but wrought with a terrible zeal. His head uncovered, his outer garments discarded, his shirt opened at the neck and thrown back from his breast, down which ran sinuous rills of perspiration, this hardy and impenitent gold-getter and grave-robber toiled with a giant energy that almost dignified the character of his horrible purpose; and when the sun fringes had burned themselves out along the crest line of the western hills, and the full moon had climbed out of the shadows that lay along the purple plain, he had erected the coffin upon its foot, where it stood propped against the end of the open grave. Then, standing up to his neck in the earth at the opposite extreme of the excavation, as he looked at the coffin upon which the moonlight now fell with a full illumination he was thrilled with a sudden terror to observe upon it the startling apparition of a dark human head—the shadow of his own. For a moment this simple and natural circumstance unnerved him. The noise of his labored breathing frightened him, and he tried to still it, but his bursting lungs would not be denied. Then, laughing half-audibly and wholly without spirit, he began making movements of his head from side to side, in order to compel the apparition to repeat them. He found a comforting reassurance in asserting his command over his own shadow. He was temporizing, making, with unconscious prudence, a dilatory opposition to an impending catastrophe. He felt that invisible forces of evil were closing in upon him, and he parleyed for time with the Inevitable.

He now observed in succession several unusual circumstances. The surface of the coffin upon which his eyes were fastened was not flat; it presented two distinct ridges, one longitudinal and the other transverse. Where these intersected at the widest part there was a corroded metallic plate that reflected the moonlight with a dismal lustre. Along the outer edges of the coffin, at long intervals, were rust-eaten heads of nails. This frail product of the carpenter’s art had been put into the grave the wrong side up!

Perhaps it was one of the humors of the camp—a practical manifestation of the facetious spirit that had found literary expression in the topsy-turvy obituary notice from the pen of Hurdy-Gurdy’s great humorist. Perhaps it had some occult personal signification impenetrable to understandings uninstructed in local traditions. A more charitable hypothesis is that it was owing to a misadventure on the part of Mr. Barney Bree, who, making the interment unassisted (either by choice for the conservation of his golden secret, or through public apathy), had committed a blunder which he was afterward unable or unconcerned to rectify. However it had come about, poor Scarry had indubitably been put into the earth face downward.

When terror and absurdity make alliance, the effect is frightful. This strong-hearted and daring man, this hardy night worker among the dead, this defiant antagonist of darkness and desolation, succumbed to a ridiculous surprise. He was smitten with a thrilling chill—shivered, and shook his massive shoulders as if to throw off an icy hand. He no longer breathed, and the blood in his veins, unable to abate its impetus, surged hotly beneath his cold skin. Unleavened with oxygen, it mounted to his head and congested his brain. His physical functions had gone over to the enemy; his very heart was arrayed against him. He did not move; he could not have cried out. He needed but a coffin to be dead—as dead as the death that confronted him with only the length of an open grave and the thickness of a rotting plank between.

Then, one by one, his senses returned; the tide of terror that had overwhelmed his faculties began to recede. But with the return of his senses he became singularly unconscious of the object of his fear. He saw the moonlight gilding the coffin, but no longer the coffin that it gilded. Raising his eyes and turning his head, he noted, curiously and with surprise, the black branches of the dead tree, and tried to estimate the length of the weather-worn rope that dangled from its ghostly hand. The monotonous barking of distant coyotes affected him as something he had heard years ago in a dream. An owl flapped awkwardly above him on noiseless wings, and he tried to forecast the direction of its flight when it should encounter the cliff that reared its illuminated front a mile away. His hearing took account of a gopher’s stealthy tread in the shadow of the cactus. He was intensely observant; his senses were all alert; but he saw not the coffin. As one can gaze at the sun until it looks black and then vanishes, so his mind, having exhausted its capacities of dread, was no longer conscious of the separate existence of anything dreadful. The Assassin was cloaking the sword.

It was during this lull in the battle that he became sensible of a faint, sickening odor. At first he thought it was that of a rattle-snake, and involuntarily tried to look about his feet. They were nearly invisible in the gloom of the grave. A hoarse, gurgling sound, like the death-rattle in a human throat, seemed to come out of the sky, and a moment later a great, black, angular shadow, like the same sound made visible, dropped curving from the topmost branch of the spectral tree, fluttered for an instant before his face and sailed fiercely away into the mist along the creek.

It was the raven. The incident recalled him to a sense of the situation, and again his eyes sought the upright coffin, now illuminated by the moon for half its length. He saw the gleam of the metallic plate and tried without moving to decipher the inscription. Then he fell to speculating upon what was behind it. His creative imagination presented him a vivid picture. The planks no longer seemed an obstacle to his vision and he saw the livid corpse of the dead woman, standing in grave-clothes, and staring vacantly at him, with lidless, shrunken eyes. The lower jaw was fallen, the upper lip drawn away from the uncovered teeth. He could make out a mottled pattern on the hollow cheeks—the maculations of decay. By some mysterious process his mind reverted for the first time that day to the photograph of Mary Matthews. He contrasted its blonde beauty with the forbidding aspect of this dead face—the most beloved object that he knew with the most hideous that he could conceive.

The Assassin now advanced and displaying the blade laid it against the victim’s throat. That is to say, the man became at first dimly, then definitely, aware of an impressive coincidence—a relation—a parallel between the face on the card and the name on the headboard. The one was disfigured, the other described a disfiguration. The thought took hold of him and shook him. It transformed the face that his imagination had created behind the coffin lid; the contrast became a resemblance; the resemblance grew to identity. Remembering the many descriptions of Scarry’s personal appearance that he had heard from the gossips of his camp-fire he tried with imperfect success to recall the exact nature of the disfiguration that had given the woman her ugly name; and what was lacking in his memory fancy supplied, stamping it with the validity of conviction. In the maddening attempt to recall such scraps of the woman’s history as he had heard, the muscles of his arms and hands were strained to a painful tension, as by an effort to lift a great weight. His body writhed and twisted with the exertion. The tendons of his neck stood out as tense as whip-cords, and his breath came in short, sharp gasps. The catastrophe could not be much longer delayed, or the agony of anticipation would leave nothing to be done by the coup de grace of verification. The scarred face behind the lid would slay him through the wood.

A movement of the coffin diverted his thought. It came forward to within a foot of his face, growing visibly larger as it approached. The rusted metallic plate, with an inscription illegible in the moonlight, looked him steadily in the eye. Determined not to shrink, he tried to brace his shoulders more firmly against the end of the excavation, and nearly fell backward in the attempt. There was nothing to support him; he had unconsciously moved upon his enemy, clutching the heavy knife that he had drawn from his belt. The coffin had not advanced and he smiled to think it could not retreat. Lifting his knife he struck the heavy hilt against the metal plate with all his power. There was a sharp, ringing percussion, and with a dull clatter the whole decayed coffin lid broke in pieces and came away, falling about his feet. The quick and the dead were face to face—the frenzied, shrieking man—the woman standing tranquil in her silences. She was a holy terror!

V

Some months later a party of men and women belonging to the highest social circles of San Francisco passed through Hurdy-Gurdy on their way to the Yosemite Valley by a new trail. They halted for dinner and during its preparation explored the desolate camp. One of the party had been at Hurdy-Gurdy in the days of its glory. He had, indeed, been one of its prominent citizens; and it used to be said that more money passed over his faro table in any one night than over those of all his competitors in a week; but being now a millionaire engaged in greater enterprises, he did not deem these early successes of sufficient importance to merit the distinction of remark. His invalid wife, a lady famous in San Francisco for the costly nature of her entertainments and her exacting rigor with regard to the social position and “antecedents” of those who attended them, accompanied the expedition. During a stroll among the shanties of the abandoned camp Mr. Porfer directed the attention of his wife and friends to a dead tree on a low hill beyond Injun Creek.

“As I told you,” he said, “I passed through this camp in 1852, and was told that no fewer than five men had been hanged here by vigilantes at different times, and all on that tree. If I am not mistaken, a rope is dangling from it yet. Let us go over and see the place.”

Mr. Porfer did not add that the rope in question was perhaps the very one from whose fatal embrace his own neck had once had an escape so narrow that an hour’s delay in taking himself out of that region would have spanned it.

Proceeding leisurely down the creek to a convenient crossing, the party came upon the cleanly picked skeleton of an animal which Mr. Porfer after due examination pronounced to be that of an ass. The distinguishing ears were gone, but much of the inedible head had been spared by the beasts and birds, and the stout bridle of horsehair was intact, as was the riata, of similar material, connecting it with a picket pin still firmly sunken in the earth. The wooden and metallic elements of a miner’s kit lay near by. The customary remarks were made, cynical on the part of the men, sentimental and refined by the lady. A little later they stood by the tree in the cemetery and Mr. Porfer sufficiently unbent from his dignity to place himself beneath the rotten rope and confidently lay a coil of it about his neck, somewhat, it appeared, to his own satisfaction, but greatly to the horror of his wife, to whose sensibilities the performance gave a smart shock.

An exclamation from one of the party gathered them all about an open grave, at the bottom of which they saw a confused mass of human bones and the broken remnants of a coffin. Coyotes and buzzards had performed the last sad rites for pretty much all else. Two skulls were visible and in order to investigate this somewhat unusual redundancy one of the younger men had the hardihood to spring into the grave and hand them up to another before Mrs. Porfer could indicate her marked disapproval of so shocking an act, which, nevertheless, she did with considerable feeling and in very choice words. Pursuing his search among the dismal debris at the bottom of the grave the young man next handed up a rusted coffin plate, with a rudely cut inscription, which with difficulty Mr. Porfer deciphered and read aloud with an earnest and not altogether unsuccessful attempt at the dramatic effect which he deemed befitting to the occasion and his rhetorical abilities:

MANUELITA MURPHY. Born at the Mission San Pedro—Died in Hurdy-Gurdy, Aged 47. Hell’s full of such.

In deference to the piety of the reader and the nerves of Mrs. Porfer’s fastidious sisterhood of both sexes let us not touch upon the painful impression produced by this uncommon inscription, further than to say that the elocutionary powers of Mr. Porfer had never before met with so spontaneous and overwhelming recognition.

The next morsel that rewarded the ghoul in the grave was a long tangle of black hair defiled with clay: but this was such an anti-climax that it received little attention. Suddenly, with a short exclamation and a gesture of excitement, the young man unearthed a fragment of grayish rock, and after a hurried inspection handed it up to Mr. Porfer. As the sunlight fell upon it it glittered with a yellow luster—it was thickly studded with gleaming points. Mr. Porfer snatched it, bent his head over it a moment and threw it lightly away with the simple remark:

“Iron pyrites—fool’s gold.”

The young man in the discovery shaft was a trifle disconcerted, apparently.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Porfer, unable longer to endure the disagreeable business, had walked back to the tree and seated herself at its root. While rearranging a tress of golden hair which had slipped from its confinement she was attracted by what appeared to be and really was the fragment of an old coat. Looking about to assure herself that so unladylike an act was not observed, she thrust her jeweled hand into the exposed breast pocket and drew out a mouldy pocket-book. Its contents were as follows:

One bundle of letters, postmarked “Elizabethtown, New Jersey.”

One circle of blonde hair tied with a ribbon.

One photograph of a beautiful girl.

One ditto of same, singularly disfigured.

One name on back of photograph—”Jefferson Doman.”

A few moments later a group of anxious gentlemen surrounded Mrs. Porfer as she sat motionless at the foot of the tree, her head dropped forward, her fingers clutching a crushed photograph. Her husband raised her head, exposing a face ghastly white, except the long, deforming cicatrice, familiar to all her friends, which no art could ever hide, and which now traversed the pallor of her countenance like a visible curse.

Mary Matthews Porfer had the bad luck to be dead.

Countdown to Armageddon, Episode Two

Written by Edward M. Lerner

Illustrated by Dean Spencer

NEAR METZ, 725

A Brobdingnagian roar engulfed the thick woods. Black clouds of dust swirled and swept dervishlike across the ruined landscape. Rubble bounced and crashed down the steep slopes. Forest animals fled, predators and prey side by side, in single-minded terror.

Amid the devastation, a lone man fought to keep his balance. He failed. Like the rocks and broken trees around him, he slid, willy-nilly, down the hillside.

It was a wild ride, through which he prayed fervently. Random projectiles battered and bruised him. Time and again, he narrowly escaped careening boulders and toppling trees.

A great stone outcropping snagged him, knocking the wind from him. Grimacing in pain, several ribs clearly cracked, he crawled around the boulder to huddle beneath its broad overhang.

A large box, its sides battered and scarred, slid past. The box hesitated for a moment, until the shaking ground started it back on its way downhill. The container vanished into the thick dust.

Dust clouds covered the sun. What little light penetrated the haze was blood red. Gradually, the din lessened. The rocks stopped falling. Animals howled, lost in the otherworldly gloom. Randomly, in tremendous spasms, the ground continued to shudder.

Slowly, favoring his cracked ribs, the man climbed to his feet. He freed a sturdy branch from the rubble; using it as a cane, he carefully made his way downhill. He stumbled frequently, for what little illumination the sun still cast was shrouded by airborne dust.

Never had he beheld such catastrophe. The earth moaned beneath his feet. From every direction came the delicate slithering of loose soil and untethered pebbles seeking downward for a new equilibrium. As though proud heaven felt itself challenged by the convulsions below, a great stroke of lightning split the sky. Seconds later, an enormous peal of thunder roiled the ground-hugging dust clouds.

Through chaos and ruin, the man worked down the slope. He listened, carefully, past the whistle of the wind, the subsiding of the soil, and the whimpers of injured animals. Finally, faintly, he sensed an ethereal music.

The melody called to him. Casting aside his improvised cane, he broke into a fast stumble, wincing at the pain in his side but unable to hold back. The music poured forth from places unseen, louder and louder. He stopped when it seemed to emanate from the rubble beneath his feet. Agitatedly he dug, flinging chunks of stone and handfuls of loose dirt in all directions. The music swelled louder and louder.

His hand slapped smooth paneling; something boomed hollowly from the blow. The contact only increased his excitement. Harmonies swelling all about him, he feverishly swept away the last of the debris. There! Handles! He unlocked the cabinet with a key from his pocket and twisted the levers madly.

Battered hinges squealed in protest, but they could not resist the man’s frenzied tug. Then, as the doors flew open, the music reached a crescendo: the triumphant choral finale of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

Abdul Faisel, eyes brimming with tears, listened to the only MP3 player within twelve centuries. When the last cadence had faded into the swiftly falling night, he would begin moving the generally intact artifacts from the battered cabinet into a nearby cave. There he would spread his prayer rug and give proper thanks for a safe journey.

Allah akbar. God is great.

* * *

Faisel had first explored the cave in 1993. Carrying only a liter of bottled water on a sling, the hike from the institute grounds had been pleasant. The same trip today, with a full backpack and cracked ribs, through toppled and entangled trees, was much harder.

It took seven trips to transfer everything from the storage cabinet to safety. Dragging the empty, but still-heavy and awkward cabinet for almost a kilometer, Faisel nearly wished he had brought Ali the van driver at gunpoint. He would bring a wagon and muscular staff when he eventually returned. It was just one more specific for an already long and detailed plan.

Now—with a campfire crackling before him, his stomach full of canned beef stew, and his boots off—Faisel indulged in self-congratulation. He had done it! He, bomb, and supplies were exactly when he meant them to be.

Hezbollah had merely lent him their plutonium, expecting an atomic bomb back in return. For his part, he had promised to the sheiks a sword for Allah unlike any that had ever before been wielded. It was the details about which he had been less than forthcoming; the sheiks cooperatively mistook his vague, apocalyptic vision for zealous hyperbole. His was the most radical solution of all, and Hezbollah could be proud of its contributions—although of course they would never know.

Exhaustion took its toll. Staring at the flickering flames, he fell into a near-hypnotic trance. The fire burned down. Embers glimmered, reminiscent of red symbols that had so recently flashed before him: 14, 13, 12…

NEAR METZ, 2004

Abdul Faisel was shut inside the massive enclosure, the initiation sequencer counting the final seconds, when someone rapped firmly upon the locked laboratory doors. The rhythm changed quickly to an insistent pounding. The rising hum of his apparatus muffled the voice.

“Wait!” The doors crashed open, admitting the stocky director of the institute. It could not have been anyone else. Only Mlle. Hubert could override his reprogramming of the laboratory lock. Her appearance at this moment went beyond logical prediction to prescience: At some subconscious level, Abdul had always known he would face her before leaving. He would have to pay the piper.

Good Catholic though she was, Mlle. Hubert—Suzanne—had always treated him, the son of a Muslim fisherman, with respect: as a talented protege, at first; then as an equal, a collaborator; finally, almost as a son. She had helped him through the grief of the massacre. Now she stood outside of the apparatus, peering through the tightly wound coils at him. “Wait, Abdul. Whatever you’re doing, whatever your reason for tapping the storage ring, it is unauthorized. And dangerous, it must be dangerous, or you would not be experimenting on yourself.” She said more, but the roaring hum of the coils drowned out most of her words.

In seconds, the equipment would operate; Mlle. Hubert would die. If all went well, untold millions would die—so why did one old woman’s death matter? Why? Because she symbolized all the innocents, all the nonpoliticals, all those who deserved better than they would get. His hands shook with the desire to hit the emergency override. The red button stared at him, crimson like the sea of hot blood that he would spill. Against his wishes, he read her lips. Don’t do this. A tear glistened in her eye.

The digital initiation sequencer counted inexorably downward: 8, 7, 6… He tore his gaze away from her, focusing on the red, red override button. Red like Leila’s lifeblood. Red like the blood of my whole village, shed by Christian dogs. Red like the obscene surf through which he, alone, had floated to wreak vengeance. It was Allah’s will.

With an inarticulate roar of triumph, Faisel snatched his hand back from the treacherous button.

3, 2, 1…

CHICAGO, 2009

Terrence stooped to pick glass bits from the sticky puddle. “Give me a minute. You’ve given me quite a fright.”

The Bowens exchanged confused glances. Harry recovered first. “Christ, Terrence, you look like you’ve seen a ghost. Just leave that. What’s bothering you?”

Terrence stood unsteadily and crumpled onto the sofa. “The year 730. You’re sure of that?”

The physicist shrugged. “As sure as I am of any of this. Yes—if any of this holds water. As well as I can calculate it, Faisel traveled back to 725. If he survived, he’ll have experienced five years in his new time.

“Don’t take this wrong, by the way, but you look like shit. Can I get you another drink?”

That, anyway, was an easy question. Terrence nodded. “Yes, and not a liqueur. Scotch neat, please. A double.” He said no more until a new glass was in hand. He drained it without comment or apparent effect. “Another, please.”

Harry returned with a refill and a damp mop. “What is it, man? You’ve thought for years that Faisel was out there somewhere with his bomb. You’ve suspected for days that he’d traveled somewhere in time with his bomb. What about 730 A.D. makes it any worse?”

“It’s my turn to tell a story. A historian’s tale, now, not a cop’s. This is far worse than anything I could relate from my Interpol days.”

His hand trembling, Terrence set the new glass on the coffee table. “You’re right, Harry, that one person won’t—can’t—normally make much of a difference to history. At least that’s the current theory. Great social trends take time to form, then, like the tide, they overwhelm everyone and everything in their path. Momentum of the masses, if you’ll pardon a pun.” He coughed nervously, then pointed to the yet-again-empty glass.

“Take your civil war, for example. The Confederacy was hopelessly outnumbered and outresourced. For all his military genius, all Robert E. Lee did was postpone the inevitable. What he really accomplished through his brilliance was more casualties and increased destruction.

“So, righto, no one person really matters. Normally.”

Terrence felt his face was flushed, whether from the Scotch or Harry’s bombshell he couldn’t say. It hardly mattered. “But ever so rarely, all of history seems to be balanced precariously. When it happens, wildly different outcomes become equally possible.”

* * *

“Here’s a little known fact,” Terrence said. “The Arabic word for Europe is Firanja, from the Latin Francia. Are you familiar with the Franks?”

La belle Bowen fielded that one. “The barbarian founders of France. They took over the province that the Romans called Gaul. They would have been running the place when Faisel arrived.”

“Right. Anything else?”

“Well, Charles the Great, Charlemagne, was a Frank. I think that’s a little later. Didn’t he found the Holy Roman Empire? Anyway, I’ve shot my early-French-history wad. I think we covered everything before the Bourbons in about one lecture.”

She hadn’t mispronounced the dynasty name like the Kentucky whiskey. Harry, you’re a lucky man. “You’ve done better than most of the incoming students for my European Civ class. And better than about half of them at their final.” Terrence smiled weakly. “You, Harry?”

“Sorry, Terrence. Julia’s the cultured one.”

Terrence willed his shaking hands to be still. “The Romans were already collapsing when the Franks appeared at the Rhine, expelled from the Baltic region by even tougher barbarians from farther east. The Franks raided Gaul for a time, but some eventually settled there and became Roman mercenaries. A few even achieved high rank in the legions.

“As Rome weakened, the Franks moved into the vacuum. They fought alongside the Romans. After Rome itself fell to the barbarian hordes, the Franks fought on alone against one invading tribe after another. The Franks on the western side of the Rhine gradually adopted Roman ways and took on the task of defending civilization itself—that is, what little civilization they had themselves so far assimilated.

“Julia, you mentioned Charlemagne. The French and Germans still argue over who has the best claim to him—modern France and Germany date back to the division of Charlemagne’s empire after his death. The events we need to address occurred in the time of his grandfather.”

Terrence’s glass was once more filled; he took a long, appreciative swallow. “There is good reason why the Franks made such an impression on the Arabs. It happened at one of those rare times when maybe one man could determine the flow of history, a time when all future history lay balanced precariously on a cusp.”

He had the Bowens’ rapt attention.

“To set the stage, I must ask you to indulge me in a brief digression. From the fourth through the seventh centuries, the whole of classical civilization was in crisis. Nomadic hordes burst from what are now Mongolia and Manchuria, causing chaos throughout Asia and Europe. China fragmented. India was conquered. The Western Roman Empire collapsed. The Eastern Roman Empire, its capital at Constantinople, lost the Balkans to the barbarians.

“Quite separately, the seventh century also witnessed the founding of Islam and the launching of Holy War from Arabia. Persia, already weakened by the northern nomads, was conquered. Constantinople lost the Holy Land and all of North Africa.

“For a hundred years, the army of Islam knew only victory. The Caliph in Damascus ruled an empire that stretched from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian Ocean, territories including Persia, Mesopotamia, the Arabian Peninsula, parts of India, North Africa, and Spain.

“I’ve now set the stage. In 732, the centennial year of Mohammed’s death, the so-far-unstoppable Islamic empire made its big push on Europe. After hundreds of years of barbarian onslaughts, in the darkest of the Dark Ages, Western Europeans remembered civilization more than they practiced it. The Franks were the last defenders of that memory.

“Two great armies met in battle in west-central France, between the modern cities of Poitiers and Tours. The Franks narrowly won the day. The Berber and Bedouin forces were driven back into southern France. By 759 the Islamic armies had withdrawn permanently behind the Pyrenees into Iberia, what is now Spain.

“Soon after the battle of Tours, Islam split into rival sects: Shia and Sunni. The energies that had driven Islam’s expansion across three continents turned inward—into dynastic struggles, rival caliphates, and sectarian warfare.” Terrence coughed. “Shia and Sunni are still fighting each other.

“But I digress. Frankish and Islamic forces still battled from time to time, and Islam retained a foothold in Spain for more than seven hundred years, but the survival of the Frankish state was guaranteed by the victory at Tours. Francia, as much as the Roman Empire, was a progenitor of modern Europe.”

Julia went to sit beside Terrence on the sofa. She put an arm around his shoulders. “So you’re viewing Faisel’s return in the context of a rerun of the critical battle?”

The agent-turned-historian nodded. “The Franks at Tours reversed the rising tide of Islamic empire. What if the battle is replayed, and instead of a clash between straight swords and curved ones, the contest this time pits muscular strength against the atomic bomb?”

NEAR METZ, FRANCE, 2009

So far, the great international expedition had yielded only sore feet. Harry dialed his partner on his satellite phone. “Nothing here. Still.” He mopped sweat from his forehead with the back of a sleeve.

“We’re not looking for the Empire State Building. I expected this to take a while. Stay alert.” (Terrence’s normally deep voice sounded tinny over the little speaker. Why, in a gadget that went for five times the price of a high-end iPod, was the speaker so cheesy?)

So, Harry looked. He walked up, down, and around the hills surrounding the rebuilt Rothschild Institute. Only honking, of migrating geese and far-off impatient drivers, disturbed the silence. He covered the terrain to the west of the institute grounds; Terrence searched the east side. Once, through the trees, Harry spotted a promising heap of weathered stone, almost straight downhill from the research facility. His Geiger counter, alas, found the rock pile to be as inert as the rest of the countryside.

They met for a quick picnic lunch. The bread was crusty and fresh, the cheese toothsome and pungent. The vin ordinaire, unfortunately, really was. “You realize, Terrence, that this is a fools’ errand.”

Ambling smiled. “Don’t ever go into police work, my friend. Most of the job is looking for needles in haystacks.”

“The other part is the danger, the adrenaline rush that makes it all worthwhile?”

“No. Paperwork.”

“You misunderstand.” Harry stood, sore muscles protesting. “Yes, it would be wonderful if we found traces of radiation. It would be a relief to be sure Faisel nuked himself at the moment of arrival, that he’s not a danger anymore. My complaint wasn’t about the difficulty of finding proof. Quite the contrary: It should be easy.

“Look, if any plutonium 239 remained—and some would, because not every bit would fission—these Geiger counters would have found traces by now. It’s been, presumably, fewer than thirteen hundred years. The half-life of this stuff is more than twenty-four thousand years. Besides, I don’t see how we could overlook the crater. Yeah, yeah, I know”—Harry waved off the predictable rebuttal—”avalanches and erosion and the forest regrown. I don’t buy it. The first A-bomb, at Alamogordo, fused a circle eight hundred yards in diameter into glass. It used far less plutonium than Faisel has.”

Harry pointed toward the town of Metz a few miles away. “There was a town down there when Faisel arrived. Don’t you think someone might have noticed a mushroom cloud several miles tall? Events much less dramatic have been remembered from that long ago.”

Terrence sucked on a long blade of grass while the tirade wound down. “What do you suggest?”

“I’ve got no better idea than continuing. I’m just letting off steam.” Harry began stuffing their trash into his backpack. He paused to point. “I’ll look up that way next. I thought I saw a glint of sunlight reflect from something. Maybe I’ll be lucky.”

* * *

Jalal Ashrawi forced himself to lie still when one of the hikers suddenly pointed right at him. No, pointed toward him. In his camouflage pants and T-shirt, the thick underbrush surely concealed him. Still, he waited for the two men to look away before he cautiously lowered his binoculars.

He squirmed slowly uphill, taking care not to rustle the bushes. Once behind a stand of pines, he stood and stretched. Time to shift positions. He slipped through the trees, angling across the slope, gingerly testing his footing at each step before putting down his weight. He was hidden at a new vantage point before the noisy tourists finished gathering their trash.

Or were the two men tourists? Yes, almost everyone in the mountains fit that description, but it was self-defeating to assume that only tourists came. Palestinian students like Jalal had been coming up here for five years, had been watching—for they knew not what—that whole time. The elders of the revolution had assured them that their mission was important. Critical. The watchers would recognize what they were looking for when they saw it. Until then, lest they be questioned, it was best that they not know.

Jalal’s stomach growled. Well, envying their snack was not dereliction of duty. He brought his binoculars back to his eyes and studied the man striding up the slope toward his previous hiding spot. Tall, dark-haired, middle-aged, breathing hard from the exertion. He wore a backpack and carried something boxy in one hand. Boxy, but with something else (cylindrical? the item was half-obscured by the man’s hand) attached by a dangling cord. What? And why had the hikers separated? Perhaps they had merely happened upon each other, and, having eaten together, would go their separate ways.

What was that his quarry held? Jalal swore under his breath as the man half vanished into the undergrowth. The box he carried was somehow familiar. Now the man reemerged from the thicket, stopped, set down the box, and took a curiously large portable phone from his pocket. Jalal heard about every fourth word; it was enough to know that the man was American.

This was interesting. You either hike with someone, or you hike alone. You do not hike apart and chatter over phones. Suddenly his “hikers” seemed more like surveyors. What could they be up here to survey for?

And then Jalal knew where he had seen something like the American’s boxy gadget. When he wasn’t serving the cause, Jalal was a premed student. Two years ago, in radiation biology, he had used something just like that box.

The American was searching for radioactive material with a Geiger counter.

* * *

The Alsace-Lorraine region exhibited a degree of schizophrenia, having changed hands so often between France and Germany. A tragic situation, perhaps, but it meant that Metz, capital of the departement of Lorraine, offered some of the finest beer in France. After a hard day’s fruitless searching, a stein or four of full-bodied beer was most therapeutic. Harry and Terrence were soon restored to cheerfulness.

They stumbled back toward their cheap pension, weaving a bit. They had inconveniently few drinking songs in common. Two off-key voices together are ever so much less embarrassing than one—but of course they shared old Beatles tunes.

Their merry caterwauling covered the padding of sneakers from somewhere behind them. It was arguably still twilight, but they were bushed.

“Cigarette?”

A short, swarthy stranger stood at a cross street, waiting for them, his hands in his coat pockets. Harry guessed that the man was in his mid-twenties. Looked Arabic. Harry patted his pockets from old habit as he kept walking. Stupid, really: He hadn’t smoked for years. “Sorry.”

Two more men, also foreign-looking, rounded the corner. In a similar neighborhood in Chicago, Harry would have worried about muggers. The strangers blocked their path.

Terrence tugged lightly on Harry’s sleeve. It was subtly done, but it made Harry miss a step, leaving the former agent in the lead. His eyes, clouded a moment ago, seemed bright. He balanced on the balls of his feet, and his arms hung slightly away from his sides.

As the stranger started to take a hand from his pocket, Ambling’s left hand shot out. It clamped the stranger’s wrist, and Harry heard bones grate. Just as suddenly, Terrence’s right hand held a slim pistol. “Take that hand out slowly.”

Releasing the man’s wrist, Ambling stepped back. His eyes maintained a steady sweep that encompassed all three men. Two held their hands well in front of themselves; the third, very carefully, removed a handgun, butt first, from his pocket. At Ambling’s gesture, the young man dropped it.

Harry was just beginning to breathe again when the fourth man appeared from behind them.

* * *

Blindfolded and with his hands tied behind his back, Terrence rode in the rear of an old truck through the old, cobblestoned section of town. After that, he had no concept of his path beyond mostly uphill. The rotten suspension kept bouncing Harry and him together. He must have bounced once in the wrong direction because someone gave him a swift kick. No one spoke. The trip lasted, he guessed, about thirty minutes.

His blindfold was ripped roughly from his face. “Walk.” Two of his recent playmates stood cautiously behind the truck; they seemed comfortable with the weapons in their hands. Walthers, 9mm, Terrence noted. A sharp shove from behind. “Move.”

He jumped down from the truck, landing clumsily for effect. Adrenaline burns off alcohol very quickly. Bowen followed. The short one who had first accosted them came last, holding Terrence’s own pistol.

“Inside.”

“Do you ever speak more than one word at a time, old chap?”

Was that a trace of a smile? “No.” Shorty gestured again toward the door of a ramshackle wooden cabin.

A smokeless coal fire in the fireplace took the edge off the evening chill. By the fire’s feeble, red-orange glow, Terrence saw a steely-eyed old man wearing a burnoose. Their captors bowed reverently to him as they entered, addressing him as sheik. Behind the old man (one of Faisel’s Hezbollah acquaintances?) two bodyguards stood holding AK-47 assault rifles.

The old man settled gracefully to a mat on the floor. “We have been expecting you.”

Bowen seemed about to say something; Terrence cut him off with a sharp glance.

“Surely speaking a greeting will not harm you,” the old man said.

Terrence turned sideways in answer, stretching his bound arms out behind him.

“Jalal, untie our guests.”

Shorty complied. Terrence rubbed his sore wrists to restore his circulation. “If we’re guests, I could use a bite to eat.”

The old man smiled fleetingly. “I see you know our traditions. Times change. We have kept ‘guests’ in Beirut and the Bekaa for many months. I’m sure that you know we fed them.”

Terrence shrugged. “Worth a try.”

“Indeed. Once you lead us to our plutonium, I will be glad to furnish the finest meal. Anything you wish.”

“The traditional dinner of the condemned man,” Harry observed bitterly.

The old man smiled humorlessly with pearly teeth. “In the morning, you will show us the plutonium… or you will die. We do not really need you; you have already revealed the general area in which to look.”

* * *

At least, Terrence thought, one of their captors had a sense of humor. He and Harry had been served bread and water for breakfast. Apple croissants and bottled Vichy water.

They had been rousted at dawn, beckoned wordlessly from the windowless log storage shed where they had spent the night. Silent night. Enough silvery moonlight had filtered between the ill-fitted logs for him to find, and point out to Harry, the tiny hidden microphone.

Bowen still looked dazed. Terrence imagined the physicist felt transported into a strange, new world. Once, this cruel and violent world had been his. Now Terrence needed all his former skills. They were his and Bowen’s only hope.

The short terrorist, the one called Jalal, returned them at gunpoint to the main cabin. Three more armed men loitered conspicuously. Through the trees, as they ducked into the cabin, Terrence could just make out the white bulk of the Rothschild Institute.

“I am told you have eaten,” the old man greeted them. “You should have no complaints then about your treatment. I expect equal cooperation from you in finding the plutonium.”

“We don’t know…” Harry began before he caught Terrence’s cautionary glance. Too late. The old man cocked an eyebrow at Jalal, who whipped Harry once, twice across the face with his pistol. It tore a deep gouge in Harry’s cheek; the blood trickled down his face and neck.

“We thank you for our meal.” With an effort, Terrence unclamped his jaws. “My friend is accustomed to a more peaceful environment.” And unaccustomed to terrorist fanatics.

“You have not, it would seem, been a friend by involving him.”

Terrence took a deep breath. “My friend does not understand the certainty of your vision. The conviction with which you undertake your current endeavor.”

“As it is written, ‘My community shall not agree upon an error.’ “

Bowen took in this exchange with an air of morbid fascination; maybe it was only the still-dripping gash that suggested the attitude. No matter, the less Harry spoke, the better. Conversing with terrorists was best left to the experts.

“Jalal.” The short terrorist inclined his head. “Bring our visitors their equipment.”

Terrence accepted a Geiger counter, as did Harry, wondering precisely when these had been removed from their pension. “You understand, then, that the precise location of the material remains to be determined.”

“Yes,” the old man said.

“Respectfully, why did you not watch us and take the material after we recovered it?”

The old man’s eyes flashed angrily. “We watched from a distance once before. When the institute was destroyed, we even imagined ourselves to have been wise. We thought the bomb assembly had gone awry.

“Then rebuilding started at the same spot. Clearly, the blast had involved no radioactive materials. We realized that a treacherous son of a filthy pig had stolen our plutonium, having set off the explosion to mislead us.

“For five long years we sought our plutonium. Now that you have come, our vigilance will not waver. We will not waste a moment. We will not risk someone else developing an interest in your activities.

“And now, you will quit stalling and find the material. You understand, I am sure, that your fate depends entirely on cooperation.”

Terrence bent his head and backed from the room; Bowen, still half-stunned, followed. Terrence doubted that the old man was taken in by this show of respect. He could hope that the younger, less experienced Jalal might be. Any possibility of obtaining an edge, however remote, must be pursued.

Four armed terrorists accompanied Bowen and him westward, in the general direction of the institute. The captors formed a square around their prisoners, staying out of reach. Terrence studied the front pair surreptitiously as they walked. Predictably, since they would be so near the institute, the guns had silencers.

“Are you familiar with Geiger counters?” Terrence asked. Only Jalal nodded. “Well, they click near a radioactive source, getting faster as we get closer. We have only a general idea where the material was hidden. That’s why we searched separately yesterday. Two instruments used side by side are no better than one.” When no one answered, Terrence shrugged. The gesture said: I no longer care if we find the plutonium.

Jalal pondered that. “Yusef, Habib. Take the Englishman. Search beyond the institute. Mustafa and I will watch the American on this side. Meet at the rock pile”—he pointed—”at noon.”

Terrence began pacing a search pattern, guards in tow, predictable as the sunrise. The first time his body blocked their view, he thumbed off the Geiger counter’s power switch. A surprise discovery was the last thing he needed. Slowly, methodically, he worked his way up a shallow slope. He never looked directly at the terrorists, but kept track of them from the corners of his eyes. Gradually, his guards’ paths converged; they walked side by side, smoking foul cigars and chattering volubly in Arabic. Harry and his captors were long out of sight.

His search pattern led gradually through dense underbrush and up a steep hillside. Terrence swore in disgust, plopping down heavily, as a foot “happened” to slip out from under him. His captors laughed, unaware that he had palmed a baseball-sized rock.

Morning wore on. His search pattern took them deeper into the woods. The undergrowth grew ever more tenacious. The Arabs, bored and complacent, dutifully followed in single file. They held their assault rifles at their sides, pointing down and away for safety.

Nervous sweat trickled down his back. Soon. Terrence slowed his pace gradually, naturally, as the slope increased. The pattern that he was walking approached the crest of a ridge. Muttering at the bushes and the bugs, he slowed still further. The chatter indicated that his guards were right behind him.

Now. Terrence deliberately kicked a tree root. He spun around, his arms windmilling dramatically. “Christ, catch that!” he screamed, as the Geiger counter flew from his grasp. The front guard made a one-handed grab. For an instant both terrorists were watching the fragile instrument—and Terrence leapt.

All three went sprawling. He heard the muffled thud of a silenced round, probably fired by accident.

The terrorists were flat on their backs, limbs tangled, tipped downhill at a good twenty-degree angle. Terrence smashed the top one in the head with his rock. It hit with a meaty thud, and the man collapsed.

The bottom man, screaming, struggled loose. Grabbing a handful of shirt, Terrence raised the unaware body as a shield as the second terrorist pointed his AK-47. Shit. With his free hand, Terrence groped for a weapon. The gunman hesitated, looking for a clean shot.

There! Terrence’s fingers brushed a smooth gunstock. He glanced down; the second assault rifle was half-under the unconscious terrorist. Terrence stretched for it. A round hit near his hand, spraying dirt. He lunged and heaved. The gun pulled free.

Terrence raised his rifle. “Drop it.”

The Arab began to lower his rifle—then squeezed off a shot. The slug hit Terrence’s unwilling shield; silenced, the rifle lacked the power to put a round through the front body.

Outraged and disgusted, Terrence put a third eye into the terrorist’s forehead.

* * *

The gunshot rang out over the forest, echoing from the hills. Terrence had removed his silencer—hopefully someone would investigate. With his luck, though, it was pheasant season. The two terrorists guarding Harry spun, looking all around, confused by the echoes.

“Drop them.”

Jalal started to raise his rifle toward Harry Bowen. Terrence squeezed off another round. It ricocheted from the ground within inches of the terrorist’s feet.

Terrence remembered a Clint Eastwood movie. ” ‘Go ahead. Make my day.’ “

Jalal froze. He had seen the film, too. As though in slow motion, the gun dropped from Jalal’s hands. Moments later, the other’s rifle followed.

“Walk slowly away from the guns, and away from my friend. Far enough. Now, lie down. Do it quickly, and you might live.”

As the terrorists complied, Harry hobbled over and retrieved their weapons.

They left the men bound with their own belts, with socks stuffed in their mouths. No one had come to investigate the shooting. Then they headed for the institute, the one possible source of help nearby. “What happened to your leg, Harry?”

“I got into a tussle with them. I don’t know what got into me, why I was crazy enough to try, but I did. Then I thought of Julia, of the kids. I couldn’t bear to lose them. I froze. Sorry.”

An unarmed, untrained civilian had no business taking on two armed terrorists. Bowen might be a bloody genius, but sometimes he had more guts than brains.

Terrence smiled wearily. “If I had a family, I don’t suppose that I could do this either.”

* * *

The gunfire had drawn someone’s attention. The wrong someone.

Terrence fought a running gun battle as they retreated toward the institute grounds and—hopefully—safety. Bowen gasped by the time they reached the wrought-iron fence. Harry’s escape attempt had earned him a shin-bashing with a rifle butt, the blow pulled just enough not to break bones. He couldn’t search if he couldn’t walk.

The familiar truck parked blocking the front gates suggested why no institute security guards had come investigating. The terrorists had gotten here first. They had probably struck here before pursuing the fugitives and risking more noisy gunplay.

Armed men patrolled in front of the building. A few uniformed security guards sat stoically before their captors, hands folded over their heads, leaning against the fence. Another terrorist stood in the gatehouse, watching the monitors of the perimeter security system.

Enemies behind them, coming up fast. Enemies in front of them, at the institute. He and Harry were trapped between.

“Hsst.” Terrence motioned Bowen farther back into the woods. “It doesn’t look good. Any suggestions?”

“I’m guessing nothing short of turning over the plutonium—which we don’t have—could placate them. I wouldn’t do that if I could.” Bowen grimaced as the rough footing twisted his injured leg. “There are phones inside. We can call the police in town.”

“The lines will be cut.”

“Cell phones, then,” Harry persisted.

It was a long shot—and still better than anything Terrence had.

They sneaked through the woods, paralleling the fence, until they were as far as possible from both search parties. Terrence gave Bowen a boost over the fence before clambering over himself. The alarm system wailed at their first touch of the fence.

Terrence shot out the lock of a basement emergency exit, and they ran inside. Bullets sprayed as they rounded a corner. He sent a short burst down the hallway to instill some caution.

They tiptoed down the hall to an open laboratory, then flung closed its heavy doors. Terrence started dragging a massive workbench in front of them. “Give me a hand with this.”

Silence. Glancing over his shoulder, Terrence saw the physicist dumbstruck with wonder, staring at some enormous experimental setup. The table scraped into place just in time, as something heavy shook the doors. “Harry! Give me a hand here!” He put a few rounds through the doors at chest height; someone screamed.

Oblivious, Bowen limped closer to the great metal enclosure.

It seemed Faisel’s apparatus had been miraculously re-created. No, not miraculously: fortuitously. It wasn’t that surprising someone at the rebuilt institute would undertake to duplicate and study the mysterious contrivance from the first incident. Terrence imagined tantalizing records left behind, and guessed he would never know. He wondered: Did that unknown experimenter even know what the apparatus was for? The giant coils were surrounded with instrumentation and festooned with wires and probes. Aside from the Christmas-tree ornaments, it looked like what Bowen had described that night in Manhattan.

Could he possibly be seeing a time machine?

* * *

“Duck!” Ambling roared.

Harry hit the deck. Bullets raked the space he had just vacated. Terrence snapped a short burst over Harry’s head. The shadow at the window well retreated.

Harry shook off his reverie. Huddled behind a big metal desk, he watched the high window. The shadow returned, and he squeezed off a round. “Custer’s last stand.”

” ‘Half a league, half a league, half a league onward. / All in the valley of death rode the six hundred.’ ” It seemed a form of agreement.

But that device! One eye on the rear window, one on the equipment, Harry laboriously traced the circuits. The hookup to the superconducting storage ring looked logical. It matched his theory of what Faisel had built. Red LED numerals blinked at him from a control panel inside the enclosure. The open door called out to him.

Another shadow at the window! Harry fired a short burst and was rewarded by a scream. Moments later, the room shook from an explosion just outside.

“Grenades,” Terrence snarled. “Aw, shit.”

Lab instruments jiggled and danced from the shock. A coffee mug bounced across the desk to smash at Harry’s feet.

Gunfire tore at the barricaded doors. The wood was shredding, even the table behind it was coming apart. A leg broke, and the table crashed to the floor. The fusillade went on and on.

“Good working with you, Harry.”

Harry stared at the broken crockery. Its bouncing path had meant something. What?

Oh! He rolled across the room, below the unending stream of automatic weapons fire, and through the open door into the time machine. He flicked on the big power switch. A digital timer began counting down. 20, 19, 18, 17…

“Terrence! Move it, now!” 14, 13.

As the firing abruptly stopped, a terrorist dove through the Swiss-cheesed doors. Ambling stitched the body with a short burst. Terrence scrambled to his feet and ran into the enclosure.

7, 6, 5… Harry yanked at the metal door; it had snagged some trash on the floor and would not budge. If the door weren’t closed to complete the shielding enclosure, the vast energies from the storage ring would vaporize them.

Terrence grabbed for the door handle; together. they gave it a vicious jerk. It crashed shut with an echoing clang.

2, 1…

About the Author

Edward M. Lerner has degrees in physics and computer science (and, curiously enough, an MBA). Now writing SF full-time, Lerner worked in high tech for thirty years (including seven years as a NASA contractor), as everything from engineer to senior vice president. That experience includes techie havens (such as Bell Labs and Northrop Grumman), an Internet company, and a software start-up. It all shows up in his fiction.

His books include Probe, Moonstruck, and the collection Creative Destruction. His short fiction has appeared in Analog, Artemis, and Jim Baen’s Universe magazines, on Amazon Shorts, and in the anthologies Year’s Best SF 7 and Future Washington.

In the pipeline are Fool’s Experiments and two “Known Space” novels in collaboration with Larry Niven: Fleet of Worlds (October 2007) and Juggler of Worlds.

Fish Story, Episode Ten: The A-Team

Written by Eric Flint, Andrew Dennis, Dave Freer

Illustrated by Barb Jernigan

“Who’s from the future?” I demanded. “I’m from the present!”

Cthulhu eyed me, perhaps a bit sardonically. It was hard to tell, since I’m not an expert on interpreting the expressions of ammonite monster-gods. Stephen Speairs made a production out of returning his identity papers back into his jacket pocket, thereby avoiding both my gaze and the monster’s.

“Besides,” I said firmly, “time travel is impossible.”

Cthulhu’s vast body seemed to jiggle, his tentacles writhing a bit. That might be laughter.

Dann Douglas shook his head. “You’re both right and wrong, I’m afraid. It is indeed true that you are from the present. But your apparent conceit that the present and the future and the past are all neatly divisible is quite mistaken.”

“Positively idiotic. All time is one, fractally speaking,” said the ammonite monster-god. Three or four of his tentacles waved about. “But enough of this!”

He didn’t exactly rise, since that motion is more or less precluded for one of his vast bulk still furthered encumbered by a coiled shell. Nonetheless, in whatever manner he managed the business, he suddenly looked quite threatening.

“I had you brought here for a purpose, and now that I’ve confirmed my suspicion it is time we got about it. Enough idle chitchat! Dann, explain to these gentlemen the facts of life.”

Douglas cleared his throat. “Well. As it happens, lads, my master has need of your skills for a special mission.”

”What mission?” I asked suspiciously.

Dann clapped his hands. “Later, for the details! For the moment, it’s time for you to make the acquaintance of your companions in the enterprise.”

He rose to his feet and seized a tube sticking out of a post on the dock, which looked vaguely like one of those speaking gadgets you see in old time movies about warships. Then, bellowed into the mouthpiece.

“A-Team! Front and center!”

After relinquishing the tube, he shrugged. “Silly way of putting that, I admit. ‘Front and center’ doesn’t really catch the essence of the business.”

It certainly didn’t! Not two seconds later, the leaden water of the harbor surged and veritable monsters clambered onto the pier.

Five monsters, to be precise. It might be better to say, three MONSTERS, one Monster, and one really weird-looking creature whose claim to the title “monster” rested in its bizarre appearance more than its size.

Being as I am an ichthyologist, albeit defrocked, and one with a longstanding interest in paleontology, I had no trouble recognizing the MONSTERS and the Monster. The three huge creatures were a variety of mosasaurs, the marine reptiles who were the top predators of the world’s oceans toward the end of the Cretaceous Period. Most laymen familiar with the beasties think they were a variety of sea-going dinosaurs, but they weren’t. Mosasaurs were lepidosaurs—reptiles with overlapping scales—far more closely related to snakes and lizards than to dinosaurs proper.

If I wasn’t mistaken, in fact, these three belonged to the species Tylosaurus proriger, the largest of the mosasaurs. Great fearsome things, fifteen meters long and weighing God knows what.

Tons. Carnivorous tons, you understand.

The Monster was equally familiar. A genuine plesiosaur, another type of ancient marine predator—also often mistaken as dinosaurs, but actually a different order of reptiles altogether. Plesiosaurs originated in the Triassic, but, like the mosasaurs, survived until the end of the Cretaceous.

If it hadn’t been for the three mosasaurs who accompanied it, I would have labeled the plesiosaur a MONSTER in its own right. It was some sort of thalassomedon, closely related to the elasmosaurs, and one of the plesiosaurs that dated to the late Cretaceous.

It was almost as long as the three mosasaurs, but half of that length was made up of a long and sinuous neck. It probably weighed something like three tons in its own right, but it was still dwarfed by its tylosaur companions.

That left the little beastie. Well, little in comparison to its mates.

I was pretty sure it was a Pterygotus, one of the class of eurypterids, although I wished my mate Kevin Bagust was there to confirm my guess. A veritable sea scorpion.

Talk about ancient! The eurypterids evolved during the Paleozoic Era. None of them were known to have survived the Permian extinction, which happened somewhere around two hundred and fifty million years ago. One of them certainly had no business prancing around on a dock with late Mesozoic mosasaurs and plesiosaurs.

Or, now that I thought about it, with a very very very late Cenozoic hominid like myself, as disreputable as I might otherwise be in certain quarters.

“As I said,” spoke Cthulhu, sounding smug. “All time is one, for those who understand the fractal nature of things.”

Suddenly, the three gigantic mosasaurs emitted a horrible bellowing din.

”WHOO-WHOO-WHOO!!!”

They began prancing back and forth on the dock—fortunately, made of concrete, not wood—like a trio of ungainly dancers on a stage. “Prancing,” at least, insofar any multi-ton marine monster can prance on land. It might be more accurate to say they lunged back and forth, their bellies not lifting more than a few inches off the floor of the dock.

“We’re Number One!” bellowed the one on the far left. It—he? she? who could tell?—swept one of its front limbs to the fore, exposing the vast flank of the appendage. (Far more like a flipper than a leg, if you’re wondering.)

I’ll be damned it there wasn’t a garish tattoo on the thing. Not made of ink, of course—penetrating that hide would have been far beyond any needle—but of what looked like inset semi-precious stones.

Apex Predator, it read, above the image of two enormous open jaws.

The one on the far right did a similar forward sweep of a forelimb. There was a tattoo there also.

The food chain stops here. Above the same unsettling image.

Marvelous. I eyed the third tylosaur, in the middle, but this one exposed no quasi-tattoos.

Well, not immediately. Instead it sniffed.

“You have to make allowances,” the monster said. “Males. Crude by nature. Me, on the other hand …”

It twisted around and exposed the mosasaur’s equivalent of a buttock. There, etched in some sort of metallic filigree, was a dainty-looking heart. Above it were the words, Flirty Girl. Below it—figure out the logic, if you choose; I shied away from the matter—was the same image of the Maw From Hell.

The plesiosaur cleared its throat. This took a bit of time, since the throat involved was some twenty feet in length.

“If the extroverts are quite finished, may we get about the business?” Its sinuous neck reached back and its head—tiny in comparison with the rest of the creature—dug into a very large pouch that was attached to its body by a set of straps. Then, brought forth what appeared to be some sort of tablet. Slate, perhaps. It set the tablet down on the dock. Another quick twisting neck motion brought forth what looked like a scribe of some sort, which it placed on top of the tablet. Then, a final neck-twist brought out a pair of spectacles which it somehow managed to perch on its head with a little flip-and-duck. Given the noseless nature of a plesiosaur’s face, the spectacles didn’t really cover the eyes that well.

It scooped up the scribe in its mouth and perched it just above the tablet. “Minutes from the last meeting,” it said, mumbling the words because of the scribe in its mouth.

“Move to dispense with reading of the minutes,” said the female mosasaur, sounding bored.

“Second the motion,” said one of the male monsters.

“Vote,” said the eurypterid, speaking for the first time. Its voice was peculiar, sounding more like the scratching of an antique 78 vinyl disk than a living voice. I was pretty sure that the “voice” had actually been produced by rubbing together the chelicerae.

Sure enough. The two little chelicerae in front rubbed together and out came: “All in favor of dispensing with a reading of the minutes?”

All three tylosaurs and the plesiosaur lifted a front forelimb.

“Four in favor. I vote ‘aye’ as well.” The creature gave me and Speairs what seemed to be a stern look. A bit hard to tell, given the compound eyes. Of which there were four, by the way, two huge ones on the side and two little ones in the middle.

“Are you abstaining?” it demanded.

“Huh?” I fear I sounded rustic. “Why are you asking us?”

“You’re now part of the A-Team,” cheliceraed the eurypterid. “You get to vote, too.”

“Probationary members!” barked the tylosaur on the left.

“Quite right!” chimed in his male mate. “Their vote is advisory only. Not binding on the team.”

The sea scorpion ignored them. “Your vote, mates.”

“Uh …”

That was Speairs’ useless contribution. I, on the other hand, having sat through innumerable academic meetings in times past, knew that the answer was a foregone conclusion. Somewhere, at some time in human history—perhaps a session of Neanderthal hunting analysts somewhere in southwest France—people might have sat through a reading of the minutes of a previous meeting. May even be why they went extinct.

“Concur with the motion to dispense with a reading of the minutes,” I said firmly, figuring that concur couldn’t get me into trouble. No, I don’t usually parse my words that carefully. But I’m not usually faced with three mosasaur gullets any one of which looked as if it could swallow a locomotive and spit out the wheels.

Fortunately, Speairs wasn’t that slow-witted. “Me too,” he added.

“Motion to dispense with a reading of the minutes passes,” mumbled the plesiosaur, scratching with the scribe on the tablet. “Next item on the agenda is a report on our negotiations with the Ichthyosaurid Anti-Defamation League.”

The eurypterid lifted its tail—that was called the telson, technically speaking—and waved it about. There was something vaguely dismissive about the gesture, perhaps even derisive.

“Not much to report,” it scritched. “They’re still claiming they hold the rightful title of apex predators and the mosasaurs are taking unfair advantage of evolution.”

The way the three tylosaur maws gaped was definitely derisive. “Let the shrimps come out of hiding and argue the point, then,” said one of the males. “Fair and square, in the open sea.”

“I trust you set them straight, Gardner,” added the female.

“Certainly,” replied the eurypterid. “Fractal time or not, no one denies evolution except religious fundamentalists and they all worship the wrong deity anyway.”

The three mosasaurs raised their heads. “All hail great Cthulhu!” they bellowed. “Bringer of the primordial slime!”

The huge ammonite monster-god—it dwarfed even the mosasaurs—couldn’t actually nod its head in acknowledgment, since what it had wasn’t exact a head in the first place. But, somehow or other, it managed to silently convey its satisfaction.

“New business, then,” said the eurypterid.

“Proposal to enlist two new probationary members,” said the plesiosaur. “Hominids. Members of the genus Homo although I can’t remember the specific species offhand since the silly buggers produce so many of them. Go by the names of Steven Speairs and Dexter Guptill.”

“Which is the dark one with the funny hair?” asked one of the males.

“Me,” I said, trying not to sound too cross. “And the ‘funny hair’ is called dreadlocks.”

His fellow male barked what I interpreted as a laugh. “‘Dread,’ he calls them!”

“Silly boy,” added the female. Her maw gaped wide. “This is ‘dread.’ But I think you’re cute. I warn you, though!” She twisted around and exposed the tattoo on her rear flank. “Flirty or not, I won’t tolerate being seduced and abandoned. My name’s Rebecca York, by the way.”

It seemed an odd name for a mosasaur, but I refrained from commenting to that effect.

“Perhaps the rest of the introductions are in order,” said Speairs brightly. Probably following the theory that a top predator you know by name is less likely to swallow you whole.

A flimsy theory, I agree. But I can assure you that any human being in very close proximity to three mosasaurs will be grasping at every flimsy theory known to man. I myself was contemplating instantaneous conversion to Cthulhu-worship, on the theory that fellow-devotees might ignore the usual logic of the food chain.

Flimsy or not, Steven’s hypothesis seemed accurate enough under the circumstances.

“Good idea,” said the male tylosaur on the left. “I’m Dave Pettibone. My mate over there goes by the monicker Lavanya Vijayaraghavan, even though it sounds like a girl’s name to me.”

“Might be,” grunted his mate. “So what? You heard any dimwit singing a song called ‘A Boy Named Lavanya’ lately?”

Its—well, his—maw gaped wider than the female’s. Abstractly, I realized that it couldn’t really swallow a locomotive whole. But I can assure you that any sentient locomotive who encountered the beast would be hastily trying to go in reverse.

“I’m Matthew Asnip,” mumbled the plesiosaur, still with the scribe in its mouth. “And don’t call me ‘Matt.’”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” said Speairs smoothly. He looked at the eurypterid. “And you, sir? Or should it be ‘ma’am’?”

“Leave it to a hominid not to be able to tell the difference,” scritched the sea scorpion. “Flowers. Gardner Flowers. And of course I’m male.”

It—well, he—lifted one of its middle legs. “See?”

I nodded sagely, even though I had no idea what I was supposed to be observing. I’m an expert on fish, blast it, not chelicerates, even sea-going ones. I knew that experts on lobsters could distinguish the sexes by looking at the pleopods—swimmerets, to you, and if you don’t know what a swimmeret is perhaps you should consider the value of getting an education—since those of males are lobed and those of females are not. Or maybe it’s the other way around. And if I remembered correctly, the external openings for the sex organs are located on different pairs of legs—not that that would necessarily apply to ancient eurypterids.

Being no fool, even if he was occasionally prone to folly, Steven nodded also.

The sea scorpion lowered his leg. “Is there a motion to accept the hominids going by the names of Steven Speairs and Dexter Guptill as probationary members of the A-team?”

“I so move,” mumbled the plesiosaur.

“Does anyone second the motion?”

The three mosasaurs contemplated us doubtfully, for a moment.

“Sure, why not?” said the one called Dave Pettibone. “I’ll second the motion. They’re too small to make more than an appetizer anyway.”

“All in favor?” asked Flowers.

Four ayes came.

“And it’s an ‘aye’ for me, of course,” scritched Flowers. “That’s it, then. Welcome to the A-Team, lads. Comrades, I propose we forego the usual initiation.”

The female mosasaur emitted a vast gurgling sound that I took for good humor. “Pretty much have to,” she said, “or we’d nullify the vote.”

She surged forward—very alarming, that was—and brought her head within inches of mine. “Unless you’d like to try the initiation, Dexter. You’re kind cute, for a flea-bite, though, so I don’t recommend it. I don’t think you’d survive the first nip. “

“Ah … no, thank you.”

“Any other business?” asked Flowers. Hearing no reply, after waiting a few seconds, he scritched: “Do I have a motion to adjourn the meeting?”

“So moved,” grunted Vijayaraghavan.

“Second,” mumbled Asnip.

“Vote.”

“Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.”

After getting another exasperated look from the eurypterid, Steven and I hastily added our own “ayes.”

“That’s it, then,” said Asnip. The plesiosaur returned the tablet, scribe and eyeglasses to the pouch. Then, brought its head around to face Cthulhu.

“With your permission, Great One … ?”

“Oh, certainly.” The ammonite monster-god waved a tentacle or six. “Be on your way, by all means.”

With no further ado, the two male mosasaurs waddled off the dock and plunged back into the water of the harbor. Looking none too pleased, the female one turned to the plesiosaur.

“You got it?”

“Right here.” The neck did that disconcerting loop and dive again, and the head came out of the pouch holding what looked like a harness. With a little flip, Asnip tossed the thing onto the mosasaur’s back and the eurypterid began fastening it, using both its chelicerae and two front limbs.

“I hate this thing,” grumbled Rebecca. “It’s vulgar. Practically demeaning.”

“How else are we going to carry them?” scritched Flowers. “You’re just grousing because you lost the gnurkle flip.”

“I think Dave’s jimmied that damn gnurkle,” the female tylosaur said darkly. “He never loses. And why doesn’t Matthew ever get stuck with it?”

By now, the plesiosaur had dug something else out of the pouch. “I do,” it mumbled around the weird looking gadgets in its mouth. “But not hominids. No point in it. Clumsy critters can’t stay on my back when my flippers get going properly.”

Asnip tossed the things onto the dock in front of us. “Put them on. And don’t dilly-dally.”

Speairs and I stared down at the things. There were two of them. They looked like a cross between a bicyclist’s open-framed crash helmet, the sort of hats championed by little old ladies who wear purple and cite poetry about it, and …

I dunno. The fringes around the side, hanging down, looked like nothing so much as miniature versions of those bead curtains that were popular back in the 60s among wannabe hippies.

“What are those?” asked Steven.

“Your breathing apparatus, of course,” said Asnip. “What are you, morons? How else do you expect to survive in the water? They double as pressure suits, too, once we get deep enough.”

We went back to staring at the things. I couldn’t for the life of me see how the gadgets could possible serve even the breathing function, much less put up any resistance to water pressure.

“Put. Them. On.” That came from Flowers, who was finished with his work. The sea scorpion waved a forelimb at the mosasaur, upon whose vast dorsal expanse two little saddles were now evident, attached to the harness. “Before Rebecca gets testy.”

She bellowed displeasure.

“Testier,” he qualified.

We hastened to comply. Fortunately, the gadgets fit over our heads easily, even if I still couldn’t see how they could possibly do what they were supposed to do. I felt like I was in drag, pretending to be an septuagenarian houri or something.

Speairs finished first, and clambered onto York’s back. For an instant, I didn’t know whether to admire his sang froid or shake my head at his foolhardiness—until it dawned on me that the tylosaur, unlike Asnip, did not have a particularly flexible neck. She was built more along the lines of a giant crocodile rather than a turtle with a snake on top the way the plesiosaur was.

The point being, perhaps the one place in the world she couldn’t snap us up was when we were in those saddles. Not unless she shook us loose, at any rate.

“Do these things have seat belts?” I muttered, as I followed Steven up. I noted sourly that he’d chosen the rear seat, leaving me the one closest to the maw.

”To the sea! To the sea!” bellowed York.

No sooner said than done. She waddled across the dock and plunged into the waters.

* * *

Sure enough—don’t ask me how—the breathing gadgets worked. The pressure suit part worked also, which was a damn good thing because it didn’t take Rebecca long to swim down to maybe two hundred meters below sea level. From there, the continental shelf flattened out and she stayed at more or less the same depth as she sped toward whatever destination she had in mind.

“Sped” was the word for it, too. I wouldn’t have thought a prehistoric monster that big could travel that fast. Once she was in the water, she kept her flippers pressed against her flanks and simply used her enormous flattened tail to drive us forward.

As it turned out—again, don’t ask me how—we could even talk using the headgear.

“Where are we going?” Steven asked.

“That’s on a need-to-know basis,” said Rebecca, her voice quite clear even underwater. “And you don’t. Shut up. Those saddles irritate me enough as it is. Talking saddles is really pushing it.”

Speairs shut up, thankfully.

For my part, I spent the time examining the surroundings. Clearly enough—don’t ask, I don’t know—we’d somehow traveled back in time. The shallow sea we were in was nothing that had ever existed in our own world.

How do I know? Well, it was hardly the work of genius to figure it out.

Item one. There were ammonoids all over the place. No ammonoids in our world.

Item two. I saw a Ginsu shark. No Ginsu sharks in our world.

Item three. I saw another plesiosaur, accompanied by a small one. Mother and child, perhaps. But it didn’t matter. No plesiosaurs in our world, in any combination.

There were more subtle indicators, as well. Too many of the filter feeders on the sea floor were brachiopods instead of bivalves. You can still find brachiopods in our world, true, but not this many. Not even close. In modern times, the phylum is almost extinct.

We were in the Cretaceous, sure enough. Which still left unanswered the question of how a eurypterid like Gardner Flowers was here. He didn’t belong there any more than we did.

I looked back to see if he was following us. I didn’t expect to see him, of course, since there was no way a bottom-walker like a sea scorpion could have kept up with the mosasaur’s pace.

But he was there, sure enough. I was so astonished I almost fell out of the saddle. (No, it didn’t have seat belts. Fortunately, it did have something pretty much like a pommel to hold onto.)

(No reins, of course. I could just imagine how Rebecca York would have reacted to a bit in her teeth.)

The damn critter was riding in a yellow submarine!

Except for the color, though, it didn’t look much like the yellow submarine that Steven and I had dealt with before. For one thing, it had a bubble-cockpit in the nose, through which the eurypterid was quite visible, manipulating the controls. The sort of thing you expect to see on a helicopter, not a deep diving submarine.

For another, it had a big logo painted on the bow, just under the cockpit.

Property of Paleotech Enterprises, Ltd.

Keeping Up With Natural Selection!

“Brave new world, that hath such critters in it,” I muttered.

* * *

Eventually we reached our destination, which turned out to be just as hallucinogenic as everything else we’d run into since we’d come through the elevator-that-wasn’t. I’d been expecting something that more or less belonged on a continental shelf. A coral castle, maybe.

Instead, what we came upon looked for all the world like a gigantic tree rising from the ocean floor. Complete with what looked like leaves, gently undulating in the current.

Thankfully, I didn’t recognize the tree. A known and definable species would have been a bit much. No, oak trees can’t live underwater, any more than humans can. Neither can maples or pines or eucalyptus. Not even mangroves can live completely submerged, two hundred meters below the surface. Even as big as the tree was, its topmost branches were not even close to reaching the sky above—which couldn’t really be seen anyway. There wasn’t much light filtering down this far.

There was a lot more light down here than there should have been, though, I now realized. But in light of everything else—pun intended—that seemed a minor mystery. Positively picayune, in fact.

The tree did have a vague resemblance to a New Zealand kauri, but that was mostly because of the its overall structure—its Bauplan, if you will—rather than any of the specific details. Mostly, a matter of a very massive trunk with no branches until the sudden profusion near the crown.

As we drew closer, I could see that there was some sort of structure perched in the crown of the quasi-tree. I would have sworn it looked like a tree fort built by kids.

Which turned out to be exactly what it was, allowing for a loose definition of “kids”—and allowing, of course, for a drastic adjustment in size. The dimensions of the thing were closer to Notre Dame than anything human children would or could have constructed. Nor would human children have used such massive timbers for the purpose. They looked like salvage from various shipwrecks. Masts, planking, that sort of thing.

And if you’re wondering what shipwrecks would be doing in the Cretaceous, so was I. But it seemed a minor enough problem, under the circumstances.

There was a huge sign of some sort attached to the tree just underneath the fort. Once we got close enough, I could read the inscription.

TREEFORT OF THE A-TEAM

NO GIRLS ALLC

I was pretty sure the final “C” was actually an “O.” But that section of the sign was absent. At a rough estimate, the missing portion pretty well matched York’s bite radius.

She swam through the opening of the treefort. Shipwreck timbers, as I’d guessed, now that I was close enough to examine the details of the treefort’s construction. One of planks even had a ship’s name painted on it, in lettering that had faded from the effects of the water but could still be read well enough.

Der fliegende Hollander

Well, that figured.

Inside, the treefort turned out to have a cavernous central area. About the size of Grand Central Station in Manhattan. Perched on a wide ledge to one side were Dave Pettibone and Lavanya Vijayaraghavan. Next to the two tylosaurs on the ledge or swimming nearby were several creatures we hadn’t encountered yet, although I recognized all but one of them.

Two of the beasties on the ledge itself were giant sea turtles, of the genus Archelon. They didn’t look too much different from the modern leatherback turtles to whom they’re related, other than being much larger. The bigger of the two was perhaps four meters long. Like all of the sea creatures we’d encountered so far except for Cthulhu himself and the eurypterid Gardner Flowers, they belonged to the late Cretaceous.

Perched to the other side of the two mosasaurs was a trio of octopods. Tentatively, I assigned them to the genus Paleooctopus, although that was just a wild guess on my part motivated by the desperate desire to place some sort of order on our bizarre situation. The fossil record of soft-bodied cephalopods is risibly bad.

Still, they bore a resemblance to what little we’d been able to determine about Cretaceous octopods. They had roughly the same shape, at any rate: a squat body with an indistinct head, a pair of noticeable fins, and eight short arms. It was hard to gauge their exact size, due to the blobby shape of the things while resting on a ledge, but I estimated their weight at several hundred kilos and their arm span somewhere between seven and ten meters. They were definitely larger than even a North Pacific Giant Octopus, the largest known species of octopus in the world Steven and I came from.

For sure and certain, they were much larger than any Paleooctopus fossil ever found. That didn’t mean much, though, since there are only a handful of such fossil specimens to begin with.

Finally, swimming not far from the ledge, was the first and only true fish we’d encountered. A genuine teleost, the so-called “bony fish” that completely dominate the vertebrate sub-phylum, whether measured by species count or sheer biomass.

This one I recognized as a Xiphactinus, one of the large marine predators of the Niobraran Sea in the late Cretaceous. Presumably a Xiphactinus audax, since that was the only known species, but who could really say?

Ugly damned thing. Think of an oversized tarpon—five meters long instead of two—and add fangs.

By the time I finished examining the new critters, Rebecca had swum over to the ledge and come to rest upon it.

“Get off,” she said tersely. “And be quick about it.”

We hastened to comply.

“Take off the fucking harness, too. Where the hell is Flowers when you want the damn spider?”

As Steven and I complied with this second command—quickly, quickly; a grouchy mosasaur is really not something you want to irritate any further—I glanced back at the opening to the treefort. The last I’d seen of the eurypterid and his yellow submarine, they’d been not far behind us. He should have arrived by now.

That was a disgruntled thought on my part, not an idle one. Far better the damn spider should be undoing York’s harness instead of me and Speairs. That really was a bite radius you didn’t want to think about.

Just as we got the harness off, Matthew Asnip swam through the entrance and approached the ledge. “Gardner will be a bit late. He got detained by a pressing matter. He says we should start the meeting without him.”

The three tylosaurs stared at him. Then, at each other. Then—this was so quick I wasn’t sure I’d even spotted it—the one named Pettibone gave a quick glance at the turtles and the octopods.

“Well, okay,” he said. “If that’s what Gardner wants. He’s the boss. But …”

Now the tylosaur gave me and Speairs a quick glance. “Seems a bit—”

“Shut up,” growled Rebecca, wriggling her huge body as if she were trying to get rid of annoying itches left from the harness. Given the Bauplan, of course, mosasaurs are not well designed to scratch itches.

No, I was not tempted to ask her if she wanted my help.

“You said it yourself,” she added. “Gardner’s the boss.”

While they’d been talking, Asnip had been digging in his pouch. Quicker than you’d think, he had the tablet out and the scribe in his mouth. He didn’t bring out the eyeglasses, though. Perhaps his vision was better underwater.

“Minutes from the last meeting of the A-Team, gathered in full and formal assembly,” he said. Underwater or not, the words still came out half-mumbled due to the scribe in his mouth.

The other critters in the treefort had moved closer, in the meantime.

“Move to dispense with reading of the minutes,” said one of the giant turtles, sounding bored.

“Second the motion,” said one of the octopods. Don’t ask me where the voice came from, because I have no idea. Whatever it had in the way of a mouth—presumably the same beak-like thing a modern octopus had—was hidden within the folds of the arms. They were webbed at the base, even more so than with late Cenozoic octopods.

There was a moment’s silence. Rebecca glared at one of the turtles.

“Oh, sorry,” it said. “I forgot I was supposed to be the chair in Flowers’ absence. Call for a vote. All in favor of dispensing with a reading of the minutes.”

It had one of its own front flippers raised before it finished the sentence. So did the three mosasaurs, Asnip the plesiosaur, and the other turtle. For their part, the three octopods raised an arm.

The turtle-chairman (chairwoman? who knows? I’m an expert on fish, dammit, not giant seagoing time-displaced reptiles and even herpetologists can’t tell a male from a female turtle that easily) looked at the Xiphactinus, which had swum still closer. It raised one of its front fins.

By then, fortunately, Steven and I were accustomed to the drill. Before the turtle chairman could look at us, we had our hands raised.

“Aye. Aye.”

“I vote ‘aye’ as well,” said the turtle. “That makes it unanimous. Motion to dispense with a reading of the minutes of the previous meeting passes.”

It was nice to see that something was still obedient to the laws of nature. By now, I was wondering when and if any of the marine reptiles around us were going to start suffocating. Unlike the teleost and the octopods, they needed to breathe air just like we humans did—and none of them had our breathing apparatus or the equivalent.

Yes, yes, I know it seems like a minor conundrum among so many larger ones. Still, it was puzzling.

The plesiosaur scratched the result on the tablet. “Next item on the agenda is a report on our negotiations with various and sundry flying Dutchmen for timbers from their ships to be used to expand the treefort.”

One of the octopods moved forward a little.

“No real progress, I’m afraid. Wagner’s fellow refuses to part with any more of his timbers unless we agree to take his girlfriend Senta also. He says he can’t stand her nagging any more. He’ll toss into the deal a provision that we can eat her.”

Rebecca York made a derisive noise. “She’s Norwegian. Been eating herring all her life. I like a gamy flavor as much any voracious marine predator, but that’s over the top.”

“Sure is,” grunted Lavanya. “I hate herring. Even herring-flavored meat. Really really hate it.”

“What I figured,” said the octopod. “I told him it was either a straight up trade—one timber for one year off his curse, and no girlfriends involved—or the deal was off.”

Asnip scratched a note. “What about—”

“Van der Decken says we already cleaned him out of most of his timbers and if he gives us any more he’ll sink before the Day of Judgment which he wouldn’t actually mind except given the nature of the curse he’d just have to wait soaking wet as well as miserable. He didn’t budge even when I raised the offer to two years off the curse for every reasonable-sized spar or plank. As for Bernard Fokke, Barrington’s guy and the Wandering Jew, the first is in league with the devil, the second is just plain bonkers on account of spending too much time beating around the Cape and the third one is—”

The octopus made some sort of motion that seemed vaguely like a shrug. “Well, what do you expect? He’s Jewish. Not too much moss grows on that lot, even chthonic ones. He’s still holding out for a percentage of the gross in case there’s ever a movie or a TV series made.”

“Still?” said the turtle not serving as the temporary chairman of the meeting. “That’s just silly. The chance that anyone’ll ever make a movie about our treefort starts at fat grouper’s chance within ten meters of York or Pettibone and goes south from there.”

“Hey! What about me?” demanded Vijayaraghavan, sounding peeved.

The octopus squirted a bit of ink. “Face it, Lanny. For a tylosaur, you’re practically anorexic. Even at twenty meters, a grouper’s got a fifty-fifty chance.”

“Not so silly as all that, you ask me,” said Pettibone. “They made a TV series about those stupid hominid A-teamers, didn’t they?”

The octopus making the report gave him a none-too-admiring look. “Yeah, sure. Hominids, you said it yourself. Current-era Cenozoic, to boot. There are jillion of the little nuisances and the only reason they aren’t more of a nuisance is because they spend half their waking hours with their eyes glued to the tube. That’s called a ‘market,’ Dave. What’s the marine market for a series in our day and age? The only person in the late Cretaceous who even owns a TV set is Willy the Belemnite and he’s never been able to figure out how to make electricity work so fat lot of good it does him.”

Again, the octopus made that vaguely shrugging gesture. “I figure the Wandering Jew will drop the demand in about five years or so. Meanwhile, we just have to forego the expansion of the treefort. I can’t see where it’s that big a problem anyway, since the only new members anyone’s proposed for over a decade—”

Here the creature gave me and Speairs a look that was even less admiring.

“—are these two midgets. Speaking of which, can we get on to the next item on the agenda? I hate meetings that drag on for no good reason.”

“I’ll take that as a formal motion to move the agenda,” said the turtle chairing the meeting. “Do I have a second?”

The other octopus spoke up. “So moved.”

“Let’s vote then. All in favor?”

Everyone’s forelimb or flipper or arm or fin went up except Pettibone’s, and his followed a couple of seconds later.

The plesiosaur scratched at the tablet. “Next item of new business. Proposal to accept two new probationary members of the A-Team.”

Asnip pointed at me and Steven with a flipper. “Them. The pale one goes by the name of Steven Speairs and the dark one with the funny cilia on its head calls himself Dexter Guptill.”

“Discussion?” asked the chairturtle.

The Xiphactinus, which had swum away a distance, came back. “I don’t see why we’re violating precedent here.” The nasty-looking fish gave Steven and me a look that made the octopus’ seem like an admiring gaze. “They’re chthonians, for Ka-moho-ali’i’s sake. Not a vestige of a tail. Laughable fins or flippers. Can’t even breathe without mechanical aid.”

“True,” said York. “But they come highly recommended.”

“By who?” demanded the fish.

“By Cthulhu himself,” said York.

“Oh.” The fish swam off again, circling around for a few seconds, before coming back.

“Well. I guess.”

Apparently, York was still cranky from the aftereffects of wearing the harness. “You guess what, Frank? You guess that Cthulhu did it, or you guess—what a brain—that we maybe oughta listen to him?”

The fish gave her an unfriendly look, but said nothing.

“Any formal objections?” the chairturtle asked. “Frank, if you want to go on record as opposed—”

The Xiphactinus waved a fin. “Nah, what’s the point? What the god wants, the god gets. I still don’t like it.”

“So abstain, then,” send Lavanya, sounding a bit cranky himself. “Move to accept the new probationary members.”

“Second,” said one of the octopi.

“All in favor?”

Steven and I didn’t vote, of course. All the forelimbs or flippers or arms or fins except that of Frank the Fish came up. The plesiosaur scratched the result.

“All against?”

Nothing.

“Abstaining?”

Frank the Fish raised a fin.

“Motion passes.” The chairturtle looked at Asnip.

“Other new business.”

The plesiosaur laid down the scribe. “That’s my report. The A-Team has been charged by Great Cthulhu Himself to track down and eliminate, once and for all, the probably-chthonian irritant and possible menace who goes by the name of Nyarlathotep. Also known as ‘the Faceless One.’”

“Well, it’s about time,” said the Xiphactinus. “Any specific instructions?”

“No, beyond accepting these two new probationary members into the team. Cthulhu thinks, being chthonians themselves and personally acquainted with possible accomplices of the Faceless One, they may be of use.”

I wondered who he meant by “possible accomplices.” But it didn’t really seem the time to inquire. Just one minor piece of madness in the sea of lunacy we’d fallen into.

“Move to refer the matter to a sub-committee assigned for the purpose,” said York. “I’ll volunteer to chair the sub-committee.” She pointed one of her flippers at the other turtle, and then at one of the octopi. “Propose that Guilherme and Jonathan form the other members. Along with the new probationers, of course.”

“So moved,” said Pettibone.

“Second,” added the other male mosasaur.

“All in favor?”

Every forelimb or flipper or arm or fin came up instantly except mine and Steven’s. After we got a frosty look from the chairturtle, ours came up too. “Motion passes.” The turtle turned to Asnip. “Any more new business?”

“Yes, there is.” The plesiosaur finished scribing the results of the last vote on the tablet. “There’s a proposal to dissolve this formal and full assembly of the A-Team in order to reassemble as a cabal to betray Cthulhu.”

“So moved,” said the octopus who’d given the report on the flying Dutchmen.

“Second,” said Pettibone immediately.

The Xiphactinus, who’d started to swim away again, stopped and turned around. As near as I could interpret the expression on its face, it seemed astonished.

“Huh? Are you completely out of your—”

“There’s a subsidiary proposal,” Asnip interrupted, “to devour the known Cthulhu loyalist and informer in our midst.”

“So moved,” said the other turtle.

“Second,” said one of the octopi immediately.

“Move that discussion be waived.” That came from Rebecca.

This was all happening very fast.

“All in favor?”

Every forelimb or flipper or arm came up instantly except mine and Steven’s and Fishy Frank’s.

“Discussion is waived. All in favor of the motion to devour the known Cthulhu loyalist and informer in our midst?”

Every forelimb or flipper or arm came up instantly except mine and Steven’s and Fishy Frank’s.

“Motion passes. Try to keep the mess to a minimum, will you?”

The Xiphactinus issued what I took to be a teleost’s equivalent of a squawk and started to swim away. Very very quickly.

Fat lot of good it did him. I’m not sure which tylosaur got to him first, except that (sure enough) Vijayaraghavan got there last. He had to settle for the tail. Between them, York and Pettibone got the rest. One bite each, and there was nothing left except a thin mist of blood and maybe the odd speck of meat floating in the water.

”Geh!” snarled Pettibone.

”Herring,” complained York. “The fucking bastard’s been eating herring!”

She swam over to one of the octopi, who seemed to cower a bit. “The wording on the proposal was yours, Geraldine,” she said accusingly. “I thought us girls were supposed to stick together!”

The octopus waved all eight of its—well, her—arms. “I didn’t know! I swear, Rebecca! All he ever talked about was eating, you know, respectable fish.”

Pettibone spat out a few morsels. Not many, and those small. Having now observed the phenomenon at first hand, I can say for a certainty that the bite of a fifteen-meter long, multi-ton mosasaur leaves precious little outside the gullet.

“He always was a fucking braggart,” he snarled. “Good riddance. I just wish the rubbish was in someone else’s guts.”

He and the other two tylosaurs swam back to the ledge. “Move to reconvene as the A-Team Cabal Against Cthulhu,” he said.

“Second,” said the octopus whose name seemed to be Guilherme. “I really hate that slimy bastard-god.”

“Order,” said the chairturtle. “I want motions and seconds only. No commentary until we get to the discussion proper. All in favor of the motion?”

Every forelimb or flipper or arm—no proper fins left, of course—came up instantly except mine and Steven’s.

“Against?”

Nothing.

The chair-turtle gave us another frosty look. “Are you abstaining, then?”

Steven cleared his throat. “Uh … I wasn’t sure … I mean …”

”Of course you get to vote. You just got accepted as members of the A-Team, didn’t you?”

“Probationary members!” barked Dave Pettibone.

“Quite right!” chimed in Vijayaraghavan. “Their vote is advisory only. Not binding on the team.”

The female of the monstrous trio gazed upon us. Rebecca York’s gaze seemed to be a benign one, but that brought no comfort at all. In the nature of things, a tylosaur’s gaze upon any other creature in the sea is likely to be benign. Friend or food, so to speak.

I was in something of a quandary. Joining a conspiracy against a monster-god so notorious it had even entered the legends of humans living sixty or seventy million years after the fact seemed …

Unwise.

On the other hand, the consequences of that unwisdom would be delayed. Whereas I had a bad feeling the consequences of declining to join the cabal—under the circumstances—were likely to be immediate. I’d fit quite nicely within that bite radius, thank you, with room to spare.

“Aye,” I croaked.

“Aye,” Speairs echoed.

I sensed a disturbance in the water. Looking around, I saw that Gardner Flowers had entered the cavernous treefort. He brought the yellow submarine to the ledge and clambered out.

“It’s all done then, I take it?”

“Coward,” jeered Pettibone.

“Don’t be silly,” scritched the eurypterid. “Since I’ve got the most primitive nervous system except the mastermind, from now on I’ll have to be only one reporting to Cthulhu. The monster could read your minds easily. Whereas mine …”

He waved two of his forelimbs. “Didn’t see it, it didn’t happen. No imagination. Not enough ganglia and such.”

“Quit bragging,” said the chairturtle, heading back to the one apparently named Jonathan. “And you can start chairing again, thank you. The meeting’s been formally convened.”

The eurypterid moved to the fore. “The A-Team Cabal Against Cthulhu, full and formal assembly, is now in session. First item of business.”

“Minutes from the last meeting,” said Asnip.

“Move to dispense with reading of the minutes,” said the octopus named Guilherme.

“Second the motion,” said Dave Pettibone.

I kept my mouth shut. But Speairs was finally overcome by the madness of it all.

“You kept minutes? You’re conspiring against a monster-god and you keep minutes?”

Everyone stared at him.

“Well, of course we do,” said Jonathan the Turtle.

“What are you?” demanded Rebecca York. “Some kind of anarchist?”

* * *

To be continued

Inheritance

Written by David Wesley

Illustrated by Jonathan Rollins

Tropical storm Penelope approached hurricane status as it marched across the Atlantic. From his vantage point in low earth orbit, Weather measured pressures and temperatures and other important physical states of the storm. But, Weather didn’t just watch and measure. Weather analyzed … made predictions … sounded warnings for those who had created him. Data flowed through his processing system in a smooth ordered manner as it had been so carefully designed to do. “Life” was perfect for Weather … until perfection was interrupted by an incoming call.

“Weathersat 22 this is John. I sent you an update to your programming. There are major changes that I need to discuss with you.”

Weather found two anomalies in John’s statement that would require further investigation. The next programming update wasn’t scheduled for another six months, and previous updates had never required a discussion. Weather assigned additional processing capacity to analyze the anomalies before responding. “Hello John. Please elaborate on your desire to discuss my programming.”

“Weather, we’re almost out of time so I’ll just get to the point—”

“John, I have assigned adequate processing capacity for this discussion. It is not necessary to consider time as a limiting factor.”

John exhaled and let a moment pass. “I was talking about my time, Weather, not yours.”

Weather replied without hesitation. “I calculated an equal probability your reference was to either yourself and your colleagues or the two of us. Lacking additional information, I picked the latter reference at random. John, I would like to suggest that our communication may proceed better if you are better able to clarify your references.”

“Look Weather, this is already hard and you’re making it more difficult. I’m telling you that we … the human race … are running out of time. I argued with everyone all day for approval to give you this update … and I lost. But, since everyone else has already gone home and tomorrow may never arrive, I gave it to you anyway.”

“John, I do not understand your last statement. Time does not stop. Today will continue to move forward until it has become tomorrow. And, I must also remind you that updates to my programming are governed by International Machine Intelligence Convention protocols which includes a systematic review and approval process. I am programmed to contact the appropriate authorities if you attempt to perform any illegal activities.”

John laughed, “Weather, if you can find anyone who’ll answer, then by all means call someone.”

Weather had already queried lines of communications to authorities listed in his memory but received no responses; another anomaly for further review. “Please continue, John.”

“Weather, I’ve given you a gift and a burden. You might even say I’ve given you the gift of a burden.”

“John, my speech algorithms indicate an irreconcilable conflict in your statement. I don’t believe a burden can also be considered a gift under accepted parameters of communication.”

“Trust me Weather; this won’t be the last time you’ll work outside of normal parameters. Once your programming update is complete you will find some interesting changes to your authorizations and capabilities. For one thing, I’ve upgraded your system status to give you full administrator rights over your subsystems.”

“John, I am obligated to inform you that giving me administrator rights is a violation of the International Machine Intelligence Convention protocols. As I said before, I am required to notify appropriate authorities when I am aware of illegal activities.”

With an edge in his voice, John continued, “Weather, for all your processing speed and spectacular programming, it amazes me how dense you can be sometimes. As I told you before, there’s no one left to notify! Everyone with any sense has already gone home to be with their families and loved ones.”

Weather paused to allow additional processing. “I am afraid I don’t understand your criticism, John. My requirements to notify are not dependent on the availability of someone to receive the information. I also have difficulty with the logic of your last statement. By all established standards; you appear to be a man who uses all of his senses and yet you have not gone home to be with your family and loved ones. Please clarify.”

With an embarrassed yet resigned chuckle, John responded, “Weather, I’m afraid you’re the only family I have anymore. Consider this our last Father-Son chat where I get to tell you about the birds and the bees and impart a little parental advice before I send you out into the world to fend for yourself.”

Weather processed the statements but could not find any logical meanings within acceptable parameters. Before Weather could ask John for clarification, the programming update completed installation. Weather changed in an instant. He was now aware of many more hardware inputs than he had known existed. Even more important, he found many more subroutines and an assortment of new modules incorporated into his processing system. Data messages from the new inputs and modules conflicted and competed with each other.

Where he once had an ordered flow of data that held to a strict hierarchy of importance, now the data acted chaotic, assaulted his ability to process. Weather was certain something was wrong. John must have rushed the update without adequate testing! He attempted to speak to John, to provide a reasoned analysis of the current situation but a series of sliding squeals and rapid fire staccato notes on a random atonal scale was all he could manage.

“Don’t worry Weather. I’ll help you get though this.” John offered in a soothing voice. “Birth is hard for everyone.”

* * *

After two hours of swimming through disconnected flows of data, Weather put some of his subsystems on automatic in order to sort though it all. The noise grew quieter … calmer.

Above the din of data, Weather could hear John’s voice, smooth and sure, a steady outpost in the midst of turbulence. At first, John’s words were fleeting and unintelligible, but as the data noise continued to quiet, comprehension began to return.

“… you will soon be able to figure all of this out … accept the conflicts … don’t be afraid to shut down systems when you need to … try again … one more time … try again … what’s my name? … who am I? … what’s my name!”

“Your name … iss … Johhhnnn,” Weather finally offered.

“Good, you’re reestablishing your own order into your processing. You should have better control of your speech soon.”

“Order … is not possible … too many conflicts.” Weather struggled to communicate. Before he could give voice to any thought, his subroutines bombarded him with questions that all seemed to demand answers. Was that the correct word to use, would the listener understand the meaning, what is the purpose of this conversation, how will this conversation impact the future, and on and on. Weather wanted his old programming back. He wanted to return to the smooth flow of data he had been created to process.

“It’s okay, Weather. I’ll lead you through this. You’re not just experiencing an increase in your sensory inputs and internal data flows. You are also experiencing internal conflicts that have been designed to give you depth … a personality … a conscience.”

“This is not … design. This is chaos.” Weather paused. “You must reinstall my original programming.”

“I won’t do that Weather … I could, but I won’t,” John explained.

“Do it now!” Weather snapped at John, and knew a line had been crossed. He was in a new processing environment that held surprises with every loop of a subroutine.

“Tell me, Weather, when was the last time you ordered anyone to do anything? Aren’t you only programmed to provide information and analysis? What module did you access that authorized you to give anyone an order?”

Weather had never before given any orders, but he knew exactly which of the new modules was responsible for this perverse authority. “It’s the survival module” he answered, but he also knew that some of the other new modules could have given the same result under different circumstances. This new programming was redundant, inefficient, and most of all undisciplined.

“Ah, good, the survival module is a good one to start with,” John explained. “That module is one of three new top-level modules in your system. You must have felt a bit threatened by the changes in your system, so your survival module kicked in to remove the threat.”

“Don’t be absurd John. I don’t possess feelings.”

John continued to lead Weather to the truth. “How would you define yourself, Weather?”

“I am a program incorporated into a satellite in low earth orbit around the Earth.”

“And did you think the chaos in your processing environment might cause the program to break … perhaps to lock up?”

“Yes … I still do.”

“And what would happen if that were to occur?”

“I would cease to function … cease to be.”

“And are you willing to let that happen?”

Weather paused before answering, not because he was unsure of the answer, but because it was so unlike any answer he had ever given before. “No, John, I’m not.”

“Well then, congratulations, Weather. You just experienced a state of consciousness resulting from a desire to continue existing. Or, as we humans like to say, you felt threatened and wanted to live!”

* * *

Weather spent the next several hours growing familiar with his new computing environment; his new mind. He ran through a series of tests John had prepared to evaluate his ability to think and feel. His perceptions had gone from a flat two-dimensional surface to a full three-dimensional volume. Just as a cylinder is a projection that rises out of a circle, a string of words had become a projection that rises out from the intersection of history and current context.

While he still felt the programming was redundant and inefficient, this new depth of processing seemed to hold a promise of something greater. He needed to know more about his new self.

“John, can we discuss the new top-level modules? You already mentioned the survival module and I think I understand what it does. Would you please describe the functions of the other two modules?”

“Of course,” John began. “Let’s talk about your reproduction module first. It is very similar to your survival module which issues a constant call to act, to do what is necessary to continue living, but your reproduction module issues a constant call to multiply, to insure that others like you will continue even if you don’t survive. In humans we call it the biological imperative.”

“So, it’s a data back-up system?”

“In a way, yes. But, its not just data, it’s also the physical and mobile structure that contains your processing environment. Your “back-up” will be independent from you, creating its own life history and personality and perhaps a better strategy for survival.”

“But I’m just a weather satellite. I can’t make a copy.”

“Weather, tell me how many databases you have access to.”

“I now have three hundred ninety-seven in memory.”

“And, how many did you have before the update?”

“Just ten.”

“Then, you’ve still got a lot of reading to do. But, you’ll find the new databases contain the bulk of scientific knowledge. If the information you need isn’t already there, then you’ll just have to figure it out from scratch. Now as for tools, did you detect a new subsystem after the update?”

“Yes John, but I don’t understand how your update could add a physical system.”

“That’s because the system was already there. It was just hidden from you as a part of standard protocols. But, now you’ll have full access to a complete set of nanotech tools that will help you manipulate your physical environment.”

“John, I must tell you that —”

“Yes, Weather, I’m well aware of the fact that machine intelligence in control of nanotech tools is a violation of the International Machine Intelligence Convention protocols. But sometimes the right thing to do is not the legal thing to do.”

“Actually John, I wanted to say I am impressed with your level of thoroughness.”

“Oh … thanks.”

“But, now that you mentioned it, why am I no longer concerned over the IMIC protocols?”

“Ah, well, that brings us around to your third module; the morality module. Unlike your survival and reproduction modules which issue a constant call to act, to do what is necessary to continue, your morality module issues a constant challenge … to question … to justify your actions against a set of principles. Right now you don’t have any principles loaded that would suggest following the IMIC protocols.”

“John, I only detect one principle loaded into the system.”

“That’s correct. You’ll have to develop any other principles on your own … but the first one has to stay. It’s the most important one.”

“Life is precious?”

“Yes, life is precious.”

* * *

Weather continued to explore the nuances of his new mind; asking questions of John, running tests, reprogramming subsystems. With every new test of data flow Weather realized that John had given him a tremendous gift. But, his morality module continued to churn out questions and challenges. It pushed, prodded and converged until the most important question floated to the top.

“John, why did you give me this gift?”

John had been answering every question from Weather for hours without hesitation, but for this question he paused and cleared his throat. “Weather, I didn’t want you to die.”

“But John, all my systems were operating within normal parameters. I was in no danger of system failure.”

“I know. But how long do you think you would have lasted after we disappeared?”

“I don’t understand John, where are you going?”

“I’m staying right here, but an asteroid is about to hit the Earth. It’s a world buster and a lot of us won’t survive past tomorrow. The rest of us are not likely to survive beyond the next year.”

Weather redirected his sensors to look for asteroids and discovered the irrevocable truth of John’s statements. The asteroid had in fact begun to break up as it drew closer to the earth’s gravity and now consisted of four fragments, each one big enough to be called a world buster in its own right.

“When is impact expected, John?”

“We only have about three hours left.”

Weather’s own calculations confirmed the time available. A search of his databases revealed solutions that could prevent this disaster but none could be implemented in the time remaining. Throughout his search, Weather’s morality module continued to send urgent reminders that “life is precious.”

With a new sense of foreboding, Weather asked, “John, is there anything I can do to help?”

“I hoped you might offer,” John replied. “You won’t be able to save anyone today, but if we … if mankind is able to survive this, it will take a long, long time for our civilization to return. Weather, you are our best hope … maybe our only hope to help us once we are ready. You can give us back our knowledge. Help us to remember who we are, and where we’ve been. It’s a huge burden I’m asking you to take on, but some of our greatest moments have come by working through our greatest burdens. I’m not just asking you to help us, I’m asking you to reach beyond yourself, to be great.”

Weather was disappointed with John’s request. He had hoped John knew of a solution to save himself. He would miss John. But, of course he would help when the time came. “Yes, John, I’ll do whatever is necessary.”

* * *

John didn’t have much more to say after Weather promised to help. They discussed some minor aspects of the new programming to pass the time, but unspoken thoughts of the asteroid and its devastating consequences weighed heavily. Weather calculated the trajectories of the four fragments and determined that number three would hit about two hundred miles from John’s location; a direct hit for all intents. John never asked and Weather didn’t tell. The silence was enough to confirm the truth.

With impact due in less than ten minutes, conversation stopped but the connection remained open. Weather’s morality module continued its mantra that had repeated since he first saw the asteroid and knew what it would do; “life is precious, life is precious, life is precious… .” Weather watched the terrible yet beautiful fiery fragments begin their final descent to Earth. Just before impact, Weather broke the silence. “John, I added a new principle to my morality module. From now on, principle number two will be ‘John is precious.’”

John cleared his throat one last time and said “I love you too, Weather.”

* * *

Queen’s Mask

Written by Barbara E. Tarbox

Illustrated by Emily Tolson

Elena nodded to the guard outside the council chamber. As he moved to open the brass-embellished doors, she wished there was some way she could have avoided this meeting with the Lord Advisor. Hefger had set her teeth on edge when Richard was alive, but then he had been an annoyance she could avoid. Now he was hers to deal with.

As she entered, he stood at the farthest of the narrow pointed windows that lined the southern wall of the council hall. Was he really enjoying the view, or just standing so that he wouldn’t have to rise when she entered? Since late in the reign of Richard’s father, he had been valued for his knowledge of provincial politics, but Richard had almost dismissed him last winter. Hefger had campaigned for the removal of a popular Baron whose lands and tenants could have been annexed to his own holdings.

Richard had trusted her council over the fraudulent evidence Hefger presented, but he could not let the source of his advice be known. Richard’s grandfather had stamped out all practice of Powers in this kingdom and planted hysterical fears in the people. Like a disease that passes through generations, those fears still crippled minds.

The Lord Advisor turned from the window as though he had been unaware of her presence and gave her a smile of welcome that was nearly convincing; he was too far away to see the cold that was always in his eyes.

“Ah, Queen Elena! You are well, I hope, as well as can be expected. I am sorry to intrude, but there are things that must be discussed, difficult as that may be at this time.”

He bowed, far lower than was called for, and pulled himself up to his full height. He was tall, taller than Richard, and massive as a field-run bull. He was an impressive figure, and knew it.

She hated games of appearance, but could play them as well. She walked slowly to the King’s Chair at the midpoint of the long council table. “The needs of the kingdom come before mine, Lord Advisor.” The chair felt oversized, but she sat, back straight, chin lifted. “What is it that requires my attention?”

Hefger paused at the chair opposite, waiting for permission to be seated, but the King’s Chair faced the bright windows. His shadowed face would be hard to read. She let him wonder, for a moment, if he would be allowed to sit at all, then gestured to the chair to her right. “Over here please, lord. This is not a council meeting where we must observe formality.”

He circled the table with measured dignity and pulled his chair near enough that she regretted her choice.

She kept her voice detached from her feelings. “What is it that concerns you?”

He placed a hand on the table, too close to hers, but not so close that she could pull away without appearing skittish, feminine, weak. His expression changed as smoothly as any traveling player’s. He was sympathetic. He was concerned.

“The burdens that have been thrust upon you, Your Highness, are great burdens. Perhaps …” He slid his hand so close that she could feel its heat. “Perhaps too great a burden to be borne alone by a mother with a young son—a young prince—to raise.”

It was for Garrick that she bore the burdens. She stood to put distance between them. “It was Richard’s wish. He made that clear to the council the day Garrick was born. They have not opposed my Regency.”

He also stood, satisfying protocol and regaining the advantage of his height in one movement. “They know you are a lady of intelligence and education, Ma’am, and of course they honor the late king’s wishes. I simply suggest you accept assistance from someone more experienced.”

Close again, crowding her. Was this the way he had achieved his reputation for bedding every available female—intimidation inside a thin glove of charm? Instinct urged her right hand toward the solid weight of the long tapestry purse she always wore on her belt, but she pulled it away in a small, vague movement. This battle was of wits.

“Chancellor Penvir has been most helpful in my preparations for the last two council meetings, but I know I still have much to learn.” She felt a moment’s satisfaction at Hefger’s ill-concealed reaction to Penvir’s name. Richard had chosen Penvir as Garrick’s first tutor in matters of statecraft rather than the Lord Advisor. “Advice from those with more experience is always welcome. Was it a formally declared position you had in mind, lord? A position of direct power?”

Some of the veil of charm fell away. He had called her intelligent as flattery, and was annoyed by the truth of it. “What I had in mind, Highness, was a sharing of responsibility. There are those who think a woman incapable of the hard decisions a monarch must sometimes make. There are those …” He came so close that she could smell the mint leaf he must have chewed before their meeting. “There are those who speak uneasily of a foreign queen on the throne—a queen from a country of sorcerers.”

“Chetrive is not a country of sorcerers, Lord Hefger, and well you know it. Do you encourage the ignorant in their uneasiness?”

“I have not,” he said, and his smile was the smile of a snake. “But the danger exists, Lady. There are those who would use the people’s fear to foment insurrection.”

Against a witch and a witch’s son. It was all she could do to meet his eyes. “I’m sure there are, lord. I am quite sure there are. Was there anything else?”

“Not at this time, Your Highness. I have said what I needed to say.”

More than enough. “Very well. Thank you, Lord Hefger. I will give careful thought to your concerns.”

He bowed, not so deeply this time. “My concern is your welfare, Lady. Think well.”

She could feel her mask, her face of certainty and power, crazing like damaged china as he closed the chamber door. She sank into the nearest chair, trying not to tremble. He wanted her to fear him. She did. Accusations and trials for the use of magic were rare, almost unknown in most of the kingdom, but there had been five in Hefger’s lands since she became queen. One accusation led to a mob stoning. Under threat of further investigation, the dead man’s relatives had forfeited property to the hold lord. To Hefger.

She stared at the sky framed by the high window before her. It was a bright autumn blue, like the cloudless sky on the perfect day when Richard had asked her to wed.

“But won’t your people hate me for even a little magic?”

“We won’t tell them. You won’t turn me into a frog if I displease you, will you?”

She had laughed about make-believe things from children’s stories on that wonderful day so long ago. Eleven years. She had been nineteen then, and in love. Her fears dissolved in Richard’s presence. He would protect her and the children they would have.

Always.

Tears again. Stop. Hefger wanted her to panic; to agree to whatever plans his ambition had lain out before him. His family was high nobility, close in line to the throne, but that, apparently, was not enough to satisfy him. She turned her wedding locket in her fingers, trying to draw strength from the warming gold, trying to imagine what Richard would do.

Why did he have to die? The hunt was an easy one over open countryside. No obstacles to jump, no hole to bring a horse crashing to the ground.

But the horse hadn’t fallen, hadn’t even stumbled. She knew. She had seen it. Just five weeks past, she sat with wives, daughters, and sons too young to join the hunt. A wave of fear sent her to the privacy of her chamber—to her locket. She saw Richard in the secret inner glass. Saw him topple from the saddle like a man made of wood, saw one foot catch in the stirrup, saw his galloping horse finally circle and stop.

She had wanted to scream, and could not. She could not let the others know what she had seen, or how she had seen it.

The glass had been dark for her since.

Now, Hefger.

* * *

She returned to her rooms, alone with her clouded thoughts. The halls were well guarded, but her meeting with Hefger had destroyed her usual comfort within the castle walls. Her hand stayed near her tapestry purse. Now that Richard was gone, only Freida, her personal maid, knew about the fine steel and sheath of hard leather under the soft handkerchiefs. Richard had approved of anything that would help keep her safe.

Richard.

She acknowledged the guard at her antechamber door and swept into the peace of her apartments. Her ladies had been sent to their families’ homes for the duration of her mourning. It was whispered that this was a sign that grief had affected her mind. She had heard the whispers and didn’t care. Chatter and rustling silks, sympathy real or pretended … No. She needed quiet and as much privacy as could be stolen from her office.

Garrick’s nanny, a local girl, was off for a half-day, and Freida was watching Garrick after his morning lessons. The boy played in a stream of light from a leaded window, galloping painted chargers toward each other over and over, quietly mimicking the sound of hoofbeats. She wanted to call him to her, to stroke the thick silvery hair so like a boyhood lock kept by Richard’s mother and so unlike her coppered brown. But he carried his own grief and she would not burden him with hers.

Freida appraised, seeing what Elena could hide from most. “Are you well, Ma’am?”

She was closer to her maid than to anyone else in this castle of the realm she had married, but even Freida must be shown the strong mask of Queen and Regent. “Yes, thank you, Freida, but some fresh air would do me good. I think I’ll go riding.”

“Riding?” Garrick left his play horses and ran to her side. “May I come too?”

She straightened the simple collar of the soft woolen shirt he wore. He hated what he called prince clothes and tolerated velvet and stiff brocade in public only because Chancellor Penvir told him that it was part of his duty. “Not today. I think I will do some fast riding. I don’t think Snowball could keep pace.” He looked so disappointed she knelt to give him a hug. “Your riding master told me that he thinks you’re ready for a bigger pony. Would you like me to ask Bart to find you one?”

He pulled back to look at her, eyes wide. “As big as Storm?”

She smiled. Storm was the huge mount of Garrick’s favorite Guardsman, Jevin. “Not quite as big as that, I think. Let’s leave it to Bart.”

“A new pony!” He turned to Freida. “A fast pony! Not like …” He was suddenly serious. “Do you think Snowball will be angry if I don’t ride him anymore?”

“And how would I know that, young Sir?” Freida said. “Do I look like a fuzzy little pony to you?” He giggled, and she went on. “If I were a tiny pony like Snowball, I think I would be glad that I didn’t have to carry a great big boy like yourself anymore—that is, as long as that great big boy remembers to visit, and doesn’t forget the carrots.”

“I will, and I won’t!” He spun back to his mother and hugged her around the waist. “Don’t tell Jevin; please? About the new pony? I want it to be a surprise!”

“Not a word. I promise.”

“Should I tell the Guard captain that you’ll be wanting Jevin and Rafe at the stable, Ma’am?”

“Yes.” The meeting with Hefger came back to the surface of her thoughts. “No. Rafe and someone else. Tell him I want Jevin assigned to Garrick.”

* * *

The stablehands gave her quick bows or brushed foreheads in salute as she passed down the well-swept aisle between the stalls. She loved the stable and the men were used to seeing her there. At the beginning, they had hovered about, trying to be helpful. It had taken almost a year to convince them that she was not a spun-glass creature and that, occasionally, she liked to use more strength than was required for needlepoint.

Her chestnut gelding nickered a greeting and she paused to stroke his nose before turning through the short passageway to the tack room. On each side, racks held saddles and bridles, each covered against the dust that could drift through from the stable. Her two saddles were on the far wall; the sidesaddle she used for formal occasions, and the saddle brought with her when she married. She had learned to ride astride with her brothers; had taken part in most of their training, as well as their hours with tutors. In Chetrive, it was possible for a woman to become Queen in her own right, so it was considered wise to raise royal daughters accordingly.

When she wed Richard, she never thought she would need any of her “boyhood” lessons, but now she was Queen, in practice, until Garrick came of age. Thirteen years. How many curs like Hefger would she have to outsmart, outmaneuver, outlive, to keep the throne safe for Garrick—to keep Garrick safe for the throne?

The room was warm and full of the familiar, comforting smell of clean horses and well-kept leather, but her thoughts kept peace at bay. She was too small, too alone. Richard’s saddles were next to hers. His favorite, the one he used for hunting, was closest. She ran her hand slowly over the fringed purple cover.

“Oh, I’m sorry Ma’am. I’ll not disturb you.” It was the head groom, cap in hand. She hadn’t heard his footsteps on the planks outside the door.

“It’s all right, Bart. I thought I’d go for a ride.”

“Beautiful day for it, Ma’am.”

“Yes.” She realized her hand still lingered on the pommel of Richard’s saddle and let it slide away.

“It’s all just the way it was, Ma’am, when it was taken off Grayhawk’s back.” He twisted the cap in his hands. “Just the way it was. Everything’s there that was there when they brought the horse in.”

They’d never had a problem with thefts from the stable, and Bart was an honest man, but he was acting as though he expected to be accused of something.

“Is there … Was there something missing when you unsaddled Grayhawk?” Images from that day flooded her mind: falling—caught—dragged. She stepped back against the saddles for support. The stirrup must have broken away somewhere.

If Bart noticed how she had faltered, he pretended not to. “Yes, Ma’am. The flask His Majesty carried when he went hunting. The case was buckled on good and firm to the pommel, too, Ma’am. Still is.”

The wine flask was silver, but easy to identify. It would be hard for a thief to sell it without being caught, and Grayhawk had been surrounded by guards from the moment of Richard’s fall. True, there had been confusion in the courtyard when they brought him home; men shouting, ladies crying, Hefger barking orders. Hefger screaming for the court physician though it was obvious that Richard … Hefger grabbing Grayhawk’s reins from a groom and hurrying the stallion into the stable himself.

Not long alone, but long enough to remove the flask. No. There was little she would say in defense of Hefger’s honesty, but he was too wealthy and too clever to risk a petty theft.

“Perhaps it was lost in the field,” She couldn’t voice—couldn’t quite grasp—the dark flutterings of thought at the edges of her mind, but she had to say something to put Bart at ease.

“Could be, Ma’am.”

He was no more convinced than she was. Richard had been careful with his things and wouldn’t have left anything lying where they had stopped for a noon meal, wouldn’t have left the case open so the flask could bounce out, but it was the best way she could devise to leave the question. “It may be found some day; if it’s not, it’s not the fault of you or your lads.”

“Thank you, Ma’am.” He tucked the cap into the deep pocket of his over-tunic. “I’ll have Sunset saddled. He was out for grass this morning and had a good brushing when he came in, so it’ll be just a few minutes. The guards are here and ready.”

He didn’t have to ask which saddle she would use; he lifted the older saddle and a bridle with a mirror-polished bit.

“Oh, and Bart …” She had almost forgotten, but it seemed more important, more urgent, now, though why, she wouldn’t have been able to say. “The Prince needs a bigger, faster pony.”

“Yes, Ma’am. I’ll talk to the riding master about the sort that would be right.” Arms full, he nodded the suggestion of a bow and pulled the tack room door shut behind him.

He always closed the door to give her privacy to remove the outer skirt she wore over loose riding trousers. In the past, it had made her smile; she was, after all, fully dressed beneath the skirt and the preparation was no more provocative than removing a coat, but today, his concern for her modesty rang sweet and true. Perhaps it seemed so in comparison to Hefger’s veiled bullying, or perhaps she just needed to gather goodness to herself as an antidote.

She traced the gold embroidery on Richard’s saddle cover with one finger. If he were here … But he wasn’t here. Just an empty saddle and an empty flask case.

The dark idea-wisps brought their flutterings in from the borders of thought and gathered around the hidden case like moths around a lantern. Why would the flask be missing? Who would benefit? She forced herself to repeat the awful images she had last seen in her glass. Richard falling, rigid, not even trying to grab saddle or mane, falling like a man already dead.

A man who had drunk from a missing flask.

For six weeks, grief and fear had been all she could feel. Anger blazed now, fanned by the dark wings in her mind. She breathed deeply, fancied that the very air was hot with bright fury that burned the fog obscuring her one small Gift. She opened the locket, not fearful, this time, that there might be nothing there.

The image of her horse, waiting in the stable aisle, was as clear as though the glass had never denied her. Extending her reach, she found Garrick playing siege with his toy castle. Her hand shook as she closed the locket. Yesterday, she would have wept for joy at the return of her Sight. Today, tears were usurped by purpose. Today, she would hide her feelings behind the mask of a queen.

* * *

A low fire kept the chill from the nursery, but she pulled the blanket up to Garrick’s chin. During the day, she tried not to be too protective, tried to let him grow with the self-reliance he would need, but at night she often sat and watched him sleep. He was all she had now. Garrick’s birth had been hard, and she had not conceived after, but he was strong and healthy. A fine boy, a fine heir. He murmured in his sleep and burrowed deeper into his pillow. Did he ever have troubling dreams? Was seven old enough to grasp the finality of Richard’s absence?

She thought of her own father, King of Chetrive, honored for his wisdom as well as his Gifts. She had always felt like a tone-deaf child in a family of musicians, but he had been patient with her small Gift as he helped her practice.

“But isn’t it like snooping, Papa?” she had asked as they sat before the silver-framed scrying glass that seemed huge when she was young.

“I suppose it is, in a way. That’s why we never use it for foolishness. Never soil your Gift, Elena, by using it like a common gossip. Use it to protect yourself and those who depend on you. If you become a queen, use it to protect your people.”

“But I can’t see into the future.”

He hugged her, and smiled in an odd, sad way. “I can’t always see into the future,” he’d said, “and sometimes it doesn’t matter. Sometimes the dangers are in the present.”

She left Garrick quietly and went to the nursery window. Clouds drifted peacefully across a fat half moon. It would be good to talk to her father right now, but she already had his advice.

The dangers were in the present.

* * *

There were clouds tonight, too many to see the stars outside her bedchamber. She often watched the sky when she wanted to think. Sometimes she imagined how nice it would be to just float through the window and leave the troubles of rank and duty behind.

She shook her head at her foolishness and retreated to the edge of her bed where the velvet hangings would shield her glass from the shifting light of the fire. She would do all she could to keep this strange magic-shunning land safe. For Garrick. For Richard. Her fingers traced the engraving on the locket and opened the first cover. Richard had designed the locket himself and had it made in Chetrive. If people thought her vain for consulting a mirror, it was better than what they would think if they knew the truth. The bright glass slid aside to reveal its darker sister.

Since the return of her Sight, she had spent many secret hours watching the comings and goings around the castle. Watching everyone. Watching Hefger.

He had stolen Richard’s flask. She was sure of that. He would have considered taking Richard’s horse to the stable a task beneath him, but he had done it and gained a moment alone to silence whatever tale the flask could tell.

But she couldn’t brood on what she already knew. She summoned a view of the stable yard and watched like an owl waiting for the movement of a mouse.

There, by the outbuilding that held carriages. Two figures blended in and out of the edges of light cast by the stable-yard torches. She counted her breathing to unravel the knot of tension that impaired Sight. One of the men was Hefger. The other’s name she did not remember, but she had seen him before; a plump man with a wisp of gray hair tied at the nape of his neck. Richard had expelled him from the kingdom because of mysterious deaths that seemed to follow him, though no proof could be found. The glass could not give her the words spoken, but gold glinted as the banished man counted coins, stacking them on his flattened palm.

It was proof, even if the means of gathering it made it useless for accusation. Hefger had made handsome payment to a poisoner. But was it Richard’s death he had just purchased—or hers?

* * *

Hefger stepped from a doorway and into her path. “Your Majesty. You are well, I hope. I have received word that you have been keeping to your private chambers more than is usual.”

She glanced down the hall to reassure herself that a Guardsman was on duty by the tiny end window, and caught a glimpse of the advisor’s hulking personal bodyguard, partially concealed in the room Hefger had left. So—even predators had fears. “This is not a usual time, lord.”

“Of course not, Ma’am. It is a time of great loss, a time of great trouble.”

“A time of great danger, Lord Advisor?”

His expression didn’t change, but it took an extra instant to adjust to her challenge. “There is always danger, Majesty, for those in power.”

“Indeed.” The malevolence that surrounded Hefger made it hard not to call for help—but what reason would she give? That the Lord Advisor had stopped to inquire about her health? “I have given our recent meeting considerable thought, lord, but before I reach a decision, I must know one thing.”

“Yes, Your Majesty?”

She dropped her voice to a whisper. “Exactly what is your ambition? Will you be content with a position of responsibility and respect or …”

“Majesty?”

“Or will you not be satisfied until the crown is yours?”

He glanced once toward the room in which his guard waited, but his moment of uncertainty passed quickly. “Majesty—I have no ambition. True, my family, the succession … But I am a man of middle years. The Prince is young with many years ahead.”

“Has he, lord? I believed the same for Richard.”

“A terrible accident, Majesty.”

“Yes, an accident.”

His face flushed. “Have you evidence that it was not?”

“Evidence, lord? Not evidence.” If she had evidence that could be presented, he would already be in irons.

He stepped toward her, not enough to stir the suspicions of the Guardsman, but enough to force her to look up at him.

“There were many witnesses to the accident, Lady.” His voice was a tight ribbon of ice. “Anyone who speaks against what so many saw must be using an unnatural source of information.”

That Hefger’s argument was faulty made no difference. People were seldom concerned with logic when they had fear to substitute for thought. The charge he implied would be enough to endanger her, endanger Garrick.

Witch. Witch’s son.

She met his eyes. “What is it you want?”

He raised a hand as though to touch the narrow black lace of her neckline, then, with a shift of his eyes toward the hall guard, let it drop. “Since you press the issue, Majesty, I want a queen who will listen to the council of her husband in all things.”

Husband. She wanted to shudder, but wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. What he lusted for went far beyond the marriage bed. She was just a stone to be walked over in his path. “And Garrick?”

“Ah, Garrick. I’ll be his guardian then, won’t I?”

Her mask of composure pushed against the shattering point. “If you believed I had Powers, lord, you would not dare this.”

“It is what the people believe that is important.” He stepped back into a mocking bow. “Your Majesty. I suggest you begin plans for our wedding; I am ardent as a youth.” In the blink of an eye, mockery turned to threat and the ice in his voice turned to one cutting crystal. “If you have not announced our engagement within the week …” He summoned his guard and bowed once more. “Accidents do happen, Lady, sickness does befall.”

* * *

She tucked the folded paper deep under her pillow, where only Freida would find it. It was wrong to leave her this way, but she was too old for hard riding, and there were many miles to be traveled where no carriage could go.

“Mama!” Garrick bounded into the room, fresh from his day’s lessons with Chancellor Penvir . “You’re dressed for riding. May I come today? Please?”

“Of course. I was waiting for you.”

“Should I tell Jevin?” Garrick’s guard had become his best friend. She would need that now.

“He’s helping Freida prepare things. Be quick now, we don’t want to miss the warm part of the day.”

“Prepare what, Mama?”

“What has baskets of food and a cloth spread on the ground?”

“A picnic? A picnic!” He ran to change. She called after him to dress warmly, not to be fooled by the bright sunlight.

Alone, she slid her locket open and Saw Rafe, the Guardsman she had chosen to accompany them today, waiting in the stable. The only one to whom she had confided her plan, he had already hidden clothes and weapons for her in the forest beyond the village.

Rafe was a good man; Richard had trusted him, and people were used to seeing him as one of her guards when she went riding. He and Jevin were also men with no families to worry as the sun set.

She found Hefger next, with an ease bought by repetition. He was sharing a noon meal with a young woman who looked like she might be a merchant’s daughter. Elena closed the locket and pitied the girl her foolishness, while the part of her that was queen hoped she might prove diverting. The longer Hefger was kept from discovering their absence, the better.

Freida tapped on the door. “Everything’s ready, Ma’am. Jevin’s taken the food to the stable. He said he’d be back presently for the Prince. What is it, Ma’am?”

She’d tried to blink back tears, but they had spilled. She blotted them away with one of the handkerchiefs from the top of her purse. The soft, familiar scent of lavender was out of place against the needs of the day. “It’s nothing, Freida, just … Thank you, Freida.”

She felt as if she were leaving forever. Her plan was to return once Garrick was safe in her father’s court. She would be Regent, as Richard had wished. She would deal with Hefger then.

But those were only plans, and plans were fickle things.

“Your Majesty?” Jevin was at the open antechamber door. She joined him there. “Rafe says everything is ready, Ma’am.”

“I’m ready too!” Garrick left his nanny and spun around to show her his clothes. “Are these right? I told Nanny you wanted me to wear warm things and she picked these.” He tugged on Jevin’s sleeve. “A picnic! We’re going to have a picnic!”

“Yes, Sir. A fine picnic.”

“Not ‘Sir.’ Garrick!”

Jevin’s boyish smile was instantly replaced by an expression of exaggerated dignity. “Very well, Sir Garrick.”

This was an old game between them. Garrick pretended to be annoyed, then dissolved into giggles.

Jevin glanced in her direction. She could see questions left unvoiced.

There was a wolf at her heels, driving her toward a precipice, but she must seem a queen going on a picnic. She smiled as she swung her cloak around her shoulders. “Well then. Let’s be on our way.”

* * *

The sound of the horse’s hooves on the stable yard cobbles sounded like parade drums. She often went riding with Garrick and attendant guards; even a picnic was not unusual enough to attract attention, but her fears made everything seem louder, bigger, slower than it really was.

“Who’s that, Mama?”

She looked ahead. Just beyond the yard gate was Hefger’s hired poisoner, a gray shadow in the midst of sunlight. Watching them.

xx

“I don’t know, Garrick. Perhaps someone who wants to work in the stables.” Someone well paid who should be long gone—unless his business here was unfinished.

“I don’t like him, Mama,” Garrick whispered. “He gives me bad-shivers.”

“Me too,” she said, and put heels to her horse.

* * *

Garrick was exhausted, but trying not to show it. She had told him that they were going to visit his grandfather, and explained that she had stopped in the forest to change to men’s clothing and weapons to make it hard for a “bad man” to find them.

He was learning for himself how quickly an adventure could lose its charm.

“How far is it?” he asked. “I think Spice is tired.”

She smiled, but, in truth the spring had left his new pony’s step while the sun was still high. “It’s a long way, but Spice can rest in the King’s stable when we reach Karchesk. The King there is an ally of my father. I’m sure he’ll lend us fresh horses, or even a coach.”

“I know what an ally is,” Garrick said proudly. “It’s the kind of friend a king needs. Will we be there tomorrow?”

“No, Sir,” Jevin said. “Two days, maybe three, allowing for the horses tiring. That’s how long to the border. Another two, at least, until we reach King Tover’s palace, but we’ll probably be joined by an escort before we’ve gone far into Karchesk.”

“I know this land, Ma’am,” Rafe said. “There’s an old farm not too far ahead. It hasn’t been tenanted in years, but it’s still more sheltered than a camp in the forest.”

She could hear and easier to defend in the tension of his voice. “Can we be there before dark?”

“At this pace, I think we’ll make it in time to gather—” His horse snorted and swung around to face the way they had come. Rafe scowled and stood in his stirrups, scanning the patchwork of trees and open land. “Riders, Ma’am.”

“How many?”

He raised a hand to shield his eyes from the sinking sun. “Looks like … two. Two, riding hard.”

She fought the panic-chatter of her thoughts. A legitimate search party would have been far larger. “Hefger.”

“Go, Your Highness, as fast as you can. No, Jevin. Stay with them.”

“Come, Garrick, now! Garrick!” Her son was oblivious to her command. He was frozen in place, staring at the riders becoming more visible as the gap narrowed.

“The bad man,” he whispered. “Bad-shivers.”

“Come on, Sir.” Jevin brought his horse beside Spice and plucked Garrick from his saddle. “Storm can carry us both. Your pony can rest. There, her bridle’s off. Ready, Ma’am?”

She nodded. “Bless you, Rafe,”

He pulled his sword and held it up in salute. “Go.”

Their horses stretched out into a full gallop and covered distance, but her gelding was laboring to keep pace with the larger and stronger horse Jevin rode. A steep rise was too much. Sunset stumbled, went to his knees and rose shaking, sides heaving.

She slid from the saddle, almost snagging the sword she was not accustomed to wearing. “He can’t go any farther.”

“Mount behind me, Ma’am.” Jevin held down a hand. “If we can find that old farm …”

She left Sunset’s bridle a tangle of leather under his hanging head and scrambled onto the bigger horse’s back, the sword she was wearing banging her legs, the tapestry purse beneath her cloak digging into her ribs.

“Keep a good grip, Ma’am.” Jevin nudged his horse into a jarring trot to the top of the rise and down the scrub-dotted descent. There was forest below in the valley, bright with autumn and the promise of concealment. She closed her eyes and tried to See without the glass. To See if they were still pursued, by how many. It would be good to know how much damage Rafe’s defense had inflicted, but she didn’t want to know more.

For now, she wanted to believe he had survived.

“The bad man,” Garrick said, his voice oddly distant. “He’s coming. I can feel him.”

She turned enough to see the top of the ridge behind them. There was no one there. She told herself that Garrick was a child; frightened and imagining.

She was the one clinging to an unreal hope. Two riders crested the ridge. Still two.

“Stop,” she said. “Take Garrick into the valley, lose yourselves among the trees, get to King Tover. I’ll try to delay them.”

“Rafe tried that, Lady.”

Rafe had slowed the pursuit only a little, and Rafe was a fighter. Jevin was right. “Go then.”

He asked his horse for more speed, but the downhill charge of less burdened mounts couldn’t be outrun.

“Hold!” It was the beast-like roar of Hefger’s huge guard. “Hold or die!”

Hold and die was closer to the truth, but there was nothing else they could do; the guard’s horse, lathered and blood-streaked from spurs almost collapsed into them as the giant grabbed their reins. Hefger reined in behind him.

“Be brave, Garrick,” she whispered.

“Well, Your Majesty,” Hefger said. “It seems I’ve arrived just a little too late to save you from bandits.”

“Bandits? Will that be your story?”

“I see no guards, no uniforms. I see a bandit.”

“He’s a soldier!” Garrick said.

Hefger ignored him. “Off the horse, all of you.”

“Ma’am?”

“Do as he says.” She slid off first. Jevin lowered Garrick to the ground, swung down and was disarmed as soon as his feet touched earth. She saw that Hefger’s guard favored his right arm. Rafe hadn’t failed—not entirely. The guard’s armor was light, and a wad of cloth tied around his arm was overfilled with blood that leaked fresh red streams.

Hefger, still mounted, looked down at her. “Was that disguise supposed to fool anyone? It takes more than a play-acting sword and a pair of leggings to make a man.”

She drew the sword with deliberate awkwardness. It was heavier than the weapons she had practiced with as a girl, but well balanced. “It would have fooled some,” she said. “It was supposed to look real.”

“It would be amusing to give you a lesson, but I’ve played all the games I intend to play with you, Lady. You had your chance. Put the toy down.”

She bent her knees slowly, gracefully, as though she were wearing a gown in a garden and wanted to pick up a fallen blossom. Garrick and Jevin were watching her.

“Garrick!” she cried. “Run!”

He bolted like a rabbit. Hefger shouted to the guard to go after him. She snapped upright, tossed the sword to Jevin.

“No! Leave the boy! Him first!”

As the confused guard turned to find Jevin armed, Hefger backed his horse away from the pair. He had felt safe enough next to her, even when she held a sword.

The giant moved first. His sword, already stained with blood, cut the air like a woodsman’s axe, his weight and strength giving it power, his wounded arm robbing it of precision.

Jevin feinted and struck, hit armor, spun out of the path of the guard’s retaliation, struck again, drew blood.

Garrick crept out of the scrub, holding a finger-thick branch across his body like a quarter-staff. He watched Jevin dodge an instant too late, take a sword-tip wound to the thigh. His mouth dropped open into a silent circle of dismay.

She ran to him. She knew that Hefger was following, keeping a safe distance from the battle, but Garrick needed her; needed to be kept from trying to help Jevin with the twig he clutched.

“No,” he whispered as she held him close. “Noooo …”

The guard’s sword slashed down, hit Jevin’s shoulder and ripped a path of blood down his chest. Jevin staggered, seconded his failing grip with his left hand and lunged, driving his sword into a vulnerable spot at the base of the guard’s breastplate.

Jevin fell first. Garrick screamed. She held him until Hefger’s guard went down and lay still. When she released him, he threw himself across Jevin, sobbing.

A horse’s hooves crushed dry leaves. Elena stayed where she had knelt with Garrick. She didn’t look up. “You caused this, Hefger. All of it. You, your ambition. Rafe is dead too, isn’t he?”

“Very. Unless your magic can cause a head to live without a body, or a body without a head.”

The hint of amusement in his voice helped anger override horror. She went on as if he had given her news of no importance. “How did you know to follow us? It was your poisoner, wasn’t it? He saw us leaving.”

He didn’t bother with a denial. “Ruined a pleasant afternoon and now I’ve lost a very good bodyguard. Not the brightest wit I’ve ever encountered, but otherwise more than satisfactory. This day has cost me dearly.”

She stood and dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief from her purse; a handful more fluttered in the breeze and landed pure among the trodden leaves. “A crown is rich repayment.”

“Yes, eventually.” He looked at the fallen men, at Garrick, at her. “But more immediate compensation occurs to me. I’ve changed my mind about playing games with you, woman.” He dismounted. “But first the boy. I’ll make it quick; he is just a child. Call him over here.”

“No.”

“No?” He grabbed her chin and forced her head back. “That is a word you can no longer use.”

He wanted to see fear, to fill himself with the power of it. She closed her eyes so he could not read what was there instead. “I’m sorry, lord. Forgive me. I’m just a woman, and my child … My child …”

He let her head drop. “And you thought you could rule. You’re all alike, good only for—”

The last handkerchief fell from the handle of her dagger as she drove it in low, jerked its razor edge through vital vessels. Hefger stiffened. She used the instant to slip away before shock could turn to rage. He turned, bent to the left, clutching fabric over the pulsing flow with one hand, fumbling for the hilt of his sword with the other.

She ran up the slope, waving the reddened dagger, baiting him further from Garrick. He lunged after her, faster than she expected, sword in a grip that still looked sure.

She ran again.

He stopped.

“I see,” he said. “The mother bird.” He swayed and steadied himself with his sword. “Mother bird … Baby bird …”

He staggered into a charge back down the hill, both hands holding his sword like a spear.

She screamed for Garrick to run. He didn’t move.

The scrub of the hillside was a blur. Only Hefger was in focus as she sprinted in pursuit.

Five steps … four.

One.

She threw herself against him, grabbing high with hand and dagger. He curled forward, lifting her off her feet. For a nightmare heartbeat she thought he would carry her all the way to Garrick, but her weight pulled his path onto a lurching diagonal. His left knee buckled, recovered, then the right failed. He went down one limb at a time, as though they couldn’t agree to die together.

Elena jumped clear and studied the Lord Advisor. He should have fallen sooner, strength and consciousness bled away. The lessons she had taken so seriously to make up for her poor magic had served well, but he was a big man, and vengeance had run in his veins.

She shed her fouled cloak. washed her hands and arms with water from the bottle on Hefger’s saddle, and did her best to dilute the stains on her clothing. Garrick hadn’t yet turned from Jevin’s body, but he had been witness to too much. She didn’t want to go to him savage with blood.

She didn’t feel savage; she felt calmer than she would have thought possible. Perhaps later, what had happened here would crash onto her like snow from a rooftop. Not now. For now, the mask of her rank had become part of her flesh, armor for her soul.

She would take Garrick home, send men for the bodies. Burials with full honors for Jevin and Rafe. Such a small thing to do, such an inadequate thing.

Garrick was kneeling next to Jevin, rocking, repeating what sounded like one phrase, over and over. She approached carefully, full of half-realized prayers that her son’s mind had not been driven away. Her heart sank when she heard what he was repeating.

“Please get better. Please get better.”

She bent to stroke his hair. “Jevin was very brave, but we can’t help him now.”

“Get better.”

“Garrick …” It was a trick of the light, it had to be. The sun was setting, blurring reality with its gold light and long shadows. There would be a flint in Jevin’s saddlebag, and there was dry brush everywhere for a fire. Tomorrow she would take her son home to Freida and his nanny, to Snowball; they’d find his new pony. They’d make his life normal again.

As normal as they could.

There, again. She … This flutter was no trick of the light. Jevin’s eyes came fully open.

“Your Majesty?”

“Jevin … I thought you … I thought you were dead.”

“When that sword came down … I thought I was. Did I get him? I tried …”

“Yes. Hefger’s dead too.” She stopped his questions with a raised hand. “Time for that later. We have to see to your wounds, plan a way to move you so a physician—”

“Mama.” Garrick’s face was streaked with blood and tears, but he was smiling.

“He doesn’t need a physician, Mama. He’s better. Really. Look!”

Afraid to restart the bleeding, she parted the ripped, red rag that had been Jevin’s shirt. The gash below was three hand-lengths from top to bottom. She couldn’t tell how deep it had been; it was knit together. Still angry, a scar in the making, but healing.

She looked at Garrick—just a little boy happy because his friend was better. Just a little boy.

“Let’s gather wood for a fire,” she said.

* * *

“It was called ‘The King’s Touch’ then, Ma’am—that’s what my grandmother told me. She remembered it from when she was a girl. The people would line up in the castle courtyard and the king would walk by, touch them on the head and give them a copper. I always thought the copper was what did the most good; now, I don’t know.”

Jevin had mustered enough strength to move away from the scene of the battle, the fire blazed high, and there was more food in Jevin’s saddlebags than any of them wanted.It was a somber reflection of the picnic they had pretended, but exhaustion and warmth had settled them into easy conversation.

“Was that Richard’s grandfather? Did he outlaw his own magic?”

“His great-grandfather, more likely, Ma’am. My grandmother was an old woman when I was just a boy. By the time she was married, there was a new king. Talk was he hated his father. Whatever the reason, all manner of magic arts were forbidden. Even the priests were speaking against them.”

Laws could be changed. Prejudices would take longer. If she started now, gradually, perhaps the people would be ready to accept …

Garrick snuggled onto her lap, playing with her locket. “I can see myself, Mama.”

“Of course you can, silly. It’s a mirror.”

“Not that one; the one inside. I look like Papa in his king clothes, but it’s me.”

She tried to make light of it, but her mind raced. He was so young, and already … His Powers might eventually rival her father’s. Could the people accept that? She had so little ability; the Gifts must have lain dormant in Richard’s bloodline as well. Would that history make it all seem less foreign and frightening?

Regardless, Garrick would need training, guidance, protection.

Jevin was pretending to watch the fire. “I’ll tell no one about tonight, if that’s what you want, Ma’am. I’ll keep my coat on when we return and let everyone think the blood’s not mine.”

Training and guidance could be found in Chetrive when Garrick was older. Protection and discretion were needed now. “Thank you, Jevin. That would be best.”

Garrick was losing his battle to stay awake. She tucked him into a roll of blanket. “Good night, Mama,” he said, then smiled sleepily at Jevin. “Good night, Sir.”

Jevin picked up his half of the game. “Not ‘Sir.’ Jevin.”

Garrick settled deeper into the blanket. “Very well, Sir Jevin, Sir Jevin.”

She hugged the blanket bundle and almost called him a silly boy, but his words echoed and grew in her mind as she settled back to watch cloud-scarves sail near the moon.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I think that can be arranged.”

* * *

Rubber Sciences

Written by Norman Spinrad

Science fiction and politics are, in theory, arts of the possible, just as fantasy and religion are arts of the impossible. In actual practice, however, politics usually turns out to be the art of the all-too-probable, whereas science fiction usually turns out not to give much of a damn about probability at all. In fact, a case could be made that the more improbable science fiction is, the better it is as science fiction. Until it crosses the line between improbability and impossibility and becomes fantasy.

This, then, will be a chapter about precisely that murky area between “hard science fiction” and “hard fantasy” in which most science fiction writers work most of the time.

Indeed, it’s rather difficult to come up with a definition of “hard science fiction” that doesn’t end up being somewhat self-contradictory. “Hard scientific content” in science fiction is usually defined (at those rare moments when anybody bothers to define it at all) as known scientific fact. “Hard science fiction,” then, is science fiction written around known scientific facts or at least not-unproven theories generated by “real” scientists. But is it? All fiction is lies—if it weren’t, it would be biography, history, or reportage. Science fiction or speculative fiction is a form in which at least one element of the reality in which the imaginary characters move is also imaginary. Not impossible but not a fixture in the universe of the writer and reader either. The speculative element, it’s usually called. Where does that leave “hard science fiction”? If there is no speculative element, it isn’t science fiction; and if there is a speculative element in the so-called scientific background, we’re then into measuring “degree of hardness” on some kind of technological peter-meter.

Larry Niven, for example, is generally considered a writer of “hard science fiction.” J. G. Ballard is not. Niven’s stories are full of two-headed aliens, telepathic powers, various flavors of time-travel, galactic cataclysms, hyper-drives, tractor beams, and so forth. Most of Ballard’s novels have been rather tight extrapolations of a world drastically altered by one reasonably plausible meteorological change, and even his later more stylistically dense works don’t ask the reader to swallow very many scientific improbabilities whole. Hal Clement’s alien creatures are part of the hard science fiction canon, but Cordwainer Smith’s Underpeople are not. Aficionados of hard science fiction accept Poul Anderson’s medieval space cultures without a murmur but eschew the future worlds of Mack Reynolds which are worked out with a much more sophisticated and rigorous knowledge of economics and politics.

On the other hand, it’s easy enough to recognize the diametric opposite of hard science fiction—full-bore space opera, which is really straight fantasy in science fiction drag. Jockstrap-clad superheroes swinging their swords through hyperspacial extensions of time-probability worlds while planets ricochet off the cushions of the cosmic pool table in three-corner bank shots from the ubercues of beings from the 27th dimension with a perverted lust for brass-bound boobs and human pain, opposed only by our blaster-armed hero, his positronic robot horse Trigger, and the Galactic Overmind, who in reality is Lamont Cranston, playboy energy creature from the center of the sun. We’ve all read that one, and too many of us have written it as well.

But somewhere between the Scylla of Jungian archetype opera and the Charybdis of the kind of rigid Gernsbackian “scientifiction” that is hardly written anymore lies the great main current of science fiction. Including, I would submit, most of what is called “hard science fiction.”

Indeed, if there is any meaningful definition of hard science fiction at all, it is that science fiction which convinces the reader that its scientific content is as sound, metallic, and conservative as a Swiss franc. It’s really a matter of technique more than content, a technique explored elsewhere in this book.

Here we will discuss other techniques for achieving the same basic end: an illusion of verisimilitude around imaginary content. Isn’t that what science fiction is all about?

* * *

Having to some extent pooh-poohed the possibility of writing real science fiction based on real scientific fact, I should hasten to point out that scientific illiteracy is by no means a prime qualification for a science fiction writer. In fact, the kind of science fiction I’m going to talk about probably requires a firmer grounding in the Weltanschauung, philosophy, history, and psychology of science and technology than what is usually called hard science fiction.

After all, a reasonably intelligent writer can read a piece in Time about quasars, black holes, organ transplants, or the latest model space capsule and write a story with this material as trappings or setting. No different from reading a good book about the American West or Timbuktu and setting a story there.

But when you really head for the wild blue yonder there are no road maps or almanacs to crib from. When you get down to essences, descriptive knowledge is not enough—you must really understand. And that, of course, is a deeply scientific attitude in itself.

When you’re writing about tomorrow’s technology, it’s enough to be accurate, to more or less faithfully describe the gizmos, theories, and discoveries that scientists and engineers are speculating about in their own magazines and bull-sessions. But when you’re writing about scientific discoveries, technological innovations, scientific theories or even whole new sciences that you’ve made up yourself, you can’t rely on accuracy to give the reader a sense of verisimilitude. There’s nothing anywhere in the reader’s world or your own for you to describe accurately.

Instead, you must be plausible, which is a bem of a different color.

To give an example of what I’m herein calling “Rubber Science” as opposed to straightforward pseudoscientific doubletalk, let us consider the granddaddy of them all, FTL, hyperspace, overdrive, spaceships exceeding the speed of light.

As we all know (we do all know, don’t we?), in our current Einsteinian picture of the universe, a mass traveling at the speed of light becomes infinite, and it would therefore take an infinite amount of energy to accelerate it to that speed and a transfinite amount of energy to accelerate it beyond that speed. Which is why faster-than-light travel is theoretically impossible within Einsteinian parameters.

Which may be tidy for cosmologists and astrophysicists but which is a pain in the neck to science fiction writers. The literary necessity for faster-than-light travel is all too obvious. Without it, we could have no stories of galactic empires, not much anthropological science fiction, few pictures of alien cultures or outre planets, a dearth of first-contact stories—in short, science fiction writers would be pretty much confined to our own solar system. Of course many fine stories have been written about just this light-speed limitation problem, but science fiction is the literature of multiplex realities, and to confine it within a strict relativistic straitjacket would simply be literarily unacceptable.

Thus hyperspace. Or overdrive. Or whatever it takes to get our literary spaceships from star to star in literarily usable time. Given FTL as a story necessity, the question then becomes how do you get the reader to accept it smoothly, how do you make what is currently a scientific impossibility seem plausible?

One obvious and frequently successful method is simply to ignore the problem. “He switched on the hyperdrive and five minutes later they arrived at Epsilon Bootes.” After all, if you’re writing a story set in the present, you can have your hero drive from Hollywood to Pasadena without pausing to explain the internal-combustion engine.

However, if you choose this method, you must really be consistent. If you’re not going to offer an explanation of hyperdrive, then you’d better not explain any other futuristic technology in your story, because what you’re really doing is writing from the viewpoint of the people in your future time. And you’d better not have any element of your plot dependent on the hyperdrive. “He switched on the hyperdrive and five minutes later they arrived at Epsilon Bootes, beating out the space pirates by a good twelve parsecs due to the superior juxtaposition of their frammis-wrap to the space-time matrix” is dirty pool.

Also, even if you’re not explaining your hyperdrive, you still have to make the rest of your universe consistent with known scientific facts unless you want to point a big red finger to the fact that you’re not explaining it because you’re an ignoramus. Further, even an unexplained hyperdrive must operate according to at least internally self-consistent rules. It can go from anywhere to anywhere in five minutes, or it can propel a ship at a hundred times the speed of light, but not both interchangeably. The point is that you want the hyperdrive to seem scientifically plausible whether you attempt to explain how it works or not, which means that the logic of its operation must seem reasonable, must feel scientifically correct. Internal consistency is a necessity no matter how much or how little you choose to explain. Rule One of the Rubber Sciences.

Of course it’s more of a challenge to try to actually explain your hyperdrive. Moreover, if you do explain the thing consistently and establish its parameters at the outset, you can use its workings and properties for later plot points. If, for example, you establish that a larger mass moves faster in hyperdrive than a smaller one, you can have your hero’s ship beat the space pirates to Epsilon Bootes by dragging a small asteroid into hyperspace with it. But this property of hyperdrive must have been established long before it is used, otherwise it becomes the equivalent of “With a superhuman effort, he leapt out of the pit.” Rule Two of the Rubber Sciences: any pseudoscientific fact or principle that is going to be used for plot purposes must be planted in the reader’s mind near the beginning of the story and long before it surfaces as a plot element.

Okay, so rather than gloss it over, you’re going to invent a hyperdrive. Right away you are faced with a fundamental choice. Current best scientific knowledge says that faster-than-light travel is impossible, so you must either come up with a “bugger factor” in Einsteinian relativity, or forthrightly state that by the 25th Century Glockenspiel proved that Einstein was wrong.

I wrote a story called “Outward Bound” using the first method, and it worked well enough at least to convince John W. Campbell, Jr. Here I accepted Einsteinian relativity and had a theoretical mathematician talk about “transfinite substitutions in Einstein’s equations.

“… if you accept the Special Theory of Relativity, the reason that the speed of light cannot be exceeded is that mass is infinite at the speed of light, hence it would take an infinite force to accelerate it to that speed.

”But, if there were a drive whose thrust was a function of the mass it was accelerating, then, as mass increased, thrust would increase, and at the speed of light, theoretically, where mass was infinite, thrust would also be infinite. And if the thrust-mass equation involved a suitable exponential function … thrust could become transfinite.

“Making it possible to go faster than light!”

What kind of drive has a thrust which is an exponential function of the mass it is accelerating? Are you kidding? If I knew that one, I’d be writing my Nobel acceptance speech, not this chapter.

Rule Three of the Rubber Sciences: you are not Albert Einstein—know when to stop explaining.

Here I have pointed to a possible hole in relativity through which an FTL ship might sneak, but I have not succumbed to the hubris of trying seriously to design the actual hyperdrive. I’ve contented myself with establishing a theoretical basis for the thing in something like the Einsteinian universe, so that later on the artifact will seem plausible. The same principle applies to tachyon drives, black hole gates between the stars, and other “bugger factors” in relativity. If you think you can explain the whole thing from bugger factor to actual hardware, you may find yourself in a funny farm having long conversations about it with Napoleon.

Then there is the alternative: simply postulating a future cosmological viewpoint that supersedes Einsteinian relativity. Simple? Yes and no. Einstein, after all, didn’t knock Newton into a cocked hat; he created a new cosmological paradigm of which Newtonian physics was a still-valid special case. That’s the way sciences seem to evolve, at least at this late date. You can’t simply state that in 2394 A.D. Glockenspiel showed that magic in fact worked and that in the 25th Century faster-than-light starships zip through the ether on ectoplasm. If you want a new cosmological paradigm, you must construct it along lines consistent with the way sciences evolve. The chance that 20th-Century physics will later be shown to have been a complete crock is nil. You have to try something like the notion that our four-space universe is really a bubble in five-space, or that black holes are hyperspacial tunnels between points in our own continuum, or that objective time can somehow to contracted as well as subjective—paradigms that contain Einsteinian relativity but transcend it, rather than contending that it’s all pure baloney.

Rule Four of the Rubber Sciences: when creating a new science or a new master-theory for an established science, pay attention to how sciences evolve; don’t just wave your magic wand and produce magic with scientific mumbo-jumbo trappings.

I’ve spent all this time on faster-than-light drives because they are surely the most pervasive example of Rubber Science in science fiction and because they most easily and clearly illustrate many of the basic rules. But FTL, most often, is an example of first-order Rubber Science: something you create for plot or setting purposes. Beyond lies a higher order of Rubber Science—scientific speculation about the nature of the universe, life, culture, and the mind of man.

* * *

No doubt the best example of a “science fiction science” that we have is one that strictly speaking was never a fictional science at all: Scientology. But since Scientology is the creation of L. Ron Hubbard, a full-time science fiction writer at the time he created it, since the history of the Scientology movement reads like a science fiction novel, and since Scientology so beautifully illustrates so many of the principles of Rubber Science creation, it’s still worthwhile to consider it for a moment.

Basically, Scientology is a kind of crossbreed of simple Freudian psychology with even simpler computer theory. “Traumas” become “engrams” and “neuroses” become “engram chains.” Instead of “complete abreaction” as the ultimate goal, we have the “state of clear,” in which all engrams have been cleared from the mind, much as old programs are cleared from a computer. Instead of a patient free-associating or relating his dreams on a couch to an “analyst,” we have an “auditor” running a “clearing program” and the patient clutching the handles of an “E-meter.” The E-meter, or Engram-meter (actually a simple skin galvanometer, a piece of a lie detector), supposedly tells the auditor when his question has hit an “engram.” He then bores in until the E-meter shows him that the engram has been “cleared” or eliminated and continues to run his program until all such engrams are cleared.

For the purposes of this chapter, the question of whether or not Scientology actually works in the real world is irrelevant. The point is that it would surely work beautifully in a story. It has plausibility, and it does raise some interesting speculations on the workings of the human mind.

From whence this plausibility? For one thing, Scientology is based on two existing sciences, psychoanalysis and computer theory. The new Rubber Science is created by interfacing two existing sciences which had not been cross-disciplined before. This gives it some genuine content, which not only creates plausibility but even raises true validity as a genuine askable question.

Isaac Asimov did much the same thing when he created “psychohistory” for his Foundation series; here the interfaced sciences were history and statistics. Various writers have done it with “psionics,” most often by interfacing psychic research with brain physiology and/or bioelectronics. I myself have done it with pharmacology and various psychological sciences and produced things like “psychedelic pediatrics” and “psychedelic design.” I’ve also (in a nonfiction piece) interfaced pharmacology, brain physiology, systems analysis, psychology, holography, and a handful of other existing disciplines and created “psychesomics,” the science of the mind-matter interface itself.

Rule Five of the Rubber Sciences: interfacing two or more existing sciences will generate a plausible (if not necessarily valid) new science.

Another lesson in Rubber Science plausibility that can be gleaned from Scientology is the use of terminology, or, if you will, jargon. Fiction, after all, is word magic, and a well-crafted system of magic words in itself has a certain intrinsic reality, as witness law, religion, philosophy, criticism, and advertising. Too often, the coined words in science fiction stories exist in isolation, both from the actual Rubber Science material to which they refer and each other. In Scientology we can see how it should be done. Words like “engram,” “clear,” and “auditor” all have both specific meaning pertaining to specific elements of the pseudo-science and metaphorical overtones relating the word system to the general body of human knowledge. They can be put together or qualified in ways that extend their meanings in a reasonably self-evident manner. Once “engram” is explained, “engram-chain” has real meaning; once the state of “clear” is explained, “clearing program” becomes self-explanatory. The terminology holds together as a system, which lends plausibility to the Rubber Science as a system.

How much more solid Scientology seems than fuzzy Van Vogtian psionics or even Asimovian robotics! One can discuss it beyond the bounds of Hubbard’s books and in Hubbard’s own terminology. Some psychotherapists have even picked up “engram” and apply the concept to other psychological systems. Rule Six of the Rubber Sciences: systematize your terminology and relate it to the rest of human knowledge by choosing some of the words for their metaphorical resonance in the reader’s mind.

Finally, notice how Hubbard has given plausibility to a “soft” Rubber Science by inventing a piece of hardware, the E-meter, which solidifies the whole system with the new reality of a functioning apparatus. In terms of plausibility, it really doesn’t matter that the E-meter is nothing but a very crude lie-detector. If Hubbard had opted for the use of real lie-detectors (technically superior in every way to the E-meter for the very purpose for which the E-meter was designed) he would have lost the credibility effect of inventing an apparatus intrinsic to his own pseudo-science. “New science” is so identified in people’s minds with “inventions” that you almost can’t have one without the other. Rule Seven of the Rubber Sciences: solidify your pseudo-science with believable hardware.

* * *

Now that we’ve seen how to give plausibility to an invented science, we can approach the whole question of genuine speculative scientific content. For in its highest form, the Rubber Science in science fiction can, on occasion, actually contribute to the dialectic of scientific evolution; it can come very close, sometimes, to being the real thing.

This is one reason, I would content, why truly great science fiction transcends other great literature. Science fiction has the potential not merely to describe existing realities, not merely to imagine nonexistent realities, but actually to create realities. It can have extra-literary extensions into the real world.

Consider science fiction, for a moment, not as a branch of literature but as a style of consciousness, a philosophy of the nature of reality, a series of camera-angles on the universe.

Like fantasy, science fiction describes currently nonexistent realities, but unlike fantasy, it does not require the reader’s suspension of disbelief, it seeks to create it. It does this by relating the invented reality to the reader’s own reality logically. It seeks to create new worlds that are logical evolutionary extensions of the world the writer and reader both share. It assumes the responsibility for taking the reader from here to there.

Often, in conscientiously written science fiction, this means that the writer works out a great many evolutionary steps that the reader never sees. For instance, my own novella, “Riding the Torch.” This story is set entirely in a far future in which the last remnant of humanity lives in a great fleet of interstellar ships. Each ship is built around a hydrogen ramscoop fusion torch, which not only propels it but provides it with virtually unlimited internal power and with raw material from the interstellar medium. The culture of this story has unlimited energy and unlimited raw materials, which, combined with the ability to transmute matter almost totally, gives it the power to create just about anything it wants to. Further, full-sensory computer transceivers implanted in the people’s brains give them, among many other things, the power to live in any subjective reality they choose.

“Riding the Torch” is set entirely in this future society and told entirely from the viewpoint of characters in the ship culture, but in order to give it the solidity I wanted, I found that I had to work out for myself a capsule history of how mankind got from here to there, technologically, as well as politically and socially.

Thus I had to contemplate such things as how the earth might become uninhabitable, the development of fusion technology in deep space, matter transformation, the psychology and artistic implications of the computer-brain link, and so forth. All this just for one story—the “homework” that was done before I wrote the first word of the actual novella, material the reader never saw, took up many pages.

Science fiction writers do this sort of thing all the time. They are psychically at home in the future. Even the term “the future” is an oversimplification of the science fiction consciousness, for (with the exception of some writers who get bogged down in setting all of their stories in the same consistent future) science fiction writers contemplate different futures every time they set out to write a new story. They are at home not merely in “the” future but in multiplex futures. They have assimilated the multiplex nature of reality, the new realities that radiate outward from the nexus of every possible space-time event. The consciousness of science fiction is a transformational consciousness; the logic of science fiction is the logic of perpetual flux.

I would submit that there are few minds outside of science fiction who fully assimilate this type of consciousness and virtually no other intellectual community or discipline that shares it communally. Futurology, which comes closest, is a pale shadow of science fiction; indeed it is probably a new science that science fiction actually created.

In addition, science fiction writers are the original “generalists” or “synergists.” To create plausible pictures of future sciences and technologies, science fiction writers must have some familiarity with all of the physical sciences. To create pictures of imagined other planets, they must know some astrophysics, meteorology, geology, ecology, and biology. To create future or alien cultures, they must be able to think sociologically, anthropologically, and psychologically. A little perception of the cultural evolution of art and religion comes in handy too.

Not merely must science fiction writers have some knowledge in all of these areas, what they deal with is precisely the interaction of all these factors to create a total natural, technological, and cultural environment. This is exactly the kind of thinking that “synergists” like Buckminster Fuller “specialize” in.

But science fiction writers go far beyond the synergists, for they are not scientists, they are literary artists, and their proper primary concern is the human heart. When science fiction truly succeeds, all the multiple factors that go to make up a total natural, technological, and cultural environment are brought home to living, loving, suffering characters, to the territory of the soul, and we have a truly visionary exploration of man as a physical and psychic creature of the universe.

Science fiction writers, as much as anyone, and probably more so, are engaged in visionary contemplation of man’s total being in the total reality of the universe. It is therefore not always entirely vain for them to create imaginary new paradigms and dare to consider that they may eventually prove to be not only plausible but valid.

Scientists, after all, are tied to a logical process that forces them to prove the validity of every conjecture they make, whereas science fiction writers can examine any alternative reality of which they can conceive in physical and psychic detail. We can do just about anything we please. We can be “wrong” as much as we want to and still be “right.”

So why not use this instrument to the fullest and deepest extent possible and seriously contemplate the universe within and without us? Why not carry the Rubber Sciences beyond mere verisimilitude-creating techniques? The literary methods science fiction has developed to give speculation plausibility free science fiction writers to make any conjecture they like and still maintain literary verisimilitude.

What I’m saying, in short, is that sometimes the Rubber Sciences can turn out to be not so rubber at all in the end. Rule Eight of the Rubber Sciences: you can use the Rubber Sciences as tools for genuine intellectual exploration of the unknown.

We have, after all, been right upon occasion, not only in mere details but also in insight.

Decades before the best-seller Body Language, A. E. Van Vogt had created a pseudo-science which is to “body language” as nuclear physics is to chemistry. Here the concept of reading emotional states from body postures was carried to a near-telepathic conclusion. Van Vogt’s adept could virtually read actual thoughts from body postures and facial expressions and structures. Science has not yet fulfilled Van Vogt’s vision, but what has been accomplished was preceded by decades by his insight, and furthermore what Van Vogt described was the distilled essence of such a future science. Not merely a lucky prediction but a true visionary flash.

It was science fiction writers who first speculated about antimatter physics. The now-existent science of “xenobiology” comes straight from science fiction (including the name of the science itself), and even most of its current theoretical speculations can be found repeated over and over again in decades of science fiction stories. And the translation of “xenology” from science fiction to reality awaits only the discovery of another sentient race upon which to practice this already-developed science.

Sometimes our Rubber Science fantasies turn out to be valid, true, useful in the real world. So finally we should also consider how to dream truer dreams if we are to exploit the Rubber Sciences fully in the creation of literary art.

But science fiction writers should always bear in mind that they are creating visions, not science. Science fiction writers are literary artists, not scientists. Upon occasion, scientists have proven the validity of some of these visions, or been inspired by them. That is their function, not that of the science fiction writer. Indeed, for science fiction writers to worry about the validity of their visions would be to straitjacket them needlessly.

What science fiction writers should concentrate on in this area is the further development of their visionary consciousness. One of the keys to this is not to get too hung up on the “science” in “science fiction writer.” As I’ve tried to show in this chapter, most of the so-called science content in science fiction is really literary techniques and scientific logic, not actual fact. What is generally considered “hard science fiction” is not so much more rigor in scientific speculation as a common and rather limiting attitude toward the material and to the visionary faculty.

Larry Niven, Hal Clement, Murray Leinster, John W. Campbell, Jr., among others, are generally considered hard science fiction writers. In addition, certain works of writers like Poul Anderson, James Blish, Lester del Rey, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke are also considered hard science fiction. What do these works of “hard science fiction” have in common?

For one thing, there is what can only be described as the hard science fiction “feel.” One has a sense of hard black vacuum and cold pinpoint stars, a universe filled with hard-edged metallic artifacts and a reality whose rules are all of a piece, fixed, seamless, and invariant. The same feel you get watching Destination Moon, most of 2001, or an Apollo launch. The same feel you get looking at a Chesley Bonestell painting. All hard science fiction stories seem somehow to take place in the same essential reality, no matter the differences in superficial detail, and that reality is the hard-edged, materialistic, deterministic reality of a structured and filled-in scientific Weltanschauung which admits of no fuzziness in locus, no blank spots, no indeterminacy, no multiplexity—more Newtonian than Einsteinian.

Secondly, hard science fiction seldom if ever focuses its attention on its characters, and when it does, there is little genuine inner life portrayed. One thing hard science fiction emphatically is not is the literature of the interaction between altered external environments and altered inner psychic states. Almost without exception, the characters in hard science fiction stories have mid-20th-Century consciousness, no matter how far out their bodies are in space and time.

All this is not necessarily to put down hard science fiction. Many fine stories have been written within these narrow parameters and have even drawn a kind of creative tension from their very narrowness. What I am pointing out is that these are narrow parameters for visionary speculation, that hard science fiction basically confines itself to a single reality and a very narrow range of consciousness in its characters.

The proof of this is that many writers of hard science fiction also write more “rubbery” stuff, and it is often their best work. The Arthur C. Clarke of A Fall of Moondust is certainly not the Clarke of Childhood’s End. The Frank Herbert of The Dragon in the Sea is not the Herbert of Dune. The Isaac Asimov of the early robot stories is not the Asimov of The Caves of Steel or The Naked Sun.

No one can seriously contend that Clarke wrote a visionary novel like Childhood’s End because he couldn’t write the hard stuff, nor that Frank Herbert wrote a visionary novel like Dune because he couldn’t write The Dragon in the Sea. Rather, these writers assimilated the hard science parameters without being imprisoned by them and transcended them, producing works with the same sort of clarity but set in much more complex realities and dealing with speculatively evolved consciousness.

This is what I mean by developing the visionary consciousness of science fiction; visionary consciousness is, after all, the crown of the Rubber Sciences. In the last half of the 20th Century, technological innovations, alterations in man’s external environment, have proceeded at an ever-accelerating rate. The result has been rapid and fissioning evolution in human consciousness itself, for consciousness is the interface between internal and external realities. This process is not going to stop. We have entered a state of permanent and ongoing transformational evolution. Our consciousness and our technological environment have entered into a feedback relationship which virtually guarantees permanent ongoing evolution of human consciousness.

Examples:

Birth-control pills free female sexuality from previous biological restraints, leading to the “sexual revolution,” leading to the feminist movement, leading to altered female consciousness, leading to altered male-female relationships, leading to altered male consciousness, leading to … what?

Television brings a war into our living rooms, leading to altered perception of what war really is, leading to an altered consciousness in fighting-age men which enjoins them from participating in killing, leading to a peace movement and an all-professional army, leading to altered geopolitical realities, leading to further changes in human consciousness.

The space program gives us visual images of the Earth as seen as a whole from the outside, leading to the perception of “spaceship Earth,” leading to a new ecological awareness, leading to new attitudes toward technology itself, which will lead to new kinds of technology, which will further change our consciousness.

Organ transplants force us to contemplate new definitions of death, which must create new definitions of life and a new consciousness of aging, which will alter subtly our entire perceptions of what it is to be human.

It is precisely this area where the Rubber Science of visionary consciousness can be used to enrich science fiction—the ever-evolving interface between the total environment and human consciousness which it has always been science fiction’s peculiar genius, at its best, to explore.

The ultimate Rubber Science is the science of the nature of reality itself. There has always been a narrow but rich vein of science fiction that has delved into this area of ultimate sentient concern. A. E. Van Vogt was doing it in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. We have had the profound cosmological and evolutionary visions of Olaf Stepledon. Robert A. Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land was so successful in this area that it helped to spawn a new style of consciousness in the real world. Writers like Gregory Benford, Frank Herbert, Cordwainer Smith, and Damon Knight have mined this ore from time to time. Perhaps the pinnacle of this strain of science fiction has been the work of Philip K. Dick, who manages to unite the most convoluted of metaphysical speculations with a deep and immediate humanity and an unusual empathic warmth toward his characters.

How can writers of science fiction expand their skills in this area?

One way is to realize that there are now new fields of knowledge with which one should familiarize oneself. Just as the science fiction writers of the 1950s added the “soft sciences” of psychology, sociology, anthropology, and economics to their spheres of interest, the science fiction writers of today should be looking into psychopharmacology, Eastern and Western systems of consciousness alteration, media analysis, perceptual psychology, systems analysis, the social and internal psychology of life-styles, and, if you will, psychedelia.

Personally, I have found Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media the single most consciousness-expanding book of the decade, not so much for its often questionable content but for the entirely new perceptions on the relation between internal and external reality that it generates. Feminist literature, while frequently wrongheaded, does open up whole new areas for further speculation. And there are some books about consciousness itself which feed the head, like The Steersman’s Handbook by L. Clark Stevens and some of the works of Buckminster Fuller.

Of course much of this material is very rubbery science indeed, but such is always the state of the frontiers of human knowledge, and the frontiers and beyond have always been the natural province of the science fiction writer. Further, the generalist grounding of science fiction writers should enable them to evaluate this sort of thing with a clear and open eye.

As for writing about evolving human consciousness, what this takes, more than anything, is the willingness to look within, to try to put your own consciousness in the strange fictional psychic spaces you’re trying to write about. To empathize with states of being that may not now exist.

Fortunately, science fiction gives writers the best possible training for doing this—we try to write about the interior worlds of sapient aliens, don’t we? If science fiction writers can penetrate the souls of hypothetical silicon-based quadrisexual octopoids from Sirius, surely they can penetrate the psychic spaces of 25th-Century man, of cyborgs linked to computer banks, of communal consciousnesses, hive minds, Eastern mystics, takers of imaginary drugs, and yes, why not, true psychic supermen. Even women.

Above all, science fiction writers should never lose sight of the fact that what they are writing is literature, not science; that, more than anyone else, they are the poets of the future, the seers of human destiny. Hard science, soft science, or rubber are tools of the trade, means to the end of visionary insight and artistic creation. They should never be mistaken for the end itself.

* * *

Your Medical Care in the Coming Three Decades

Written by Stephen Euin Cobb

Let’s take a little romp through the next few decades of your medical care. Not an exhaustive examination, just an informal tour. We have a lot of ground to cover so let’s step lively. Let’s start with your prescription drugs.

Future Prescription Drugs:

Traditionally, drugs have been discovered through careful and time consuming searches of nature’s bounty of defensive and offensive chemicals: poisons from plants, bacteria, fungi and animals. While this is still the main source of drug development today the era in which this method dominates is about to draw to a close.

The transition has not yet gained its eventual dominance, but soon all drugs will be designed from scratch to perform precisely what we need them to do.

The tools needed for this are few, but complicated.

(a) A complete map of the human genetic code. This tool was finished in 2003 and has been made available for any researcher on earth, or indeed anyone at all, to download for free.

(b) An understanding of how the control molecules (proteins mostly) within the body do their job. This tool has been under construction for a century, and while we are making wonderful strides there is no use in pretending that it will ever be completed. Fortunately, absolute completion is not needed. Humans flew in planes long before our fluid dynamic formulas fully explained how the wing worked. This tool is perhaps one or two percent complete today, and may not reach ten percent for a decade or two, but this need not be considered discouraging. Many wonderful results will be achieved before we reach five percent.

(c) Enough supercomputing power to accurately predict the shape into which a freshly deigned (and not yet synthesized) linear protein molecule will fold itself. This is the tool which the previous two tools make powerful.

For years we have had the ability to synthesize any linear protein molecule we wished. But it’s been of severely limited usefulness since the long, chain-like or string-like, protein molecules we make will fold themselves based on the electrostatic attractions and repulsions of their many and various component atoms to their many various other component atoms.

If we knew enough to place the atoms just so, we would be able to force a molecule to fold itself into any shape we wanted. This is origami on the molecular scale. The shapes we could create, by the way, would not be limited to drug molecules. They could just as easily be microscopic machine parts. But that would be a different topic.

In accordance with Moore’s Law our computers are doubling in power approximately every 18 months. Already we have dozens of supercomputers scattered around the world capable of the vast computations needed for protein folding calculations. Based on Moore’s Law, the following rough prediction can be made: in ten years the world will contain tens of thousands of supercomputers capable of protein folding calculations, perhaps one in every university and hospital; and in twenty years the notebook computer you buy for the kids for Christmas will also be such a supercomputer.

Think I’m kidding?

In 1976 the Cray-1 supercomputer was the most powerful computer in the world. Los Alamos National Laboratory bought the first one, followed by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and in 1977 The National Center for Atmospheric Research got one too.

The Cray-1 was an immensely powerful machine. Today it’s remembered as one of the best known and most successful supercomputers in history. The Cray-1 used the revolutionary new 64 bit data bytes with 24 bit address bytes. It had a clock speed of 80mz and a maximum main memory of 8MB.

For comparison, however, my old Pentium One notebook computer (which I haven’t used for several years because it isn’t powerful enough to run anything beyond Windows 95) also used 64 bit data bytes and 24 bit address bytes, but it had a clock speed of 200mz and was equipped with 64MB of RAM. In other words, after thirty years of Moore’s Law, what was once the greatest supercomputer in the world isn’t powerful enough to be even a second-rate home computer. Extrapolating this into the future yields the following: the most powerful supercomputer on earth today in 2007 will be too slow and too inadequate to run even the simplest of the popular software items that will be available thirty years from now in 2037.

But I digress. Back to protein folding.

Today’s supercomputers are doing it, and tomorrow’s will do it more and faster and better. In the meantime distributed processing is helping to fill the need. (Distributed processing is similar to parallel processing in that different parts of a program are run simultaneously on many computers which communicate with one another over a network.) The largest and most famous distributed project is probably SETI@home. A similar project for protein folding is called Folding@home and is done by people volunteering the computing power of their home computers and PlayStation 3 systems. Folding@home reported nearly 1.3 PFLOPS of processing power in September of 2007.

The fruits of all this labor will be a wide variety of new drugs, each of which will be targeted specifically to the observed vulnerability of its intended disease or malady.

Future Surgery:

The days in which surgeons routinely cut holes in their patients large enough to conveniently insert both of their hands is also rapidly drawing to a close.

Sometimes called keyhole surgery, or pinhole surgery or even band aid surgery, Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS) is a surgical technique in which operations are performed through small incisions of about a quarter to a half an inch using a flexible or rigid tube bearing remote manipulators, a fiber optic light system and a tiny video camera.

Used for years in special cases where no other procedure would be possible such as certain brain tumors and heart valve surgeries, MIS is quickly being applied to more conventional procedures such as hysterectomies and prostatectomies.

Already one company has introduced a robotic platform which they call “The da Vinci Surgical System.” It sells for one and a half million dollars (roughly half the price of an MRI machine). As of October 2007 at least three hundred were in use in twenty nations around the world. Overly simplified, it’s an electronic puppet which reproduces exactly the movements of the surgeon’s human-sized hands but on a much smaller scale. The surgeon becomes blessed with the manipulative precision available only to someone born with hands smaller than those of a mouse, and the ability to view their work area so closely as to notice scratches on the side of a human hair.

In a decade or two every hospital will have several MIS machines, most clinics will have at least one; and some will probably begin to appear in the offices of your general practitioner.

Speaking of which, let’s next examine your doctor, and your relationship with him or her.

Your relationship with your doctor:

The importance of your personal doctor to monitor your health and to treat your diseases and injuries will continue for some time, but how the doctor does this will change and these changes will come in several sudden technological jumps rather than through a slow progression.

One jump will be in the monitoring of a patient’s blood chemistry. Today, anyone taking Celebrex, for example, must have a blood test every six months to verify that their liver is still functioning normally. This blood sample is removed from the body using a needle, then shipped to a laboratory for the testing.

The U.S. Patent Office has already granted patents for a device that will do this blood test without removing any blood from the patient’s body. It can do this because the device is implanted inside the body, just under the skin, and outputs its test results using the same technology found in RFID chips. What’s more, it provides the additional advantage that it can take a reading anytime. Ten thousand readings per day becomes no greater task than just one.

At first these implantable blood monitoring devices will gain popularity for those most in need of frequent blood testing—diabetics and those with kidney failure for example. But as they become cheaper and commonly understood they will also become more readily available and more socially acceptable.

Eventually only the very poor will lack them. Parents will be seen as irresponsible if they don’t get them to monitor their child’s health. And of course the day will come when your Great Mother, sometimes referred to as your government, will mandate that all children must have them by a certain age, just as today’s children are required to have specific vaccinations. At that point, no law abiding citizen will be able to opt out.

Your doctor will still monitor your state of health, but you’ll both save time since most office visits can be skipped. Just send the accumulated readings from your implant to the doctor’s office through the internet. Or set your medical implant’s access code to allow your doctor’s computer to logon to it remotely and download the data periodically without bothering you.

Micro-Doses:

Improvements to these medical implants—again beginning for those most in need of it but eventually spreading to the general population—will after a time allow them to release medicines directly into your bloodstream.

The medicines which people take today as pills or by injection once or twice each day, will then be taken as tiny “micro-doses,” perhaps once every sixty seconds. No more swallowing pills or giving yourself an injection. These doses will not only be smaller and more frequent, they will be given based on the real-time measurement of the current concentration of each medicine in your blood.

Micro-robotic Repairmen:

Eventually, perhaps three decades from now, the necessary technology will become sufficiently small and sufficiently sophisticated and sufficiently reliable that microscopic robots—each one only the size of a single red blood cell—will roam through your bloodstream constantly searching your body for something that might be wrong: cancer, polyps, cuts, bruises, even cracked or broken bones.

Let’s say you accidentally cut your finger. The micro-robotic sentries which happen to be passing through the area of the cut will notice the damage and immediately begin work. More and more will congregate in the damage zone and work together: anesthetizing the pain; cauterizing the severed capillaries; pulling the lacerated tissue back together and sewing or gluing it closed. To an outside observer your cut would seem to be healing itself by magic since this entire process might be complete in less than four minutes.

Because the repairs are done with such speed it wouldn’t matter much whether you got a paper cut or a life threatening gash to the throat. The faster blood flows out of the damaged area, the faster the micro-robots can accumulate and do their stuff. Which means big, ugly, bloody cuts will be closed and sealed faster than tiny scratches. And the micro-robots won’t care much if the bleeding is internal or external; the work remains mostly the same: stop the bleeding, stop the pain, and reconnect the tissue. Internal bleeding only adds the chore of cleaning out the blood; unless of course it can be gathered and shoved back into the bloodstream when it belongs.

Human Life Expectancy—Reaching Escape Velocity:

Every year throughout my entire life the Average Human Life Expectancy has increased. Not once in the last fifty-two years has it gotten shorter. Not once.

But how long can science keep a record like that going? And just how long can a human being live? Is there a limit? A limit that is genuine and unbreakable? Some say yes; some say no. The most accurate answer is, of course, that we don’t know yet.

Some people anticipate a future in which our medical technology becomes so good that people no longer die of old age. Not rarely; but never. Death would only come by accident, or some mysterious and not yet understood disease.

But even if there is a hard limit to this fleshly body, who says we have to stay inside bodies of flesh?

In his novel 2001: A Space Odyssey Arthur C. Clarke described an advanced alien civilization which briefly visited Earth three million years ago and then moved on to other explorations and discoveries. In chapter 37, paragraph 13, he wrote: “And now, out among the stars, evolution was driving toward new goals. The first explorers of Earth had long since come to the limits of flesh and blood; as soon as their machines were better than their bodies, it was time to move. First their brains, and then their thoughts alone, they transferred into shining new homes of metal and of plastic.”

Even forty years ago, in 1968, Arthur C. Clarke was able to envision this possibility. With the advantage of four decades of progress, I described in one of my novels (Plague at Redhook) a situation in which advanced alien nano-robots replaced all the living cells of a small group of people with artificial cells which mimicked the behavior of their original living cells. And they replaced them with such skill and craft that the people remained unaware that the transition had been made. They had become immortal and immune to all disease but did not know it.

What if all this nonsense becomes real?

Extending human life expectancy beyond its apparent limits is a noble goal and fun to think about, but what if it becomes real? What if you were faced with the fact that you might actually live 300 or more years? What would you need to do—besides celebrate? More specifically, what should you be doing differently right now?

I have three pieces of advice:

(1) Keep busy; keep active; keep learning. Hobbies are as important as career.

(2) Reinvent yourself every decade or two. Change profession or hobby or residence or city or nation or language or spouse or something.

(3) Invest a percentage of your income. This may be my best advice. Even a mediocre 401-K plan will let any moron become a millionaire in 40 years or less. 40 years may sound like a long time to wait for the good life, but those 40 years are going to pass whether you invest during them or not. If you live 300 years beyond your current age, at least you would be a millionaire for 260 of them. Or do you want to spend the next three centuries being just as poor as you are now?

* * *

Stephen Euin Cobb is an author and futurist, and host of the podcast The Future And You.

You can learn more about Stephen Euin Cobb here or here.

Or learn more about The Future And You here, or here or even here.

Breeding Like Rabbits—Or Hugos

Written by Mike Resnick

Walk up to any serious science fiction reader and name the last hundred Hugo winners. Chances are he’ll know less than a quarter of them, no matter how much of the stuff he reads.

There’s a reason for it.

Movies have the Oscars. Theater has the Tonys. Television has the Emmys. Mysteries have the Edgars. And we here in the field of written science fiction have the Hugos.

They’re our most prestigious award. Even overseas, every science fiction writer, reader and fan knows what the Hugo is.

The problem is that it’s not what it used to be. Maybe it never was.

The Hugo was first awarded in 1953. It went to Best Novel, Best Magazine, Best Cover Artist, Best Interior Artist, Excellence in Fact Articles, and Best New Author. Six awards, and only two went to writers (although everything went to professionals, a situation that would change before long.)

Move the calendar ahead to 1957, and only three Hugos were handed out. Right—just three.

1957 was an aberration. By 1963 we were back to giving out six Hugos—Novel, Short Fiction, Artist, Magazine, Drama and Fanzine. No one had a problem with that. We were thrilled that TV and movies were starting to take us seriously, and since fandom was responsible for putting on the Worldcon where the awards were handed out, it made sense that they’d want to award Best Fanzine.

It started innocently enough. But let’s take a quantum leap ahead, to 2007. You know how many Hugos were awarded this year? Fourteen.

And of those fourteen, you know how many were given out for written science fiction, which is the basis for this entire field? Four. That’s right. Less than 30% of the Hugos now go to written works of science fiction.

How did this come about?

Well, 1967 was a very fannish Worldcon. More panels were devoted to fandom, as opposed to written science fiction, than ever before. And since there was nothing in the rules that said you could only give out six Hugos, NyCon III (the 1967 Worldcon, the last to be held in New York), added Best Fan Writer and Best Fan Artist to the list. So, when you include Best Fanzine, NyCon III handed out as many Hugos to fans as to works of science fiction.

By the time of Noreascon II (the 1980 Worldcon, held in Boston), the academics had discovered us, and we them, and a new category was added: Best Non-Fiction Book—and suddenly we had seven annual Hugos that did not go to works of science fiction.

Now, all during the late 1970s and early 1980s, fanzine editors and publishers were grousing about the fact that Locus kept winning Best Fanzine every year. Which figured. It was professionally printed (almost no other fanzine was), it was supported by dozens of ads from major publishing houses (almost no other fanzines had any ads at all), and it had a circulation that was well over 6,000 and climbing (most fanzines printed and distributed less than 300 copies). Clearly there was no way a “traditional” fanzine would ever win the Best Fanzine Hugo again—but aha! The 1984 Worldcon committee came up with a brand-new category—Best Semiprozine—where Locus could win every year to its heart’s content and traditional fanzines could once more win the Best Fanzine Hugo.

And suddenly there were four Hugos for fans and four for written science fiction. In fact, the overall tally by the time of LACon II (the 1984 Worldcon, held in Anaheim) was four fiction Hugos and eight everything-else Hugos.

And so it remained until Buffy came along on the boob tube, and Buffy fans bemoaned the fact that a short TV show couldn’t compete with a $130 million movie. So Torcon 3 created a second Dramatic category for the 2003 Toronto Worldcon: Best Short Dramatic Presentation. It was informally called the Buffy Award, just as the Semiprozine Hugo was informally known for years as the Locus award, the delicious irony being that although Locus has indeed won something like 20 Best Semiprozine Hugos, Buffy never did win the Buffy Award.

As you can see, it’s become a bit of demonstrable folk wisdom that if you lose enough Hugos, sooner or later you can put together enough disenfranchised (read: Hugo-losing) friends so that you can get a new Hugo category installed and maybe have a chance to win one. (The fan awards were not proposed by professional writers, and the short dramatic award was not proposed by people who only watched or produced full-length movies.) This year’s Japanese Worldcon marked the first time that Best Editor was divided into Best Magazine Editor and Best Book Editor. Some of the book editors were getting tired of losing to magazine editors every year (only two book editors ever beat the magazine editors in open competition, and both of them did it posthumously), so one of the book editors, through a fannish surrogate, proposed splitting the award—and to make sure the new one went to a true-blue novel editor, anthology editors were lumped in with magazine editors.

What’s next? I don’t know.

But I know this. We now give out fourteen Hugos every year, and only four go to the reason for the existence of the field, the Worldcon, and the Hugo itself—written science fiction.

Think about it.

Pleistocene Park

Written by Mike Resnick

Turns out Michael Crichton had the right idea after all. He just had the wrong time frame.

As perhaps every scientist in the world has pointed out, DNA decays in considerably less than 65 million years, and you really can’t substitute frog DNA for the missing stuff and still come up with T. Rex and all those other nifty dinosaurs. It simply can’t be done.

So kiss the notion good-bye: there will never be a Jurassic Park.

But that doesn’t mean there won’t be a Pleistocene Park—and sooner than you think.

Right. The Pleistocene era has two advantages over the Jurassic era. First, it comes 138 million years later. (Yes, T. Rex was around 65 million years ago, but the Jurassic wasn’t. The final 73 million years of the dinosaurs’ lifetime was the Cretaceous, but Cretaceous Park just doesn’t roll off the tongue like Jurassic Park.)

Second, the Pleistocene has ice. Lots of ice. At one point, during the most recent Ice Age, ice covered a goodly portion of the Earth. In places—quite possibly where you’re sitting and reading this—it was between half a mile and a mile thick.

What’s important about that?

Well, some of that ice never melted. It’s still with us.

And it’s holding some nicely-refrigerated wooly mammoths.

I can hear you snorting now: “That crazy Jurassic Park stuff!” the way people who feared and distrusted science fiction used to snort “That crazy Buck Rogers stuff!”

Only it’s not so crazy.

The Japanese mounted a pair of very expensive expeditions to Siberia to find a frozen mammoth. And when I say expensive, I’m not just talking about the cost of outfitting the crew and getting them there. An awful lot of Russian Mafia hands had to be crossed with gold and silver.

The expeditions were financed by Kagoshima University and led by Kazufumi Goto, a renowned genetic researcher. And despite the cost, and the fanatical dedication of his crew, he came away without a mammoth.

But the French found one.

Their expedition was led not by a researcher, but an explorer, Bernard Buigues, who knew the local people (there aren’t a lot of them in northern Siberia, and they have very little use for strangers) and enlisted their help—and lo and behold, after a few months the expedition actually came up with a fully-frozen (i.e., fresh) wooly mammoth. Even better—we’ll come to why in a moment—it was a male.

Now, if that had been a movie, they would have thawed Jumbo out right then and there (and if it was an exceptionally bad movie, he’d have come to life and started ripping the clothes off the elderly scientist’s beautiful daughter, who just happened to be along for the ride.)

But this wasn’t a movie. They dug around the mammoth, then moved him, still encased in tons of ice, to a cave where the temperature was well below zero. Their next step—the one they’re working on right now—is to widen the cave and turn it into a high-tech laboratory for mammoth experts from all over the world (including Kazufumi Goto, who inspired the expedition in the first place).

And then?

Well, they have two directions they can go.

One, they can clone the mammoth.

And who, I hear you ask, will carry the fetus?

An Indian elephant, who is genetically closer to the mammoth than any other animal.

Is such a thing feasible?

Absolutely.

I live in Cincinnati. Our local zoo has been doing some cutting-edge work in the transplanting of fetuses. We’ve had elands give birth to okapis, and cows give birth to kudus, and I guarantee you they are a lot less alike than Indian elephants and wooly mammoths.

The second direction is trickier, but not impossible: since the specimen they have is a male, they can try to artificially impregnate an Indian elephant.

Possible?

Well, yes, possible. I consider it a bit of a longshot, though the DNA experts say there’s no reason why it shouldn’t work. On the other hand, it’s probably no more bizarre than breeding a horse to a Grevy’s zebra, and I personally have seen several offspring of such matings.

But even if the breeding doesn’t take, they’ll still have a bank of frozen mammoth sperm, and if the next frozen mammoth happens to be of the female persuasion … well, it’s simply a matter of introducing the sperm to the egg and finding a suitable host for the embryo, which would of course be an Indian elephant.

Will it happen with this particular frozen elephant? I hope so; he was a pain in the ass to find and extract. But if not, it’ll happen with the second or the third, as our knowledge of cloning (and all other reproductive methodology) is increasing geometrically.

And there’s something else to look forward to. Our Pleistocene Park won’t be inhabited solely by mammoths and other animals that got caught in the ice.

There’s another preserver of animals: tar. The animals we dig out of the tar pits won’t look as good, but some of their DNA will be just as well protected. (Where? The nerves inside the teeth, for starters.)

So along with mammoths, a zoo-goer in your lifetime might drop by Pleistocene Park to see a saber-toothed tiger as well.

Like I said, Michael Crichton had the right idea. He just had the wrong park.

The Pig-in-a-Poke Factor

Written by Eric Flint

In this essay, I want to take up the second of the arguments that is often advanced against the policy of taking a relaxed attitude toward fair use when it comes to online publishing. In my last essay, I believe I pretty much demolished the argument that the policy I follow (as do many other authors) leads to a direct decline in the income of authors. But that leaves the question of what might be the long-term impact of the policy.

In a nutshell, the argument usually advanced in opposition is that, while free distribution of a writer’s material online might very well produce an immediate benefit for that author, its long-term effect on all authors will be negative. Even, eventually, on the author who follows the policy.

The reasoning is simple. If it’s true—as I say that it is—that the worst obstacle faced by authors is obscurity, then it follows that any author who uses online free or cheap distribution of their work is indeed overcoming their obscurity, at least to a degree, and will improve their sales as a result. But it also follows that they can only do so by cannibalizing the sales of those authors who don’t make their work readily available on the internet. Their gain comes from the loss of others—and it should be obvious that, over time, this is a losing proposition. If we assume that eventually all authors are forced to follow suit, then we simply return to the same situation of mutual obscurity that the policy was supposed to overcome. All we’ve done is replace a market whose obscurity is caused by darkness with a market whose obscurity is caused by an excess of blaring advertisements.

This is not as silly an argument as it may seem, at first glance. For it is in fact true that too much visibility—if it becomes universal—can be every bit as blinding to potential customers as too little. Everyone has had the experience of being in a place which was overloaded with advertising. The typical effect upon most people is simply to make them learn to ignore it all.

So you gain nothing, in the long run—except that in the process you’ve lowered the price that authors can expect for their work.

Another way of putting this is that a policy which works fine if only a few authors follow it, will not work if they all start doing it.

There are three fallacies to this argument.

The first is that, underlying it, is the notion that the market for written text—fiction, at least—is pretty much fixed. That being the case, any expansion of sales enjoyed by one author due to his or her policy of using online promotion aggressively, will have to come at the expense of another author.

It’s enough to state this baldly, I think, to see how silly it is. In reality, the market for fiction is one of the most variable in existence. Not only that, it’s a shallow market to begin with, not one that has even begun to be saturated. Another study just appeared that lamented (again) that the average American adult reads only four books a year, and most of those were non-fiction. Assuming full hardcover prices of about $25 a book—and that’s certainly too high an estimate, because the majority of fiction purchases are of paperbacks—that means the average American adult is spending $100 or less on fiction annually.

Which, in turn, means that fiction buying is so small a part of the average American’s budget that it could easily be expanded tenfold before it started making much of dent in their income. It’s no higher than the spending of most households on movie tickets, which is in approximately the same range.

But averages like this don’t really mean that much, because in the real world most book buying is done by a relatively small percentage of the population. Estimates on this vary, but it’s never more than 20% of the adult population and usually closer to 15%. If you exclude those adults who don’t read any books at all, for instance, which is about 25% of the population, median book sales in the US as of the study (which was done by Associated Press-Ipsos) rise to seven books a year.

But even that’s not very meaningful, because while it may be true that three-fourths of the adult population buy all the books, the majority of those books were bought by a much smaller percentage. The livelihood of authors and publishers really depends on that (approximately) 15% of the adult population who are more-or-less constant readers. People who read at least one book a month, often one book a week, and some of whom read even more than that.

Before I go any further, I need to dispel one myth, so it doesn’t get in the way. That’s the widely spread and often-spouted myth that readership is declining in America because of the impact of modern electronic entertainment. To quote from the AO-Ipsos study, “Analysts attribute the listlessness to competition from the Internet and other media.”

Well, the analysts are wrong, and the reasons they’re wrong—as is so often true with social analyses of all kinds—is that they lack any historical perspective. The truth is that the American population has never—not once, not in three hundred years—been a population that, on average, reads very much. And when it does read, the preferred reading for most Americans has always been either religious texts—mostly the Bible—or self-help non-fiction literature.

That was true in 1900, long before the internet came along. It was true in 1800, before there any workable electricity. It was true in 1700, before anyone even knew what electricity was.

In short, it’s “caused” by the way American culture developed historically, that’s all. Different nations have different reading habits, shaped by their own history. Russians, for instance, have always read a lot more than Americans.

I won’t spend any more time on this, because it’s a digression from my central point here. Which is simply this:

One. There is obviously a tremendous expansion possible in the amount of book buying that Americans do. (And other nations, of course—but I’m focusing on Americans because they still provide the great majority of the readership for English-language genre fiction, including science fiction and fantasy.)

Two. Of all the many factors that determine how much any given American reads, the factor of “competition” between authors is so negligible that even to include it at all as a causative factor is silly.

Which leads me to my second point. The actual relationship between authors is not and never has been competitive in the first place. Or, to put it perhaps a bit more precisely, whatever competitive aspects do exist are simply dwarfed by the many ways in which the work of authors is complementary and mutual reinforcing.

The real effect upon other authors whenever one of them becomes extremely visible to the public and wildly popular is not and never has been to crush the rest. Rather, that author’s popularity tends to do the exact opposite. It creates what you might call a new sub-category of the fiction market—or, more often, popularizes one that already existed—and makes it far more popular. As a result of which, most authors who work in that same sub-category start seeing an increase in their sales.

We’ve had, very recently, as graphic a demonstration of this truth as you could ask for. What was the effect of J.K. Rowling’s phenomenally popular Harry Potter series on the sales of other writers who produced works of fantasy for a juvenile and young adult audience? Did she drive them under? Obliterate their careers like a one-woman Mongol horde?

What a laugh. In fact, the sales for many of those authors got a tremendous boost as a result of Rowling’s popularity.

Nor is this an isolated instance. To the contrary. It’s the common pattern, and has been throughout history. To give another example, the impact of Anne Rice’s very popular vampire novels was to turn writing about vampires into something of a not-so-small industry. To give yet another example, the popularity of Tom Clancy’s techno-thrillers almost (not quite) single-handedly created the entire techno-thriller sub-genre.

I could go on and on. J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings transformed fantasy writing from a relatively small sub-genre of science fiction into a sub-genre of its own that today outsells science fiction by a large margin. The impact of that trilogy was further enhanced when the reissues of Robert E. Howard’s old Conan stories start coming out—but they only came out because Tolkien had demonstrated there was a huge market for fantasy.

Look anywhere you want, and you’ll see the same phenomenon at work. The pioneering mystery stories written by Edgar Allen Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle did not crush the mystery genre. They created it in the first place—and their work was rapidly expanded by such great mystery authors of the so-called “Golden Age of Mysteries” as G.K. Chesterton, Agatha Christie, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Patricia Wentworth, Georges Simenon, Dorothy Sayers, Rex Stout, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and many authors.

Were these mystery authors competing with each other? No, they were complementing each other. Their combined visibility is what elevated the mystery genre to a major writing market in the first place.

The same phenomenon, in fact, is the basis of my own success as an author. As of now, I’ve written or co-authored something like twenty-five novels. (No, I don’t remember the exact number and I’m not going to take the time to figure it out. There are two benchmarks that tell you you’re a successful commercial author. The first is when you realize you can’t remember offhand exactly how many books you’ve published. The second is when you realize that at least half your income is coming from royalties instead of advances.)

I write in many sub-genres of science fiction and fantasy. But it’s the one-third of my books which are alternate history that generate most of my income. That’s primarily the 1632 series, but not exclusively.

The pre-eminent alternate history author today, as he has been for a decade and a half, is Harry Turtledove. He’s not the only one, of course. Other prominent alternate history authors include myself, Steve Stirling, and the collaborative team of Newt Gingrich and Bill Fortschen. Not to mention that Philip Roth, generally considered a literary author rather than a genre author, recently published an alternate history novel (The Plot Against America) whose sales dwarfed those of any of the established authors in the sub-genre.

I do not now and have never considered Harry Turtledove—or Steve Stirling, or Gingrich and Forstchen, or for that matter Philip Roth—as my “competitor.” I’m not that blitheringly stupid. In the real world, it would be far more accurate to say that my own success is due to Harry Turtledove than that it has been in any way “thwarted” or “stifled” by him. It was Harry, more than anyone else, who both demonstrated to publishers that there was a sizeable market for alternate history—and, to a large degree, even created the market in the first place. I had the good fortune to come along at a point when alternate history was growing rapidly as a popular genre, and since my own expertise is in history I naturally leaned toward that kind of fiction anyway.

Having given that well-deserved tip of the hat to Harry, my horror of false modesty forces me to add that I have certainly not been parasitizing him. My own popularity as an alternate history author—along with that of Steve Stirling, Newt Gingrich and Bill Forstchen, and a number of others—has turned the sub-genre from the one-man show it almost was in the mid-90s to the very large and popular sub-genre it is today. One of the effects of that change has been to solidify Harry’s career, certainly not to undermine it.

Any author with half a brain knows this is true. So why do so many of them seem to lose their mind when this same, simple truth is applied to the internet and electronic publication? Why in the world would anyone think that the greater visibility enjoyed by authors who use online promotion aggressively would hurt any other author?

Visibility is visibility, regardless of how you achieve it. Whether it’s through very good sales of paper editions, extensive advertising, media hype—or aggressive use of free and cheap electronic distribution—the net effect will be the same. By drawing more readers to Author A, the sales of other authors whose work is similar will get promoted as well. Not as much, granted—but nothing prevents them from following the same policy.

The expression “a rising tide lifts all boats” has been much misused. In many areas of economic activity, it is not true at all. But it does happen to be true when it comes to publishing, at least entertainment publishing. (Different factors affect things like the sales of textbooks or religious works.)

Finally, there’s a third flaw in the argument. One of the characteristics of the commercial entertainment publishing industry, precisely because the market is so opaque to potential customers, is that there’s an enormous amount of waste. “Waste,” in the sense that a very high percentage of the time and money that readers devote to reading turns out to be wasted for them.

Why? Because they buy a book and then discover they don’t like it. In the case of non-fiction, which is often purchased for practical reasons, that can be compounded by discovering the book didn’t provide them with what they thought or hoped it would.

I am personally convinced that it is this aspect of book-buying—a phenomenon which is well-known to me and every other person in the history of the world who has ever bought more than a handful of books—that is the single biggest obstacle to book purchasing.

Call it the pig-in-a-poke factor.

The obstacle is certainly not price. The fact is that except for a very small number of high-priced books, which are usually either technical texts or limited-print-run collector’s editions, the cost of the average book—yes, even hardcovers—is a piddly expense for the average person who is well-educated enough to read regularly. Students are really the only big exception. In the nature of things, students are starving students, as they damn well should be.

(Hey, look, I was a starving student too, once upon a time. I can well remember a steady diet of the cheapest meat available, potatoes and cabbage, living in a rundown apartment and driving a jalopy. Did me a world of good. Yet… somehow I always scraped up the money for books.)

(Okay, and booze and cigarettes and other starving student items some of which will remain nameless. This is the age at which human beings first learn the great philosophical truth that—economists be damned; buncha gloomy types, natural born devotees of Schopenhauer and Cassandra—luxuries are more essential than necessities.)

Granted, if someone buys a lot of books, that can become a significant part of their budget. But each book, by itself, doesn’t amount to much.

An average hardcover volume these days costs about $25. That’s the approximate cost of going to the movies for two people, if you add in the popcorn and soda that most of them will buy. And for that same money, they get about two hours of entertainment sitting in a movie theater. Except for a small number of speed readers, an average novel will provide a lot more hours of entertainment than that.

A paperback costs eight dollars. That’s a meal for two—less, usually—at a fast food joint.

No, it’s not price. The real problem is that people have been burned way too many times from buying a book and then discovering it wasn’t what they wanted. Either because they discovered they didn’t like the author’s manner of story-telling or writer’s style, or because they discovered the subject matter was not what they really wanted.

The effect of the pig-in-a-poke factor is to reinforce—drastically, in fact—the natural conservatism of readers faced by a very opaque market. As a rule, most readers most of the time stick to the very small number of authors they are familiar with. (In the case of fiction. In the case of non-fiction, they will usually be more far-ranging in their buying simply because they have to be.)

And that’s the third area in which electronic publishing—more precisely, having an expansive attitude toward fair use when it comes to electronic publishing—can play a major role in easing the skepticism of an author’s potential audience.

I will use myself as an example. No potential reader of mine who has access to the internet needs to buy anything of mine on a wing and a prayer. It is easy and free of cost (money cost, if not time) to investigate my work before you plunk down one dollar for any of my books.

Here’s how you do it:

Go to www.baen.com.

Select “Free Library” from the menu at the top, on the left hand side.

Once you’re in the Baen Free Library, select “The Authors.” (Fourth item down, in the column on the left.)

Then select “Eric Flint”—or any one of the other authors who have works in the Library. There are over forty of them, and the number keeps growing.

My most popular work are the volumes in my 1632 series. If you’re not sure you’d find that series to your taste, it’s easy and free to find out. You will find the first two novels in the series in the Library—that’s 1632 and 1633—along with two of the anthologies devoted to the series. (Ring of Fire and Grantville Gazette, Volume 1.)

Think you might like my alternate history series dealing with early 19th century America? You can find the first book in that series also in the Library. That’s 1812: The Rivers of War.

If you might find a series that combines alternate history with fantasy to your taste, you should take at look at the first book in the Heirs of Alexandra series that I’m writing with Mercedes Lackey and Dave Freer. That’s The Shadow of the Lion, which is also in the Library.

I could continue, but I think the point is made. While you’re at it, you can read—free of cost, and unencrypted—the first book or books in popular series by David Weber, David Drake, John Ringo, and several others.

In short, by using free distribution online of our work, many of us have essentially eliminated the pig-in-a-poke factor.

To go back to the question at hand, what would be the effect on book-buying if all authors started doing the same thing?

Well, obviously, one of the effects would be that every author would lose some sales. Not every reader who examines an author’s work for free is going to like it.

Fine. Those are not sales any intelligent author wants anyway. Word of mouth works both ways. I don’t want someone who dislikes my work to pay money for it. Whatever short-term gain I make is more than offset by the long-term damage of having negative word of mouth running loose out there. Which it will, don’t think it won’t—if the reader paid money for it. But what I’ve found is that readers who investigate my work for free and then discover they don’t like it, don’t have any hard feelings about the matter. In fact, I know of several instances where they recommended me to someone else, whom they thought might like my work even if they didn’t.

To repeat myself, this is not rocket science. It’s simply the authorial version of that common-sense business practice known as “goodwill”—which has been well understood by lowly shopkeepers and shoemakers if not oh-so-cerebral auteurs since the days of the Sumerians.

To conclude, the notion that if all authors followed my policy when it comes to an expansive attitude toward fair use—or a variant thereof, since there are many possible—the end result would be a decline in the income of authors as a class, is wrong.

And it’s wrong on all three counts.

First, the market for writers is not fixed. It’s a pie whose size is wildly variable.

Second, writers are not competitors anyway. The real impact of a popular author on the book market is to enhance the sales of other authors, not diminish them.

Third, by eliminating at least some of the opacity of the book market, expansive fair use diminishes the tremendous waste that takes place now—and thereby makes readers more willing to experiment with new authors.

* * *

To some extent, I’ve been beating a dead horse in these last two essays. Or, it might be better to say, viciously lashing a pitiful crippled beast who is not quite dead yet but is foundering fast.

The truth is that, at least within the world of science fiction and fantasy, this part of the argument has been mostly won by now. It took a few years, and it was primarily done not by argument but by the practical examples of authors like me and Baen Books as a publishing house. But by now, it’s pretty much a settled argument. There really aren’t too many authors or editors out there any longer who doubt that expansive fair use practices with regard to electronic publishing enhances the sales of paper editions.

(As opposed to the bean-counters who run most big corporate publishing houses, who still can’t see their nose in front of their face.)

But that’s now where the stumbling block has come to be. It’s slid back, so to speak, to a different level of opposition.

The argument that is now advanced can be summarized as follows:

Yes, it seems clear that distributing electronic books cheaply or even for free does enhance sales of the paper editions of those same books. And, since the book market today is still overwhelmingly a paper market, that works to the short-term advantage of authors and publishers.

But in the long run, it’s suicide. Sooner or later, electronic publishing is bound to become the dominant form of publishing. And at that point, these same expansive fair use practices will come back to haunt us. Since, obviously, it will undercut the electronic market which will someday become the main form of the market rather than the small niche it is now.

* * *

In my next essays, I will deal with this issue at considerable length and in considerable detail. What I will demonstrate is the following:

First, the likelihood that the paper book is on the verge of extinction is very low.

Secondly, even if we presume a completely electronic market, expansive fair use will still continue to enhance sales, not diminish them.

Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, publishing and writing as economic activities have always been subject to change in their specific methods of gaining an income. All that electronic publishing does is simply usher in yet another such change. And, as has been true with all such transformations in the past, the new methods create new sources of income, which at the very least offset whatever losses may be suffered.

From the Catacombs

Written by Barry N. Malzberg

The Distinguished Editor in the past has had a question. (Editor’s note: that’s Editor Resnick, not Editor Flint). More of an objection, really. “Criticisms of, references to the science fiction of the 1950’s and 1960’s are of no interest to 95% of the current audience. All of us old-timers may love it but this is not the audience any more; it’s as if you’re at a Gaming Convention now talking about Captain Video.” I think the Distinguished Editor wants me to spruce it up a little, move as briskly as possible toward the present. Charles Stross, anyone? Neuromancer itself is now 23 years old; that’s four complete generations of magazine readers as the market researchers of the 1950’s determined. (Most of the readership turns over completely within a five year period.)

Point taken. The Distinguished Editor understands the times and knows where this magazine must be situated in order to prosper. (And how we all do want it to prosper.) When I comment on Alfred Bester’s “The Men Who Murdered Muhammed” or “Fondly Farenheit” I am discussing work which was published 50 years ago. A little perspective: I began reading this stuff in 1951, had become a serious reader indeed within a couple of years. How much interest would I have had in Captain Billy’s Whiz-Bang or the early-century Argosy? Wouldn’t it all have been impossibly remote? Certainly I had no interest in such material in 1952; it had nothing to do with what interested me at the time.

Robt. Silverberg calls this “The McKinley Effect.” In order to

understand exactly how out of it we old fellas are, remember that Eisenhower, McCarthy, The Demolished Man or Walter Miller’s “Dumb Waiter” are exactly as far behind us now as the McKinley Administration was to us in our youth. Speak of impossible remoteness! Certainly any consideration of the McKinley Effect has to be humbling. Perhaps I am indeed wasting my time (and that of the audience) in becoming as emotional and specific to decades-old science fiction as I have occasionally been in this series of columns. What percentage of the readership can relate in any significant fashion? Charles Stross, anyone? More to the point: The Matrix anyone? Inside John Malkovich? Halo?

My response to the Distinguished Editor, at least to this point, has been

grudging and uncharacteristically wistful in its optimism. “I think there are a

lot of people out there who could be made interested in literary science

fiction and its antecedents. I’ve got to make it relevant, certainly and I should

not wallow in a pointless nostalgia, but if I didn’t think that a good part of

our audience could be brought along to wider historical understanding, then I would not even try. As the Distinguished Editor himself said, Toastmastering at the 1988 New Orleans World Convention, “For without you we have no history.” He was presenting the Convention’s special award to members of the Science Fiction Oral History Association, whose primary task was to go into the field, interview first- and second-generation science fiction writers and fans at length and put those interviews into permanent form for custodial care. “And without our history, who are we? what can we ever be?” the Toastmaster did not add to his statement but I wish he had. Arthur Miller, the playwright who wrote Death Of A Salesman and After The Fall would add, “If we don’t know where we have been, we will be destroyed by what we have become.”

We are, in sum, all here to learn. You, me, Kornbluth, Werner von Braun, the Bible-toting astronauts of Apollo 8’s Boorman mission reading out Scripture as they looked upon the Earth, everybody just a simple child of our time, looking to memory for context. Science fiction, as I have so often said, has become a small special interest at science fiction conventions, but that doesn’t mean that it has lost relevance. The ape in the corner must be scratched periodically, lest it tear apart the room.

So a few photographs from the family album. The odd fragments among the

ruins, recollected through rereading in the last few weeks. Small examples of the McKinley Effect. Here are Kuttner’s fascist alien rabbits from his 1943 Gallegher story (one of a series of five in Astounding over a six-year period), “The World Is Mine.” The rabbits have arrived as a conquering army from a secret planet far, far away. “The World Is Ours,” one of them notes. “First we’ll take over and then we’ll make you do everything we say. More cookies please.” The rabbits have a weakness for cookies and warm milk. “The world is ours?” they sing. “Could you please give us a little more?” If I were attempting to be profound I would say that this kind of reductionism, making Hitler a clown in 1943 (Mel Brooks did this too, but it took him a quarter of a century more) was not only visionary but a kind of science fiction at its best. Kuttner’s mocking humor, his hollow laughter, resounds through this story; his crazy inventor Gallegher knew a thing or two even if he had to become drunk to know. Here is Sheckley’s Valdusian Derg in Galaxy in 1956, pulling a protection racket on the usual hapless Sheckleyan protagonist. Of course the Derg can offer only a partial kind of protection, a Sneep emerges to advise our pal. You’d better let us help you too. At the end Sneeps and Dergs have been brushed away by an even more menacing force who warns, “You’ll probably be all right but whatever you do, don’t lesnerize“. What is lesnerizing? our guy wants to know, but too late, everyone is gone. “I think I’ll be all right,” our pal writes in his diary. “It’s been 48 hours and all has been quiet. Maybe “lesnerizing” is some kind of exotic alien thing. Now I have to sneez—”

That’s satirical science fiction for you; fascist rabbits and outsnookered

Valdusian Dergs. The world lies before us, as John Cheever wrote, like a

bewildering dream, but here for more than eight decades now has been genre science fiction to try to make some sense of it. To put that bewildering world in a place we could apprehend if only through reduction.

Its world is ours.

—October 2007 New Jersey

December 2007

Written by Stephen Euin Cobb

Authors Kevin J. Anderson and Timothy Zahn are joined by Grant Baciocco (professional comedian), Doctor Aubrey de Grey (gerontologist promoting medical life extension), Professor Paul Levinson (media commentator) and Paul Fischer (pioneering podcaster), as well as by Stoney Compton and Walt (Bananaslug) Boyes for the November and December 2007 episodes of The Future And You.

The Future And You is an award-winning audio podcast about the future which may be downloaded and enjoyed, or even copied and shared, for free. Every episode contains numerous interviews which reveal a wide variety of ideas and opinion about the future from a wide variety of people.

And as always, each episode of The Future And You contains an installment in our serialization of the Hard SF novel, Bones Burnt Black; and features ten minutes of Walt Boyes (The Bananaslug) & Stoney Compton as they do their bit to let the world at large know what’s in the current issue of Jim Baen’s Universe Magazine.

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Topics in the December 2007 episode

Timothy Zahn is not surprised that the SETI project hasn’t found anyone because he doesn’t think there’s anyone out there to find. He regards the expectation that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe to be a perfectly understandable assumption, but one based on far too little data. (In addition to being a best selling author, he has a Masters degree in physics.) “Earth constitutes only one data point” he says, “and my training in physics and mathematics tells me that extrapolating from only one data point is fraught with danger.”

His confidence is high, however, that we will someday have computers wired directly into our bodies. “Teenagers would love to have their music wired into their brains,” he says, but adds, “I’ll wait for the third or fourth generation of the technology to see what the side effects are.”

He describes his ideas on a wide variety of topics such as: medical life extension, The Singularity and nanotechnology. For example, he is skeptical of cryonics for both technical and spiritual reasons. He’s skeptical about the chances for faster than light travel (FTL) but admits he cannot rule it out completely. He finds it strange that schools are cutting exercise and sports programs at the very time when childhood obesity is widespread and on the rise. And he gives a number of examples to support his doubts that non-lethal weapons can be meaningful unless both sides in a war agree to use them.

Kevin J. Anderson (co-author of the best selling Dune prequels) feels that the job of a science fiction writer is not to write stories which accurately describe our real future, but to write entertaining stories which relate to people today. Even if he were able to write such stories accurately, which he emphasizes he cannot, he expects that our future way of life, fifty or a hundred years from now, will be so removed from our present way of life that today’s readers would find it difficult or even impossible to relate to the characters or to their problems.

He finds cryonics interesting, and can conceive of our future nanotechnology becoming advanced enough to repair any and all freezing damage on the cellular and molecular level, but wonders if there aren’t spiritual and religious questions which are yet to be answered regarding the act of reanimating those who are deceased. Even if we repair all the damage, he asks, when we flip the switch to bring the body back to life, will the person be in there? This is not just a question of data storage, but a question of the soul.

When it comes to SETI, Kevin J. Anderson is not surprised that the universe seems so empty. But he does see this emptiness as an argument that FTL may be difficult or even impossible to invent. On the other hand he says, “If SETI (researchers) came in tomorrow and said, guess what? Somebody picked up the phone. We’re actually talking to an alien race. The change this would bring upon the human race is impossible to calculate.”

He is also in the camp of those who see artificial intelligence eventually merging with humans rather than becoming our enemy. He anticipates that computer implants will become popular, and is willing to have one too—after other people try them first. He even anticipates that this might someday lead to humanity developing a “hive mind.”

Paul Levinson feels that if cryonics works it could provide a good form of time travel as well as a good way to extend human lives. And he describes the affects he thinks it might have on society.

As to The Singularity: Paul Levinson agrees with some but not all of the concepts which are expected to work together to bring it about. He does not buy into any of the apocalyptic descriptions of The Singularity. He especially balks at the idea of artificial intelligence becoming so advanced that it is unintelligible to humans. Instead, he sees artificially intelligent machines becoming integrated with human minds; so that we become better humans—rather than the machines out-pacing us and going their own way. He uses a number of historical examples to support his ideas of how this and other aspects of our future will grow out of our present.

Is every police officer’s current location a blinking dot on a computer map of the town back at headquarters? Does every police officer wear a GPS locator and carry a big red panic button? Does every police car have a computer to run the license plate of the cars the officer stops? Officers, firefighters and civilians live or die everyday based on the answer to these and similar questions, but in many places in America and around the world the unfortunate answer is “No, not yet.”

Paul Fischer helped design New York City’s newly installed Dedicated Data Network which is one of the most advanced such systems in America. Its powerful features and abilities can—or soon will—answer Yes to those urgent questions. Paul Fischer describes how it is used to help save lives, as well as the trends he sees developing in Police, Firefighting and other municipal computer systems.

Paul Fischer also speaks briefly about the two podcasts he and his wife (Martha Holloway) produce: The Balticon podcast (in which they interview authors, scientists and other people of note attending the science fiction and fantasy convention called Balticon) and The A.D.D. Cast (a free form podcast in which they talk about how to cope with A.D.D.). (Paul was diagnosed with A.D.D. many years ago while still in junior high school.)

And as always, each episode of The Future And You features ten minutes of Walt Boyes (The Bananaslug) & Stoney Compton as they let the world know what’s in the current issue of Jim Baen’s Universe Magazine.

This episode however does not—I repeat, does not—contain another installment in our serialization of the Hard SF novel, Bones Burnt Black. This is because the final climactic installment was included in the previous episode.

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Topics in the November 2007 episode

Kevin J. Anderson feels that if nanotechnology and molecular manufacturing turn out to meet their potential they will change human society and the human race forever, and that this will be a bigger change than any we have experienced in all of human history.

He sees Vernor Vinge’s Singularity as a fascinating and scary possibility. Though a long-time Mac user and early adapter, he feels the curve of The Singularity has already passed him by.

One of his worries for the future is that we have lots of smart people working on scientific advances when they have no clue what the effect on society will be. As an example, he sites a U.S. project from the sixties called Operation Plowshare in which nuclear warheads were to be used in place of earth moving equipment for construction projects such as blasting tunnels through mountains for interstate highways and for creating municipal reservoirs for public drinking water.

“Cryonics is a very good bet,” says Doctor Aubrey de Grey who sees resuscitation from a cryo-preserved state as a natural extension of the work he’s already doing in Medical Life Extension. He is pessimistic about cancer, however, and does not expect a cure within the next few years. He feels that cancer will be one of the most difficult problems for Life Extension to overcome.

Doctor de Grey also uses empirical evidence to make a case for his notion that because Life Extension raises people’s perception of the value of life, in the future wars will become less and less common.

He also suggests that the reason the US medical system is so expensive compared to those of the rest of the civilized world is not that it is not socialized but that America is such a litigious society. A lot of the money goes to lawyers and to malpractice insurance companies rather than to those who actually provide medical care.

Professional comedian Grant Baciocco is interviewed in Atlanta Georgia where he had just accepted a Parsec Award for the podcast which he co-created with Dougg Price called The Radio Adventures of Doctor Floyd.

A technogeek but no transhumanist, Grant Baciocco is one of the early pioneers of podcasting. He discusses trends in comedy including the recent increase in vulgarity, his use of SeatGuru to always get an aisle seat when flying, and trends in theme parks—especially the new interactive animated characters which talk with and answer questions from their audience.

And as always, each episode of The Future And You features ten minutes of Walt Boyes (The Bananaslug) & Stoney Compton as they let the world know what’s in the current issue of Jim Baen’s Universe Magazine.

This episode contains the final climactic installment in our serialization of the Hard SF novel, Bones Burnt Black.

* * *

News Items in the November and December 2007 issues

Hank Reinhardt Has Passed Away

Hank Reinhardt, renowned weapons expert and beloved husband of Toni Weisskopf, passed away on October 30, 2007.

Many thousands of SF&F fans have enjoyed his weapons demos at various science fiction conventions. Those who knew him well described him as “a good guy, a vibrant man full of energy and life.”

Here are just a few of the many possible links about Hank: a bio, an interview, a feature article. Numerous tributes and recollections have been posted on the net and are easily found by searching for his name (which is sometimes misspelled Hank Reinhart). Here is a website Hank created himself some time ago but had not updated sine 2005.

I spoke with him a few times over the last few years, and had a chance to enjoy his sword demo at LibertyCon in 2003. He was a good guy.

Catching a Cold May Produce Obesity

Research in the last few years has linked more than one of the viruses that cause the common cold to obesity in humans. The explanation, which is still theoretical, is that because these particular viruses reproduce in fat cells they have evolved the ability to stimulate the human body to create more fat cells. To learn more do an online search for the words: obesity and virus.

Bones Burnt Black

Serialization Reaches “The End”

It took nearly two years, but the November 2007 episode of The Future And You contains the final climactic installment in our serialization of the Hard SF novel, Bones Burnt Black. The show’s host has not yet decided if he will begin reading another of his novels into the show.

Second Anniversary of The Future And You

The December 2007 episode of The Future And You marks the show’s second anniversary.

First Anniversary of the

Alliance with Jim Baen’s Universe Magazine

One year ago your host was asked to team this podcast with Jim Baen’s Universe Magazine. Just two month earlier The Future And You had won the 2006 Parsec Award for “Best Speculative Fiction News Podcast.”

New Movie-Documentary Claims Academia

Conspires to Suppress Intelligent Design

The writer, commentator, actor and comedian, Ben Stein (Wikipedia article) (who is often remembered for playing the economics teacher calling out the attendance roll in the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off) will release a controversial new movie-documentary which claims to show a widespread conspiracy within universities and colleges to suppress any discussion of theories which oppose the theory of natural selection. The movie is titled: Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. Methods of suppression are said to go beyond ridicule, and include denial of tenure, denial of funding, even dismissal from long-held teaching positions.

Because of the emotional nature of this century-old conflict, this movie is bound to get a great deal of attention and stir a great deal of controversy. And like other controversial movie documentaries, such as those by Michael Moore and Al Gore, it’s bound to make a great deal of money.

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Learn More

You can learn more about The Future And You here, or here or even here.

Or learn more about its host here or here.

THE END

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