April 2018
Author: Asimov's Science Fiction
Date: 0101-01-01 00:00:00+00:00

NOVELLAS

13

Dix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kristine Kathryn Rusch 140

Bury Me in the Rainbow . . . . . . . . . . . . Bill Johnson NOVELETTES

68

A Threnody for Hazan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ray Nayler 94

Seven Months Out
and Two to Go . . . . . . . Rachel Swirsky & Trace Yulie SHORT STORIES

47

Artisanal Trucking, LLC . . . . Mary Robinette Kowal

55

Queen of the River:

the Harbor Hope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . James Van Pelt 62

Emojis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rudy Rucker 82

Love Songs for the Very Awful . . . . . . Robert Reed

108

The Billows of Sarto . . . . . . . . . . . . Sean Monaghan 120

The Waiting Room:

the Pedia’s Story . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . James Gunn 123

Attack on Terminal:

the Pilgrims’ Story . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . James Gunn 128

In Event of Moon Disaster . . . . . . . . . . Rich Larson 136

Because Reasons . . . . . . . . . . . . . Alexandra Renwick

MARCH/APRIL 2018

Vol. 42 Nos. 3 & 4

(Whole Numbers 506 & 507)

Next Issue on Sale April 24, 2018

Cover Art by Jeff Brown

POETRY

61

The Evolutionary Race . . . . . . . . . . . . . Peter Payack 67

When Time-Travelers from
the Future Finally Reach Us . Darrell Schweitzer

93

Is it True? It’s Not True . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jane Yolen 119

Palate of the Babel Fish . . . . . . . . . . . . Todd Dillard 127

Your Clone Defies Aging . . . . . . . . . . Robert Frazier DEPARTMENTS

4

Editorial: More Words

About Some Words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sheila Williams 6

Reflections: Rereading

Fletcher Pratt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Robert Silverberg 9

On the Net: Is the Internet

Broken? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . James Patrick Kelly 46

In Memoriam: Kit Reed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

197

Next Issue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

198

On Books . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Peter Heck 208 The SF Conventional Calendar . . . Erwin S. Strauss Asimov’s Science Fiction. ISSN 1065-2698. Vol. 42, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 506 & 507, March/April 2018. GST #R123293128. Double issues published bimonthly by Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publications. One year subscription $47.94 in the United States and U.S. possessions. In all other countries $56.94 (GST included in Canada), payable in advance in U.S. funds. Address for subscription and all other correspondence about them, 6 Prowitt Street, Norwalk, CT 06855. Allow 6 to 8 weeks for change of address. Address for all editorial matters: Asimov’s Science Fiction, 44 Wall Street, Suite 904, New York, N.Y. 10005. Asimov’s Science Fiction is the registered trademark of Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publications. © 2018 by Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publications, 6 Prowitt Street, Norwalk, CT

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Printed in by Trend Offset Printing, Jacksonville, FL U.S.A. (1/29/18)

EDITORIAL

Sheila Williams

MORE WORDS ABOUT SOME WORDS
n exploration of the words that have

(Translation: semi-retired criminal
appeared in Asimov’s fiction and po-
lawyer.)” With time on his hands, Piet
etry titles is possible due to the work
created and regularly updates an index

Aof Asimov’s super fan, Piet Nel. Piet of all the stories and poems published in was born in Cape Town, South Africa, in

Asimov’s. In our last issue, Neil Clarke,

1954 and, apart from brief sojourns else-
editor of Clarkesworld and creator of
where, has lived there ever since. He has

Asimov’s online submission system, pro-
been a prosecutor, a senior state advo-
vided us with a statistical analyses of
cate (similar to our ADA) and, for more
fifty thousand poetry and fiction titles
than a decade up to 2015, an acting re-
submitted through our system since it
gional magistrate. Piet tells us, “The lat-
launched in 2010.

ter work was done on a contract basis,

I asked Piet if he could do the same
but my contract ran out in 2015. I re-
thing for our published work, and he did
main available, but no opportunities to
an analysis based on the 3,338 works of
return to work have arisen since then.

fiction and 1,240 poems that have ap-

Piet Nely
ord Cloud bW
peared in Asimov’s through our September

“From earliest childhood I’ve loved

/October 2017 issue. Below is a list of our
bedtime stories, and ever since then
most popular titles, and a word cloud

I’ve never wanted to be without a reli-
based on the words that are most common-
able source of gripping fiction—prefer-
ly found in all our titles appears opposite.

ably short, because I’m a night owl

1st (4) “Oracle” (or “The Oracle”; two
and do most of my reading very late at
each)

night. I started to follow science fiction

2 n d ( 3 ) “First Contact,” “Hero,”

magazines in the mid-seventies, and

“Visitors”

since the mid-eighties Asimov’s has

3rd (2) “At the Pet Shop,” “Bridges,”

been my fiction journal of choice. I can

“The Catch, “Destination,” “Deus ex
clearly remember exactly where I was

Machina,” “Dinosaurs,” “Dust,” “Elephant,”

when I read some of my favorite clas-

“End Game,” “Entrada,” “Ever After,” “Fa-
sic tales by Robert Silverberg, Ursula
ther to the Man,” “Fireflies,” “Galatea,”

“Green,” “Guardian,” “In Concert,” “Inva-

K. Le Guin, Kij Johnson, and way too
sion,” “Lethe,” “Limits,” “A Meeting of
many others to mention. And despite

Minds,” “Monsters,” “Nazca Lines,”

the forward-looking nature of the mag-

“Nightfall” (one of these was a reprint of
azine, I’m old enough to be sentimental

Isaac Asimov’s 1941 story), “Not Fade
and to love the fact that Asimov’s, in its

Away,” “The One that Got Away,” “Original
forty-first year, is now old enough to

Sin,” “Over There,” “Perchance to Dream,”

have left behind four decades of unfor-

“Pièce de Résistance,” “Roadkill,” “Sal-
gettable stories, some of which I’m still
vage,” “Savior,” “Scout,” “Skin Deep,” “Solo,”

discovering or rediscovering in

“This Impatient Ape,” “Time Travelers
anthologies. May the magazine’s future

Never Die,” “Turing Test,” “Windows”

resemble its past.”

If the poetry publications are removed,

—Piet Nel
second-place “First Contact” and sixteen
backward, slips, storms, and goes by. We
third-place titles drop off the list.* There
have Closing Time, Sequoia Time, Prime
are no other changes to the numbers.

Time, Twilight Time, Wolf Time, a Time

Readers of last month’s editorial may al-

Bride, and Still Time. We also have Time-
ready have noted that “First Contact”

Warp, Space-Time, Cross-Time, Time-
was the most used title in the submission

Out, Real Time, Time Passages, Writing
system, and “Oracle,” “Hero,” and “Visi-

Time, and Time Considered. We have All
tors” didn’t place in the top ten cate-
the Time in the World and Time on My
gories. In addition to the four uses that

Hands, Who Knows Where the Time Goes
vault it into first place, our winner’s plur-
and, of course, we’re Out of Time.

al, “Oracles,” is also used once as a fiction

First-runner up, “Man,” appears in 68
title. Proving yet again that, for better or
titles. Other well-used terms include
worse, professional SF authors have a

“Last” (39), “Wife” (38), “World” (37),
fondness for predicting the future.

“Earth” (36), and “Death” (35). Analytics

Though the titles are different, the
are fun. They show us unexpected con-
most popular words are similar. Just as it
nections among our most compelling in-
dominated the submission list, “Time” is
terests. Yet, while we now have a list of
the most popular word among the profes-
popular words, this knowledge isn’t a
sionally published titles. With 84** ap-
guaranteed recipe for successful story ti-
pearances, it actually shows up in close to
tling. Anything is possible, but it’s rather

2 percent of our titles. We have “Time
unlikely that “The Time Wife from Earth

Travelers” and “Time Machines.” Time

Shot the Last Man on Death World” will
gets sliced, stolen, and burned. It goes
show up in Asimov’ s anytime soon. ❍

*“At the Pet Shop,” “Bridges,” “Destination,” “Dinosaurs,” “Entrada,” “Fireflies,” “Invasion,” “Lethe,”

“Limits,” “A Meeting of Minds,” “Monsters,” “Nazca Lines,” “The One that Got Away,” “Solo,” “This Impatient Ape,” and “Time Travelers Never Die” drop off when poetry is removed from the list. Many of these had one-time uses as fiction titles.

** This list excludes the word’s thirteen appearances in the title of Reginald Bretnor’s “Feghoots.”

REFLECTIONS

Robert Silverberg

REREADING FLETCHER PRATT
letcher Pratt is one of the few impor-
self regretting that this great fantasy
tant science fiction writers I never
writer is now just about completely un-
had a chance to meet. I began going
known to today’s readers.

Fto SF conventions in my teens, back
in the early 1950s, when I lived in New

Pratt was born in 1897 on an Indian

York, then the center of the science fic-
reservation near Buffalo, New York,
tion world, and very soon after that I
where his father was a farmer. He hoped
precociously began my writing career, so
to attend college, but could manage no
it was my good luck to be able to meet
more than a single year at Hobart, a
just about everybody who had done any-
school in Geneva, New York, before his
thing important in science fiction since
family fell on hard times and he had to

Hugo Gernsback started the pioneering
leave. He became a formidably self-edu-
magazine Amazing Stories in 1926.

cated man, though, mastering French

Nearly the whole crowd was still alive—
and Danish and several other languages,

Doc Smith, Ray Cummings, Edmond
reading widely in history and literature,

Hamilton, Jack Williamson, all the
and fixing every nugget of information
founding fathers—and I encountered
that came his way in his extraordinarily
them and even came to regard some of
retentive memory. Pratt supported him-
them as friends.

self during these early years in various

But not Fletcher Pratt. By all ac-
odd jobs, mainly journalistic, but by the
counts he was witty, charming, erudite,

1930s he had established himself as a
and much beloved by his colleagues
military historian with books about the

(when he died, James Blish, a writer

War of 1812, the Civil War, Napoleon,
now pretty much forgotten himself,
and the medieval Danish warrior-king
wrote a memorial poem that began,

Waldemar IV, among many others. And

“The one dull thing you did, Fletcher,
for amusement’s sake he wrote science
was to die”). He began writing science
fiction and fantasy on the side.

fiction in the early Hugo Gernsback era,

My first acquaintance with Pratt’s
did a famous series of light-hearted fan-
work came in 1950, when a short-lived
tasies in collaboration with L. Sprague
science fiction magazine called Wonder
de Camp, and later published two major

Story Annual reprinted his 1932 Gerns-
fantasy novels, The Blue Star and The
back novel, The Onslaught from Rigel.

Well of the Unicorn, that I read with ad-

At fifteen, I thought it was wonderful,
miration and delight when I was in my
though looking at it now (it was repub-
teens. But he died too soon, only fifty-
lished in book form in 1960 as Invaders
nine years old, just as I was showing up
from Rigel) I see that I would probably
on the scene as a professional writer, and
think a good deal less of it. Next I discov-
though it’s quite possible that he and I
ered the Pratt-De Camp comic fantasies,
were in the same place at the same time

“The Castle of Iron,” “The Mathematics
now and then, I have no recollection of
of Magic,” and “The Roaring Trumpet.”

ever having met him. My great loss, I

These, written in 1940 and 1941 for
have always thought. And now, some

John Campbell’s fantasy magazine Un-
sixty years later, I have just reread Well
known, dealt with the adventures of the
of the Unicorn with the same admira-
feckless amateur magician Harold Shea,
tion and delight as before, and find my-
who accidentally projects himself into

6

Asimov’s
the world of the Norse myths (“Trum-

Vulkings, whose military methods dis-
pet”) and, later, that of Spenser’s Faerie
play Roman-style discipline (Pratt had

Queene (“Mathematics”) and Ariosto’s
written a biography of Julius Caesar

Orlando Furioso (“Trumpet”). Pratt and
some years earlier), and the surrounding
the much younger but just as erudite De
region is divided into an assortment of

Camp had a great deal of fun with this
earldoms, dukedoms, and principalities,
series, as did I, and so have readers ever
which will remind modern readers of the
since (the stories have been assembled,
complex world of George R.R. Martin’s
along with much later material, in an

Game of Thrones books—some willing to
omnibus collection called The Complete
live under Vulking rule and some in

Compleat Enchanter).

sullen rebellion against it, and most hos-

Though everyone loves the Harold
tile to one another.

Shea stories, Pratt’s reputation as a

Somewhere to the south is the Empire,
writer of fantasy will stand or fall, I
a vast realm, patterned perhaps after the
think, on two long and very serious nov-

Byzantine Empire or the Holy Roman
els that he wrote fairly late in his all-

Empire, to which almost everyone, even
too-short life (he died of cancer in 1956),
the Vulkings, owes at least nominal alle-

Well of the Unicorn, published in 1948,
giance. Within Imperial territory is the
and The Blue Star, 1952. I particularly
all-important Well of the Unicorn, the lo-
enjoyed Well when I first read it when I
cation and nature of which Pratt carefully
was about fifteen, and, as is my wont
leaves vague. Its waters bring “peace” to
these days, I’ve just reread it to see if I
those who drink from it, though that
agreed with the high opinion of it that
seems to be a peace verging on total loss of

I’ve held for more than sixty years. And
will. (Again, Pratt does not go into details.)

I did. I loved it just as much the second

We meet young Airar just as he is being
time around.

expelled from his family’s property by a

Vulking official for non-payment of taxes,

Well of the Unicorn takes place in the
and follow him through a series of adven-
medieval era of a Europe that is not
tures in which he affiliates himself with
quite this world’s Europe, though the
one of the many anti-Vulking rebel
tone and texture of the setting are clear-
groups, demonstrates an unusual apti-
ly Scandinavian. (Pratt was an expert on
tude for military strategy, and eventually

Danish history, remember.) It is a Scan-
rises, step by step, to an unexpectedly
dinavia in which magic works, more or
high position. Pratt tells the story in a
less, though not always with the intend-
prose that is subtly archaic in tone—not
ed results, and the practice of it is terri-
as difficult of access as is, say, the prose of
bly exhausting to the practitioners, who
that great heroic fantasy, E.R. Eddison’s
therefore are hesitant to use it very fre-

The Worm Ouroboros, but with idiosyn-
quently. There are also various demons
cratic mannerisms (the occasional use of
and monsters in the background, though
a verb without its noun, or of mildly con-
they only occasionally figure in the story,
torted syntax) that some modern readers,
which is mainly that of the revolt of op-

I see, have complained about in Internet
pressed people against tyranny.

reviews. I found the style, both in my ado-

The scene seems to be a composite of
lescent reading of the book and in my re-

Sweden and Denmark, although the pro-
cent one, magnetic, incantatory, a perfect
tagonist, Airar Alvarson, comes from a
match of manner and content. As for the
place called Dalarna, which in our world
world Pratt creates here, it is a fully in-
is an actual region of Sweden, and its
habited one, rich in detail and color: as we
people are called Dalecarles, as they are
travel with Airar through Dalarna and
in our world. Dalarna has come under
the surrounding territories, we live en-
the rule of hard-bitten conquerors, the
tirely in that world, and is that not one of

Reflections: Rereading Fletcher Pratt

7

March/April 2018
the essential requirements of this kind of
and bought the book, and read it imme-
fantasy?

diately, and loved it, though I was not

* * *
really a “connoisseur of fantasy” and in-

Pratt’s primary reputation as a writer
deed rather preferred science fiction. I
of historical works carried the book into
thought it was just grand. And have
disaster from the first moment of publica-
cherished it ever since.

tion. Instead of taking it to one of the
small publishing companies specializing

The Well of the Unicorn, I see now, is
then in fantasy and science fiction, which
not just a tale of heroic derring-do with
might not have been receptive to any-
swords and crossbows constantly at work,
thing so esoteric in manner, he brought it
but also a model of world-building (we see
to the mainstream house of William
the various earldoms and principalities of

Sloane Associates, a short-lived company

Pratt’s imaginary world in very real con-
with strong literary predilections. They
flict) and a novel that deals, not inciden-
made the catastrophic decision to publish
tally, with questions of free will versus de-
the book not under Pratt’s name (which
termination, of the obligations of citizens
was associated mainly with his works of
to governmental authority, of good and
military history), but under a new byline
evil, and many another high theme, not
entirely, “George U. Fletcher,” a pseudo-
pasted on but emerging as inherent as-
nym used for the one and only time here.

pects of the plot. The depiction of charac-

Thus, at a single stroke, the novel was cut
ter is commendable also: Pratt’s medieval
off from the readers of Pratt’s previous
folk are not the stick figures so usual in
fiction, particularly the well-beloved
heroic fantasy, but strong and realistic in-

Harold Shea stories, and from those read-
dividuals. He is particularly good with fe-
ers of his books of history who might have
male characters, notably the earthy fish-
been attracted to a work of fantasy that
er-maiden Gython, whom Airar loves in
reflected his knowledge of warfare. Book-
vain (he is not very comfortable with
stores and reviewers thus had no idea of
women) and the ferocious Amazonian
how to deal with the book, and although
warriormaid Evadne, who yearns for

Sloane put it out in an elegant edition

Airar but does not strike his fancy. (He
with a handsome jacket and many inter-
does finally make a surprising and suc-
nal maps, it sank out of sight instantly
cessful match with a woman of the Em-
and not long after publication day arrived
pire.) There are even two gay characters,
at the remainder tables, where I, a high-
something almost unknown in fantasy
school student at the time, happily
fiction in that day, and they are each, in
bought a copy for fifty-nine cents. (I knew
their very different ways, anything but
about the book, despite the opacity of the
stereotypical ones.

“Fletcher” byline, because Sprague de

Though Well of the Unicorn was an ut-

Camp had done his old collaborator a fa-
ter failure commercially at the outset, it
vor by reviewing it in Astounding Science
has managed to achieve several reprints

Fiction, calling it “a colorful and fast-mov-
along the way, and is, I think, still in
ing adventure fantasy” that any connois-
print even now. It still remains fairly ob-
seur of fantasy would want to have, and
scure, though. Which is to be lamented:

hinting broadly and unmistakably at the
reading it again after all this time, I can
identity of its author.

only echo Sprague de Camp’s verdict of

So I laid out my fifty-nine cents (not
seventy years ago: “If you are at all a
all that inconsiderable a sum back then)

connoisseur of fantasy, get it.” ❍

8

Robert Silverberg

On the Net

James Patrick Kelly

IS THE INTERNET BROKEN?

troll snapshot
nologies on the horizon that might dis-
courage trolling and encourage inclusive
n the last installment, we contrasted
behaviors? How might these solutions
the current state of the internet with
impact free speech?

the vision some early adopters enter-

Their extended responses are well

Itained of an online utopia of informa- worth a look, although they fill some tion exchange and elevated discourse.

eighty pages in the PDF version, and,

Here’s optimistic rhetoric from the 1996
alas, reach no consensus. They fall into

A Declaration of the Independence
four broad themes.

of Cyberspace eff.org/cyberspace-in-

Things will stay bad because trolls
dependence: “We believe that from
have always been with us and anonymi-
ethics, enlightened self-interest, and the
ty on the internet only encourages them.

commonweal, our governance will emerge.

Mike Roberts icannwiki.org/Mike_

Our identities may be distributed across

Roberts, Internet Hall of Fame in-
many of your jurisdictions. The only law
ternethalloffame.org member and first
that all our constituent cultures would
president and CEO of ICANN
generally recognize is the Golden Rule.”

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICANN, com-

In 2018, the challenge of internet gov-
mented, “Most attempts at reasoned dis-
ernance looms large. Last year the Pew
course on topics interesting to me have

Research Center pewinternet.org is-
been disrupted by trolls in last decade or
sued a report called The Future of Free
so. Many individuals faced with this ha-

Speech, Trolls, Anonymity and Fake
rassment simply withdraw. . . . There is a

News Online pewinternet.org/2017/
somewhat broader question of whether

03/29/the-future-of-free-speech-trolls-
expectations of ‘reasoned’ discourse were
anonymity-and-fake-news-online. The
ever realistic. History of this, going back
researchers asked 1,537 technology ex-
to Plato, is one of self-selection into con-
perts, scholars, corporate practitioners,
genial groups. The internet, among oth-
and government leaders, “In the next
er things, has energized a variety of
decade, will public discourse online be-
anti-social behaviors by people who get
come more or less shaped by bad actors,
satisfaction from the attendant publici-
harassment, trolls, and an overall tone
ty. My wife’s reaction is ‘why are you sur-
of griping, distrust, and disgust?” Forty-
prised?’ in regard to seeing behavior on-
two percent of the respondents said they
line that already exists offline.”

expected no major change for better or

We interrupt this column for a personal
worse in our current troubling online

’Mov’s reminiscence.

culture, while 39 percent thought that

Longtime readers may remember the
the next decade would see even more
old Forum, an online message board
negative activity. Just 19 percent were
linked to our webpage, where readers
hopeful that online interactions would
and writers mingled. I was a regular, as
be “less shaped” by harassment, trolling,
were our distinguished editors. The
and distrust.

mythical official history of ’Mov’s would

These experts were invited to expand
record that it was on the Forum where
on their replies by considering how so-
the idea for this column was first pro-
cial media might evolve. Are there tech-
posed in public—by me. I nominated

On the Net: Is the Internet Broken?

9

March/April 2018

Bruce Sterling wired.com/author/
before long. There are concerns for free
bruces, but then discovered that Sheila
speech. My hope is that pseudony-
and Gardner were already considering
mous reputation systems www1.cs.co-
hiring an internet columnist. To my vast
lumbia.edu /~elli/papers/anonp2p.pdf
surprise, they offered the job to me! Sev-
might protect privacy while doing this.”

eral years later the Forum began to at-

If you’re wondering what a pseudony-
tract trolls. Writers and readers left in
mous reputation system is, think of the
droves until sometime in 2005 one egre-
seller information systems on eBay
giously offensive idiot crossed a bound-
ebay.com and Amazon amazon. com. On ary and the Forum went dark. This was
eBay, for example, the identity of a party
only supposed to be temporary but it
to a transaction is hidden behind a
never came back and I still miss it.

screen name. According to eBay, “When-

We now return you to your regularly
ever you buy or sell something, you
scheduled column.

can leave Feedback about the transaction.

“Things will stay bad because existing

Your buyer or seller can leave Feedback
platforms provide financial, political, and
for you as well. Over time, eBay members
emotional incentives to negativity. ” Or as
develop a Feedback profile, or reputation,

Baratunde Thurston baratunde. com,
based on other people’s comments and
a director’s fellow at MIT Media Lab
ratings. The Feedback score is one of the
and former digital director of The
most important pieces of a Feedback

Onion theonion.com, wrote, “We’ve built
profile. . . . Feedback comments become a
a system in which access and connectivi-
permanent part of a seller’s record.”

ty are easy, the cost of publishing is near

Fixing this mess may come at a cost of
zero, and accountability and conse-
increased surveillance, government regu-
quences for bad action are difficult to im-
lation, and limits on access to informa-
pose or toothless when they do. Plus con-
tion and free speech.

sider that more people are getting online

Joe McNamee storyengine.io/stories
everyday with no norm-setting for their

/decentralization/joe-mcnamee, execu-
behavior and the systems that prevail
tive director at European Digital
now reward attention grabbing and ex-

Rights edri.org, observed, “In the con-
tended time online. They reward emotion-
text of a political environment where
al investment whether positive or nega-
deregulation has reached the status of
tive. They reward conflict. So we’ll see
ideology, it is easy for governments to de-
more bad before more good because the
mand that social media companies do
governing culture is weak and will remain

‘more’ to regulate everything that hap-
so while the financial models backing
pens online. We see this with the Euro-
these platforms remain largely ad-based
pean Union’s ‘code of conduct’ with social
and rapid/scaled user growth-centric.”

media companies. This privatization of

Things will get better because we’ll find
regulation of free speech (in a context of
technical solutions—thank you, Artificial
huge, disproportionate, asymmetrical

Intelligence—to call out and marginalize
power due to the data stored and the fi-
bad behavior. Or we’ll build digital walls
nancial reserves of such companies)

to keep out the baddies.

raises existential questions for the func-

Brad Templeton www.templetons.

tioning of healthy democracies.”

com/brad, chair for computing at Sin-
gularity University su.org and long-
weapons grade
time Electronic Frontier Founda-

As disturbing as the rise of the trolls
tion eff.org board member, had this to
may be, we face the more existential
say: “Now that everybody knows about
threat not from individuals acting out
this problem I expect active technologi-
for personal reasons, but from shadowy
cal efforts to reduce the efforts of the
groups who seek to manipulate social
trolls, and we should reach ‘peak troll’

media to undermine our collective confi-

10

James Patrick Kelly

Asimov’s
dence in institutions. Weaponized nar-
it as a weapon to divert scrutiny from
rative weaponizednarrative.asu.edu is
some of his more questionable deeds.

the current buzzword for what used to

But the real danger of fake news is not
be called propaganda historians.org/
that it spreads lies, but that it deviously
about-aha-and-membership/aha-history
erodes belief in our institutions and in-

-and-archives/gi-roundtable-series/
deed in the possibility of knowing the
pamphlets/what-is-propaganda/defining
truth at all. Whom do you trust to call

-propaganda-i. However, in the last
out the purveyors of fake news? The es-
decade, the internet has given propagan-
tablishment news media are regarded
da a reach and a complexity that has in-
by many as biased or corrupt. For my-
creased its power a hundredfold. In the
self, I have in the past relied on fact-
previous column I commended Weap-
checking websites like Snopes snopes.

onized Narrative Is the New Battle-
com and Politifact politifact.com. Would space defenseone.com/ideas/2017/01/
it surprise you to know that fake news
weaponized-narrative-new-battlespace/13
perps and their sympathizers have

4284 to your attention. “What’s new is
launched an offensive against these
the extraordinary power of today’s weap-
sites? Almost all of their attacks have
onized narrative. It attacks our group
failed, but the effort continues.

identity—our sense of who we are, our

There’s a wonderfully telling page on
privilege of not being identified as ‘other.’

Snopes that I think of as Fake News in

The rise of the Connected Age allows at-
the News snopes.com/category/
tacks that tear down old identities that
facts/fake-news. It features debunked
have bound us together. But it also al-
news stories from the past couple of
lows the creation of narratives that de-
days. They’ll all be different when you
fine the new differences between ‘us’ and
read this, but this afternoon’s hoaxes in-

‘them’ that are worth fighting for.”

clude Google Earth Discovers Man

Consider the phenomenon of fake

Trapped on Desert Island for 9
news en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake_

Years? snopes.com/inboxer/hoaxes/
news. This neologism was coined only a
googleearth.asp and Did a Man in
few years ago, but its fundamental prin-

Katy, Texas, Discover a Hired Escort
ciples are centuries old. Certainly the

Was His Wife? snopes.com/texas-man-

Founder Fathers were up to their
prostitute-wife. It is to laugh. Not so fun-
necks in it mentalfloss.com/article/
ny, however, is this: Did President

12487/adams-vs-jefferson-birth-negative

Trump “Reinstate” a Memorial Day

-campaigning-us. During the election of
for Police Officers, Canceled by Oba-

1800, Thomas Jefferson employed a
ma? snopes.com/memorial-day-police-
sleazeball named James Callendar to
trump-obama.

plant stories that his presidential rival
and fellow Founder John Adams was a
exit

British agent set on fomenting war with

Although I have an account and tweet

France. Adams’ partisans, for their part,
from time to time, I am not a Twitter afi-
claimed Jefferson endorsed the blood-
cionado. Many of you no doubt are, and so
shed of the French Reign of Terror and

I leave you with this item from the New
was “a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow,

York Times: How Twitter Is Being
the son of a half-breed Indian squaw,

Gamed for Misinformation nytimes.

sired by a Virginia mulatto father.” Of
com/2017/05/31/technology/how-twitter
course, the current occupant of the

-is-being-gamed-to-feed-misinformation.

White House has repeatedly got himself
html. Did you know that there are tools
tangled in fake news, most egregiously
you can download to create thousands of
as a spokesperson for the Birther

Twitter “bots”? These are accounts that

Movement cnn.com/2016/09/09/ poli-
look real, but that you control. Your
tics/donald-trump-birther, and has used
friends in the fake news industry are all

On the Net: Is the Internet Broken?

11

March/April 2018
over this. The BBC found one net-
they consider it a kind of responsibility to
work of 350,000 accounts bbc.com/
cover it, even if the story may be an alter-
news/ technology-38724082. “It is difficult
nate frame or a conspiracy theory,” ac-
to assess exactly how many Twitter users
cording to Alice Marwick, author of a re-
are bots,” said graduate student Juan
cent report on the mechanics of media

Echeverria, a computer scientist, who un-
manipulation datasociety.net/pubs
covered the massive networks. These

/oh/DataAndSociety_MediaManipula-
bots can be used to create an illusion of
tion AndDisinformationOnline.pdf.

popularity for a politician or a product or

“That’s because if they don’t, they may
an idea.

get accused of bias.”

Twitter has been called the journalists’

In the first century, the satirist Juve-

Clubhouse for the News poynter.

nal wrote “Quis custodiet ipsos cus-
org/2017/i-studied-how-journalists-used
todes?” en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quis_

-twitter-for-two-years-heres-what-i-learned
custodiet_ipsos_custodes%3F. Two thou-

/453162. It’s where they find leads, meet
sand years later, we still wonder who is
sources, and pitch ideas. “When journal-
watching the watchers.

ists see a story getting big on Twitter,

12

James Patrick Kelly

DIX

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

As usual, Kristine Kathryn Rusch stays just a little too busy.

Her crime novel, Protectors, which she wrote under the name Kris Nelscott appeared last fall. That was followed in January by a Fiction River anthology called Justice that she edited. Kris and Dean Wesley Smith used Kickstarter to revive Pulphouse

Fiction Magazine, and the first issue also appeared in January.

Her next Diving novel Searching For the Fleet appears in September. By the time you read this new fleet tale, there might be even more projects. . . .

1

For the rest of her life, Yash Zarlengo would replay that last night in her mind, going over each and every detail, looking for something different—a clue, perhaps, a missed signal.

She never found one that satisfied her.

Yash and Jonathan “Coop” Cooper had been sitting in their favorite bar in the Ivoire. The bar was really just an extension of the main commissary, but the ship’s designers had gone all out. The bar had twenty-f ive tables, organized in small groups, some with counters running behind them, and plants shielding the patrons.

The tables were made of brass and some teak-colored wood. The chairs matched, except for the comfortable brass-colored cushions.

Alcohol bottles lined the two interior walls. The wall that was easiest to reach had what had been the alcohol that was easiest to find in that particular sector. The wall behind the recycler cleaning unit had upper cabinets f illed with bottles that were mostly one of a kind. Although, technically, everything in this bar was now one of a kind.

Yash tried not to think about that. Instead, she stared out the floor-to-ceiling windows that revealed the vastness of space—or whatever planet the Ivoire orbited. The windows could be shuttered, then shielded, and often were when the ship was traveling from place to place.

But at that moment, the Ivoire was docked at the space station that housed the Lost Souls Corporation. A woman who called herself Boss in that bastardization of Standard everyone spoke in this time period had started the corporation to discover more about something she called “stealth tech,” but which really had more to do with the Fleet’s anacapa drives.

Boss had found the Ivoire. In fact, Boss had accidentally rescued the Ivoire. She and her people had inadvertently activated the equipment in a decaying sector base.

Dix

13

March/April 2018

That equipment had pulled the Ivoire out of its trap in foldspace, bringing the Ivoire and her crew five thousand years into their future.

As a cadet—hell, throughout her career—Yash thought she could deal with anything. But the loss of everything she knew—from the Fleet itself, to the language her people spoke, to the history that was just yesterday to her and so far in the past as to be unknown to these people—was overwhelming. Some days, she thought she wouldn’t make it.

But going through this with the crew of the Ivoire, all five hundred of them, made it easier. She wasn’t going through this alone.

She took comfort in that.

Hence the drinking sessions with Coop. They would meet in the bar not quite nightly, put their feet on the tables precisely because that wasn’t regulation, and drink some of the old whiskey, the kind that they had brought from planets they would never see again, in a time period they couldn’t return to.

After the first few sessions, Coop and Yash didn’t get drunk. Usually, anyway. They sipped and stared at the edges of the space station and the edges of the sector beyond. Planets Yash still didn’t recognize, nebulae that gleamed against the blackish-blueness, the red star so far in the distance that it looked like a pinprick of blood.

She wasn’t coming to love those things, but they were becoming familiar. Anything could become familiar, given enough time.

That night, Coop was staring at his whiskey, not drinking it at all. He was looking through the glass at the view, in an unusually contemplative mood.

He had been everyone’s rock. A solid, broad-shouldered man who seemed even taller and broader-shouldered since they had arrived, he now had a few more lines on his face, a hint of silver in his black hair. He had stopped wearing any kind of uniform a few months ago and had said nothing about it.

He now dressed like Boss’s people, wearing black pants and a black or gray T-shirt, quietly moving his association from a Fleet that probably no longer existed to Lost Souls Corporation and its vague connection to something called the Nine Planet Alliance.

He was shedding as much of the past as he could, and making it okay for the rest of the crew to do so. Some were already thinking of leaving the Ivoire permanently, taking jobs inside Lost Souls or becoming planetbound somewhere in the Nine Planets.

Yash couldn’t contemplate any of that. She still wore her Fleet clothes as well, although some of them were getting worn. She would have to replace her regulation boots soon, and she didn’t want to. They were comfortable.

They were also coming apart.

“Hey, can anyone join this little party?” Dix Pompiono, the Ivoire’s nominal first officer, spoke from behind them.

Yash tensed. Coop stopped swirling the liquid in his glass. His expression hadn’t changed, a sign that Coop didn’t want anyone to know what he was feeling.

But Yash knew exactly how Coop felt. Neither she nor Coop wanted to deal with Dix right now. This was their relaxation place, not a place for histrionics. And Dix had been all over the emotional map ever since the Ivoire arrived here.

Dix had actually suffered some kind of breakdown a few months ago after a mission Coop ran to Starbase Kappa to shut down a long-malfunctioning anacapa drive.

The mission had nearly failed because of Dix. Coop resented that deeply.

Yash hadn’t told Coop that she had found the mission joyous, in its own way. Yash had felt useful again, like she was back in the old Fleet, with a proper goal and a future.

Of course, after that mission, the Ivoire’s crew had nothing to do. And, in some ways, that mission had been the Ivoire crew’s last gasp. The mission had brought up too many conf licting feelings for everyone, not even counting what had happened with Dix.

14

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Asimov’s

“Gotta pour your own.” Coop sounded welcoming, but the pause before he spoke probably told Dix more than enough.

Behind her, glasses clinked. Then she saw movement reflected in the windows before her. Dix had taken a tumbler out of the cabinet near the recycler. He had grabbed the whiskey bottle and was pouring himself a drink.

Coop let out a sigh so small Yash wouldn’t have heard it if she hadn’t been sitting next to him. Yash patted his arm, not as comfort, but as agreement.

Coop glanced at her, blue eyes hooded. Then he shrugged ever so slightly with the shoulder closest to her, as if to say, What can you do?

She mimicked his shrug, so that he understood that she identified with him. The nice quiet evening they’d been enjoying would be quiet no longer.

Dix rounded the table nearest them, carrying a tumbler of whiskey two f ingers full. He stopped, looked at the view, then took a sip.

He was gaunt now. He had always been too thin, and abnormally tall for someone who ended up as bridge crew. His hair had gone completely white in the last year, and his cheeks were sunken inward.

The last time Yash had seen him, his hands shook as if he couldn’t control them.

But they weren’t shaking now.

“There’s the future,” he said, looking at the sector they still hadn’t explored. “It’s been there all along, hasn’t it?”

He sounded like the old Dix, a little wry, intelligent, and maybe even a bit hopeful.

Yash couldn’t believe that Dix was hopeful. He’d been the most distraught of all of the senior crewmembers, the one who had been least able to contain his heartbreak when he learned they could never ever go back.

Indeed, his completely insane meltdown on Starbase Kappa had come from some cockamamie scheme he had developed to send the Ivoire back to its own time period—and Coop had thwarted him.

Dix had barely spoken to Coop since.

Dix sipped from his tumbler, tilted his head back—clearly savoring the whiskey—
and then swallowed. He turned away from the windows, and set his glass on a nearby table. But he didn’t sit.

Instead, he continued to stand, the light from the space station illuminating half his face, leaving the side closest to Yash in shadow.

“I owe you guys an apology,” he said.

His voice had strength, which she hadn’t expected. The last time he had used the word “apology” in her presence he had said, I suppose you expect an apology, and his tone had been as mean as the words.

Now, Yash didn’t answer him, but she met his gaze. He still seemed sad, as if sad-ness had leached into his very soul. She wondered if someone who knew her well would think the same thing of her.

Coop didn’t even move. It was as if Coop hadn’t heard anything.

“I’ve been thinking about it,” Dix said, glancing at Coop, then looking back at Yash.

“I’ve been acting as if this just happened to me. It didn’t. It happened to all of us.”

Yash hadn’t wanted to react to anything Dix said, but she couldn’t help herself.

She nodded.

He gave her a faint smile, took that nod as an invitation, and sat down to the left of Coop. Coop rested his glass of whiskey on his flat stomach, and continued to stare at the Universe beyond.

“I can make excuses,” Dix said, “and I did. I know I did. The loss of Lenore made me crazy.”

Everything made you crazy, Yash thought, but didn’t say. She didn’t dare speak out at all, because everyone had lost family and loved ones, even her. She would never Dix

15

March/April 2018
see her parents again, or her twin sisters. She hadn’t had a lover at the time the Ivoire left on its last mission for the Fleet, but she had had an entire cadre of friends, all of whom had not served on the Ivoire.

She would never see them again. She would never again see anyone she loved who hadn’t been on the Ivoire.

“Sometimes I think if we could access records of the Fleet, learn about what happened to everyone, I’d feel better,” Dix said.

Yash stiffened. She’d had that thought. So had Coop. They’d actually looked through the information they’d pulled from Starbase Kappa, but it was minimal.

Maintenance records mostly. No history of Fleet personnel, not even personnel who had come later.

As was proper. No information about the Fleet should have been available in any closed Fleet outpost. None.

“But I keep turning it over and over in my mind,” Dix said, “and I realize that discovering that Lenore married someone else, and had kids with him—or didn’t marry anyone and died alone—that wouldn’t help me. It’s not just the loss of the people, selfish as that is to say. It’s the loss of the future. The expected, imagined future.”

Coop let out a small sigh. His fingers wrapped around the glass, but he didn’t take another drink.

“How do you do it?” Dix asked. “How do you get through each day? How do you accept that you should put your uniform away, and say good-bye to the Fleet, when the Fleet has been our entire life?”

Coop stiffened. Yash did too. Yash hadn’t ever had that conversation with Coop, although she’d had others. About the Fleet. About where it might be now, f ive thousand years later. About whether or not it still existed.

About whether approaching it if it did exist was a good idea.

“You don’t want to talk about it, do you?” Dix asked. “That’s how you’re coping.

You’re denying what’s in front of you.”

A surge of anger ran through Yash. Coop wasn’t denying anything. Neither was she. They were moving forward each and every damn day, just like they’d been trained to do.

She swung her feet off the table, sitting up, about to speak, when Coop lifted one hand from his glass, forefinger out, stopping her.

“I’m using my training,” he said to Dix. “You should too.”

“Training?” Dix made a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob. “None of us were trained for this.”

Coop’s lips thinned. He sat up, then put his glass on the table in front of him.

Yash tensed. She would step between them if need be. The crew was still on edge; they didn’t need to hear that their captain had physically fought with Dix.

Then she swallowed, thinking about her own reaction.

Coop wasn’t a violent man. He had never hit anyone on his crew, rarely hit someone who had attacked him. He was the calmest person she knew.

That hint of violence in the air? Was she imagining it? Or had it come from her?

She shifted slightly, saw Coop’s posture. No. She knew him well. He was furious.

He was past furious. He was barely holding himself together.

“We are all trained for this, First Officer Pompiono,” Coop said, enunciating each word precisely. He was using the captain speak he used only with the most recalci-trant crewmembers, the ones he would dump at the next port after dozens of write-ups. The hopeless ones.

Dix raised his eyebrows. “I never heard any of my instructors mention that foldspace could catapult us five thousand years in the future, making us lose everything, cheating us of our own march through time. Making us abandon our families—”

16

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Asimov’s

“Then you weren’t paying attention.” Coop handed his glass to Yash, as if she were his second in command, not Dix. And in truth, she had become Coop’s second in command. She had been at his side for the entire year they’d been stuck here, working on the Ivoire, figuring out the way forward. Dix had been wallowing in his own losses and breakdown, and Yash had been working. Hard. Like most everyone else.

Yash set Coop’s glass next to hers, out of the way.

Dix leaned back just a little, but there was something in his eyes. A kind of triumph, maybe? Relief that he had finally gotten an obvious emotional reaction out of Coop?

Coop laid his hands flat on the table’s faux wood surface, as if he were stretching them, as if he were pushing the table down so that he wouldn’t do anything harmful to anyone.

“Our training,” Coop said, “was about this, and only this.”

Dix frowned, opening his mouth to speak, probably to disagree, when Coop continued.

“We were told that DV-Class ships ventured out alone. We could get lost. We might never come back. We often had no one to rely on but ourselves. I don’t know about you, but my training included years of role-playing those very things, plus going over historical incidents of lost ships, coping with hundreds and hundreds of scenarios in which this very thing occurred.”

“It’s not the same,” Dix said.

“It’s exactly the same.” Coop spoke softly, but used as much energy as if he had shouted it.

Yash was holding her breath. She made herself release it.

“It’s not the same,” Dix repeated. “In those scenarios, we would have had hope.”

“Hope?” Coop spoke the word as if Dix had been using Boss’s bastardized Standard. “What kind of hope are you talking about?”

“Hope that we could return.” Dix was calm, like the Dix of old. The man that Coop had made First Officer.

Yash could remember when Dix inspired confidence in everyone, when he knew the exact right words to say. When he really was an extension of Coop, understanding exactly how Coop would approach something, and then anticipating it, so Coop never even had to give the order.

“You lack that hope now?” Yash asked. Because she didn’t. She was still searching for a way back, even though she knew it was a long shot. They had gotten here, hadn’t they? That meant returning was possible as well.

Coop turned his head slightly, as if he had just remembered that Yash was in the conversation.

Then he shifted his body, almost blocking her view of Dix.

“You think all of those scenarios,” Coop said, “the hundreds and hundreds of them that we learned, would always have hope?”

“Yes,” Dix said.

“Ship destroyed, crew scattered, the Fleet never notified before it happened, you think those kinds of scenarios had hope?”

“Steal a ship, buy one, get back to the Fleet,” Dix said.

“Without an anacapa drive,” Coop said. “Not possible.”

“But the hope—”

“Is a myth, Dix. You were in the same classes I was. You had the same training, the same instructors. Did you miss the parts about ships getting lost forever in foldspace? Do you think those crews had hope?”

“Until they died, yes, I do,” Dix said.

“Did you have this kind of hope when we were stranded in foldspace?” Coop asked.

“Yes,” Dix said calmly. “I was convinced we’d get home.”

Coop harrumphed. Yash thought back to those horrid weeks just over a year ago.

Dix

17

March/April 2018

She hadn’t allowed herself to think about getting back to the Fleet. Nor had she let herself think about foldspace as much more than a theoretical problem. The Fleet used foldspace as a tool to travel long distances. The Fleet believed that the anacapa drive created a fold in space, so that ships could cross it quickly.

But Yash hadn’t been sure that they entered a fold in space. She thought maybe they had traveled somewhere else, a different sector of the Universe, somewhere far away. Or maybe they had entered some kind of interdimensional portal. She had kept those thoughts to herself when the Ivoire was trapped, because she needed to fix the ship, figure out what had gone wrong, to create some kind of chance—

“I wasn’t convinced we’d get back to the Fleet,” Coop said.

“But you said you were.” Dix sounded surprised. Apparently, he had trusted in Coop’s words.

Yash had too. She had thought Coop amazingly calm throughout that entire ordeal—as much as she had paid attention to him. She had spent so much time in engineering that most nights she had even slept there.

“I said I believed we could escape foldspace,” Coop said. “One problem at a time.

Remember, Dix? It’s part of the training.”

Dix flinched.

Yash nodded. She was rather astounded that Dix had to be reminded. One problem at a time was a core principle of the Fleet. She had been operating on that very principle when the Ivoire had been trapped in foldspace.

“And I was right,” Coop said. “We escaped foldspace.”

“We didn’t do anything to escape,” Dix said. “These people we’re stuck with, this Lost Souls thing, they got us out.”

Yash clenched a fist. How dare he? He knew how hard everyone worked to get out of foldspace.

She finally spoke up. “You’re mistaken, Dix.”

His head swiveled toward her as if he had forgotten she was there. Coop, too. He frowned at her in surprise.

“We fixed the anacapa drive just enough,” she said, “so that when a signal came from another anacapa we had the energy to assist in the pull from foldspace. If that signal had come one week earlier, we would still be stranded there.”

Dix’s eyes narrowed. “You believe that.”

“I know that,” she said.

Coop nodded. “One problem at a time,” he said. “That’s what we did in foldspace.

We worked the problem.”

Dix’s lower lip trembled, making him look like a little boy who got caught in a lie.

He squared his shoulders, then said, “So what’s the current problem? Getting back to our time period? Getting back to the Fleet?”

If he had actually been doing his job the last year, he would know what everyone was working on, and how they were coping.

Although not everyone was coping. And Coop was managing those people as well.

To his credit, he didn’t say that. He leaned forward, putting more of his weight on his flattened hands, then peered at Dix, as if unable to believe that Dix had no idea what was going on.

“We’re five thousand years in the future,” Coop said. “Five thousand years of technological advances. Five thousand years of changes. Five thousand years of Fleet history.”

“Technology is backward here,” Dix said, interrupting Coop’s flow.

“Here at Lost Souls, yes,” Coop said. “It is. But we haven’t found the Fleet yet. And once we find them, if we find them, we have no idea if they’ll believe us, help us, or work with us. But I don’t care. One problem at a time, Dix.”

“We’re searching for the Fleet?” Dix asked.

18

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Asimov’s

“We never stopped searching for the Fleet,” Yash said.

Dix shifted slightly on his chair. “And you think that when we find them—”

“If we find them,” Coop corrected.

“You think they’ll help us get back.” For the first time in a year, Dix sounded almost joyful.

“No,” Coop said. “I make no such assumption. One problem at a time.”

“But the new technology, as you said.” Dix was smiling, but his smile was that intense weird smile he had had on Starbase Kappa. “Their technology will be better than Boss’s. They’ll know how to get us back.”

“A lot of assumptions in that,” Yash said. “We don’t know if the Fleet still exists. We don’t know if the Fleet of the present—if there is one—has better tech than Lost Souls. We don’t know if they’re going to want to send us back, because it might cause all kinds of problems. There are time lines—”

“And alternate realities, and yeah, yeah.” Dix waved a hand. “I believe in that less than I believe in foldspace.”

Whatever that meant. He had gone off the deep end after all. Somehow, after the apology, Yash had hoped the old Dix had come back. She missed him. Before the Ivoire got lost in foldspace, he used to sit in this bar with the two of them, and work shipboard problems as if they were nothing.

The man in front of her only resembled that man. The man in front of her had Dix’s shell, but not his courage. And she was beginning to think he didn’t have Dix’s brain either.

“Are we going to even try to get back?” Dix asked Coop.

“When?” Coop asked.

“What do you mean, when? If we get a chance. Are we going to try?”

Coop looked away, focusing on the windows. Yash looked too, saw the lights of a small ship as it left the space station, on a mission she probably would never know about.

Coop took a deep breath. “One problem at a time, Dix.”

Dix slammed his hand on the table, making his glass jump and spilling just a bit of the whiskey. “I need to know, Coop. I need to know we’re trying.”

“Getting back to the Fleet and to our time period is an extreme long shot, Dix.”

Coop spoke softly. “And I’m not sure it’s worth attempting. Because—the training, Dix. We’re trained to make the most of the situation we’re in, not to wish we were somewhere else.”

The color fled Dix’s face, leaving only two red spots on his cheeks, almost as if Coop had physically slapped him.

“I lost the love of my life,” Dix said.

“Most likely,” Coop said, and Yash tensed at the bluntness. Although she knew that was part of the training too. No use sugarcoating anything, because that didn’t help anyone deal with change.

Better to face it straight on.

“But you would have lost her if her ship got damaged in some battle,” Coop said.

“You would have lost her if we remained stranded in foldspace. Hell, Dix, you would have lost her—or she would have lost you—at the end of your lives. One of you would have had to die first.”

Dix pressed his lips together. His eyes had filled with tears. “You’re a mean son of a bitch, you know that, Coop?”

Coop gave him a languid, sideways look. “I never pretended otherwise. You don’t get to be the captain of a DV-Class vessel by being kind, Dix. I thought you knew that.”

Dix ran a shaking hand over his face. “I didn’t know anything.”

Yash frowned at Dix in surprise. Of course he had known what it took to be Dix

19

March/April 2018
captain. He was on the captain track. There were personality tests, and stress tests, and a willingness to do exactly what Coop had done: disregard someone’s feelings to get that someone back on track.

Had Dix forgotten that? All of it? Or had he tested well, only to perform poorly in the field?

Coop folded his hands together, as if he had to hold them in place to prevent them from—what? Grabbing Dix and shaking him?

Because Yash wanted to do that.

“Remember who you are, Dix,” Coop said. “Use your training. You’re second in command on this ship.”

“Not any more,” Dix said bitterly. “You sidelined me.”

“You need to face forward, Dix,” Coop said, ignoring Dix’s accusation. His accurate accusation. “We need you to work the problem.”

“The problem, the problem,” Dix snapped. “As if it’s something minor.”

Yash glanced at Coop. His expression was calm, but he was gripping his hands together so tightly that his knuckles had turned white.

“DV-Class ships never deal with something minor, Dix,” Coop said. “You know that too.”

“They don’t deal with something like this, either,” Dix said.

“How do you know?” Yash asked.

Both men looked at her with surprise. She shrugged. She had been thinking about this a lot.

“Dozens, maybe hundreds, of ships have disappeared forever, lost to foldspace.

Those are the ones we know about, the ones that were actually observed entering foldspace. But we lose a lot of ships because they never return from some mission, and we can’t track them down. We don’t know how many other ships, how many other crews, how many other captains have dealt with this very thing.”

Dix stared at her, his eyes tear-filled, his nose red. “And that’s supposed to make me feel better?”

“We’re not here to make you feel better,” Coop said.

Dix turned that hideous gaze on Coop.

“None of us feel better,” Coop said. “But most of us are working.”

“Yeah,” Dix said. “Working every angle. Sleeping with that woman who found us.

Must be nice to have her to warm your bed.”

Coop’s impassive expression vanished. In its stead, he gazed at Dix with compassion.

“I know you lost Lenore,” Coop said, clearly trying a different tack. “And I know you loved her more than anything.”

“I won’t replace her,” Dix said. “I won’t try.”

“I’m not suggesting you do,” Coop said.

“You have no idea how this feels,” Dix said.

Coop nodded. “You’re right,” he said. “I don’t.”

Yash frowned. She hadn’t expected him to say that. Was this another attempt at calming Dix? Or was this just Coop, tossing away any attempt at caution?

“I don’t know if I ever will know what you felt for Lenore,” Coop said. “They tested me. They test all candidates for captaincy. We’re less likely than other members of the Fleet to have long-term romantic relationships. When have you ever heard a captain use the phrase, ‘The love of my life’?”

“Are you saying I’m not captain material?” Dix asked.

Good God. Everything was about him. That wasn’t the point, and if he had been listening—

“It would have depended on how you tested out on other things,” Coop said. “But a willingness to sacrifice deep human connection in favor of the right decision for the 20

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Asimov’s
ship, a certain bloodlessness, if you will, or, as you said, a willingness to be a mean son of a bitch, that’s damn near the number one requirement.”

“So you’d leave Boss for the Fleet?” Dix said.

“You’re under a misapprehension,” Coop said. “We’re close, but we’re not in a relationship.”

Yet, Yash thought. But they would be.

“If you were.” Dix’s tone implied that he didn’t believe Coop’s denial. “Would you leave her to go home?”

Home was an interesting word choice. Although Yash empathized with it. That was the thing: the Ivoire felt like home, but this time period did not.

“Yes,” Coop said. He relaxed his hands. They were still clasped together, but loosely. “Here’s what you miss, Dix. I would leave a loved one for any mission, if ordered to do so by the Fleet. I would, and I have.”

“Even someone you thought you could spend the rest of your life with?” Dix asked.

“Yes,” Coop said.

“And never see them again?” Dix asked, voice trembling.

“That’s the risk,” Coop said. “That’s what we all agreed to when we joined the crew of this vessel. I thought you understood that.”

Dix blinked and looked away. A single tear hung on the lashes of his left eye. Yash stared at it, wondering if he knew it was there. Wondering if he cared.

“We lost everything,” he whispered.

“Face forward,” Coop said. The words were brutal. His tone was brutal. “That’s what the Fleet does, Dix. Forever forward. You know that.”

Dix nodded. The tear fell, landing on the edge of the table, and falling out of Yash’s line of sight.

“I forgot,” he said, his voice thick with tears.

“I know,” Coop said gently. He put a hand on Dix’s shoulder. Dix jumped. “Drink with us. Yash and I have been talking about all of this since we got here. We’ll catch you up on our plans.”

Dix’s Adam’s apple bobbed—a nervous swallow.

For a moment, Yash thought he was going to stay. For a moment, she thought they would be able to reclaim the team that they had been just over a year ago.

Then Dix shook his head. “I have enough to think about for one night.”

He stood, reached out one hand toward Coop.

Coop took it.

Dix shook.

“Thank you,” Dix said. “You clarified things.”

“Good,” Coop said. But he didn’t add, as Yash might have, Glad I could help. It was almost as if he didn’t believe the conversation made any difference at all.

“Join us tomorrow?” Yash asked, partly because Coop didn’t. Partly because it seemed like Dix expected it.

He smiled at her, and the smile was warm. “I’ve missed these moments,” he said.

“Me, too,” she said.

He picked up his whiskey, knocked it back, then carried the tumbler to the cleaner/
recycler.

“I am sorry,” Dix said.

She nodded. “We know.”

Then he waved his fingers, a small good-bye. He left the bar.

Coop picked up his own drink, put his feet back on the table, and leaned back in the chair. He still didn’t take a sip.

Yash watched until she was certain Dix was gone. Then she settled back into her spot, although she didn’t feel as relaxed.

Dix

21

March/April 2018

“He did apologize,” she said.

“He did,” Coop said, as if it didn’t matter.

They sat in silence for a long time. Then Yash said, “He’s not the man you thought he was, is he?”

Coop finally picked up his glass. He peered into it, then—finally—took a sip.

“He’s the man I feared he was,” Coop said. It was, in its own way, the closest Coop had ever come to saying he had picked the wrong first officer.

Yash f inished her drink and thought about getting another. This night, it felt wrong to get drunk. Maybe she was past anesthetizing herself. Maybe she had moved to another stage.

“He’s right, though,” Coop said.

“About what?” Yash asked. She braced herself. She hadn’t ever expected Jonathon

“Coop” Cooper to talk about loss.

“I’ll never know how he feels,” Coop said, and finished his drink.

2

The next morning, Yash arrived on the Ivoire early to run the monthly systems checks. The Ivoire didn’t need that many checks, but they made Yash feel better.

No one knew how often she came here, not even Coop.

She walked onto the bridge, lights coming up as she entered. No matter how many times she’d come here since they had arrived in this strange future, she still felt uncomfortable on the empty bridge. It had been built for activity, with dozens of work stations, and the captain’s chair in the very center, waiting for someone to take command. A door to her right led into a small conference area, and a line of storage cabinets covered the wall beside that door.

She always glanced at them, afraid someone had tampered with them. She didn’t trust everyone at Lost Souls, even though none of them should have had access to the bridge.

The bridge felt even more uncomfortable than usual this morning, and she couldn’t quite put her finger on why. The hair on the back of her neck had gone up the moment she’d stepped into the main part of the bridge.

The only anomaly she could see were the screens. They had been shuttered, blocking the view of the docking bay she had seen just the night before.

She thought that odd; she liked having the portals open, liked seeing everything in real time. The shuttered portals were how she knew she hadn’t been the last person up here. That too was odd, but she didn’t think too much about it, because Coop had been on the ship with her last night.

They no longer lived on the Ivoire, taking larger berths in the converted space station, but a handful of crewmembers still did. Coop did not discourage them. He wanted someone to continue manning the ship. He probably would have done it himself if no one else had volunteered to stay.

But he was gradually easing his grip on the past, and moving off the Ivoire had been one of those steps for him. Just like it had been for Yash.

She actually liked her new apartment better now. She liked the extra bedroom, which she had cluttered with equipment. She liked the large kitchen, and the bathroom was a religious experience.

She, too, apparently, was easing her grip on the past.

The conversation last night, the apology from Dix, had buoyed her mood. Maybe others who were having trouble moving into the future would do so if Dix did.

22

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Asimov’s

She had gone to sleep hopeful and had awakened with even more hope. She was humming as she went through some of the start-up routines.

As she saw it, one of her duties as chief engineer was to make sure each system activated and functioned. She had developed a cycle in the past year, a way of working through each system, checking it and its readings against the readings made before the Ivoire got trapped in foldspace, and also against the readings made after the Ivoire had come here.

The only system she hadn’t worked on a lot was the anacapa drive. She had repaired it in foldspace, just like she had told Coop and Dix, but she hadn’t cycled it on much here. They had used it when Coop had taken them to Starbase Kappa, and they had used it again on a few “fact-finding missions” as Coop called them, searching for the Fleet.

But Yash had been tense each and every time. She used to trust the anacapa drive a little more than the rest of the crew did (which was to say, not that much), but she no longer trusted it at all.

If she was being honest with herself, she was a bit afraid of it now. The change had been large for her as well.

Still, on her monthly scans, she checked the anacapa drive’s controls, to make sure they functioned. She also checked the drive, to make sure no one had snuck onto the ship and tampered with the drive or activated it remotely.

Not that that would have been easy, particularly since she did not have the drive in assistance-needed mode. But she worried about it.

Since arriving here, in this time period, she worried about everything.

She worked her way across control panels and through the bridge itself, checking each system, just like she always did. There was an odd smell on the bridge, something coppery and slightly foul. She checked the environmental systems, and saw nothing amiss, although she didn’t check all of the records to see if someone had spilled something. She would do that if the smell lingered after she had moved through the bridge.

The environmental system activated at different levels, depending on what was occurring on the bridge. Since nothing much had happened here in the last few weeks, the system had remained on low.

She rounded the corner of one of the stationary control panels and stopped. Boots jutted out from under the console.

Boots, attached to legs, legs wearing an older dress uniform, black with silver piping.

That foul, coppery scent was stronger here.

She didn’t even have to look to know what she would find. A body. The question was: whose?

She moved to the side of the console, next to the large container protecting the anacapa drive.

Dix was wrapped around the container, clutching it like a lifeline. Blood had pooled near his head, and one of the bone knives he had received as a gift after successfully negotiating an agreement on Colashen was on the floor, not too far from his neck.

He had slit his own throat.

His hands gripped the container, though, palm prints everywhere, palm prints in blood.

He hadn’t tried to clutch the wound closed. He hadn’t sent for help. He had clearly intended to do this.

His face was whitish gray. She had always heard the term “bloodless,” but she had never really seen it. Not like this.

His eyes were open and dull, his mouth slack.

He had done this deliberately. He had planned this, the bastard. He had known he was going to do this last night, and he had come to say good-bye.

Dix

23

March/April 2018

That little finger-wave, that half-smile. It wasn’t because he was getting better. It was because he knew he was leaving.

He was getting out.

No. He was quitting.

She clenched her fist. She had this insane desire to kick him, to take his blood-covered hands off her anacapa container, and fling them away. To fling him away.

It took every ounce of control she had to remain still. The bastard. What did he think this would gain? This show he had put on. Had he expected the bridge to contact someone to help him, to prevent the actual death? If so, then why had he slit his own throat? He had cut the carotid artery, which was guaranteed to bleed him out in minutes, long before anyone could get to him.

Although there was equipment on the bridge that could be used in an emergency.

Tools that would seal wounds, that would actually fly to the side of the injured and bind the wound until it could be repaired.

She glanced up, saw that nothing along the medical wall had been disturbed.

The fact that the medical wall was untouched meant he had actively shut off the assist controls before he had slit his throat.

And he had called Coop cruel.

She took a deep breath, willing herself calm.

First she had to preserve the scene.

She leaned over the control panel, and made sure the information that the bridge recorded as a matter of course—who arrived, who left, the footage from the security cameras, the changes in environmental controls, and the record of the changes she had made since she’d arrived here—were archived.

She had brought a data strip and set it on the control panel. The strip copied data off the control panel, so she could remove that data from the Ivoire. The strip was unique to the Fleet, so that the control panel knew it could share the information.

She would place that information in her second bedroom, with information she had taken off all of the Fleet ships that Lost Souls had found.

Then she froze.

Had Dix tampered with anything? More specif ically, had he tampered with the anacapa drive?

He had tampered with the anacapa on Starbase Kappa, in a fruitless attempt to get back to their time period. What had stopped him from doing so here?

She swallowed hard, her heart hammering.

Nothing had happened yet. If he had done something, it would have to be on a timer, as something that would happen after he died.

She needed to contact Coop. Then she needed to look.

3

“I need you on the Ivoire.” Yash sent through Coop’s private command channel.

“I need you on the bridge stat.”

She hoped he was still hooked into the comm. So many members of the Ivoire crew had decided to go untethered—as they called it—removing the tiny communications devices that they normally wore when they left the ship.

“Problem?” Coop asked in that tone that told her he didn’t want to be interrupted.

“I’m not saying any more,” she said. “Get here. Now.”

He was changing. The Coop of old would have been a lot more professional, less annoyed.

24

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Asimov’s

He probably thought there were no problems on the Ivoire that couldn’t wait.

He was wrong.

She walked around the console, looking at the anacapa controls. It didn’t seem like anyone had touched them, but she had to be sure.

She wiped her sweaty palms on the back of her shirt, then took a deep breath.

Before she did, she activated a voice log, giving the date in both the timeline of Lost Souls and also in the ship’s time, as if the Ivoire had never left the past.

Then she said, “I am making this recording in case I find something awry. For the record, I have found the body of former First Officer Dix Pompiono . . .” and she paused.

Coop hadn’t officially removed Dix from duty. Coop had been following procedure, more or less. He had wanted to document everything that Dix had done wrong, and the medical attention Dix had probably needed.

If Coop had demoted Dix, Dix wouldn’t have been able to access the bridge.

If only.

“Dix killed himself. At least as far as I can tell without touching or moving him.

The medical team will have to confirm. The reasons I have activated a voice log are twofold: I am alone on the bridge, and will remain so for several minutes more as I wait for Captain Cooper to join me.”

She let out a breath. She sounded calmer than she was. Not that she was panicked. The fury had her shaking. Goddamn it, Dix.

“The second reason is that I found Dix with his arms wrapped around the anacapa container. Dix had lost control of himself on a mission to Starbase Kappa three months ago and had tampered with an active, if dying, anacapa drive. I am concerned he has done something similar here.”

But why would he? He had planned to kill himself. And he wasn’t so far gone that he would believe that the anacapa needed blood to activate.

She smiled grimly at the very thought.

“I do not know what I’m going to f ind. I have already set the bridge controls to record everything occurring on the bridge at full levels, but I still need to make sure that the record is clear. Which is why I’m going to narrate my investigation. I will not go into depth, unless I need to.”

She didn’t want to go into depth, to think about the proper wording of every phrase. Not yet anyway.

“First,” she said. “I need to check the anacapa controls.”

She was not going to explain why. Nor was she going to mention how her right hand shook as it hovered over the section of the console that activated the controls quickly.

Sometimes she saw that section of the console in her nightmares, her fingers in-putting codes, then her palm, slamming against the console, giving it permission to execute the commands she had just placed—commands that had sent the Ivoire into foldspace.

Commands that had led to the ship ending up here.

It didn’t matter to her nightmares that at the very same moment, Quurzod ships had fired on the Ivoire, causing serious damage. It didn’t matter to her, even though she knew that something in the Quurzod ships’ weapons had interacted with the anacapa drive. The drive had been damaged: she had seen that in foldspace, and she had felt it that day.

She hadn’t shut off the drive.

She probably should have shut off the drive.

She slowly brought her hand down on the smooth surface. The controls rose, responding to her touch.

The anacapa only worked for select personnel. She had no idea if Coop had restricted Dix’s use of the anacapa drive. She would have. And she should have Dix

25

March/April 2018
suggested it when they came back from Starbase Kappa, but she had been too busy, thinking about that mission. Too busy thinking about all the implications for their new future.

The controls looked normal.

She let out a small breath, then reminded herself that it didn’t matter how the controls looked. They had looked normal after they had resumed their cycle, that day the anacapa drive had malfunctioned.

Still, she verbally noted that the controls seemed fine, and then discussed how she was going to dig further, to make sure that what seemed fine actually was fine.

First, she had the system show her any unusual activity, no matter how small.

What she found wasn’t small at all. Dix had tried to access the anacapa drive, but he hadn’t been able to.

Coop had done exactly what he should have done. He had removed Dix’s access to sensitive systems.

Yash nodded as she saw that. Coop had figured Dix would test to see if he could still access the bridge, but had gambled that Dix wouldn’t try to access sensitive systems—important systems.

Yash almost looked to see if Dix had tried to access other systems, but made herself stop. She needed to investigate the anacapa drive f irst. That was the one Dix was most focused on.

At Starbase Kappa, Dix thought he could recreate the circumstances that had sent the Ivoire into foldspace, and then five thousand years into the future. Dix had believed he could use that recreation to reverse what had happened.

Yash still had no idea how Dix believed that would happen. To her that kind of thinking was as filled with magic as trying to active the anacapa drive using blood.

But Dix hadn’t been in his right mind, no matter how he had seemed the night before.

The f irst hurdle crossed. Dix hadn’t tampered with the anacapa drive controls.

But she needed to examine more. Because of who Dix was, and how he had become First Officer.

Coop had always trusted Yash more than he trusted Dix. Coop had actually told Yash that on a few occasions. But she had never been on the captain track that first officers usually followed. She had been really honest with Coop from the beginning: she didn’t want to become a captain. She loved the engineering work. She liked design and tech as well.

Being captain, being in charge of all these people, would have gotten in the way, even if she had been good at working with people, which she was not.

So she had been Coop’s advisor on choosing among his f irst off icer candidates.

Coop had had reservations about all three candidates. Dix had been the most well rounded of all of them. He had known DV-class vessels better than anyone. People liked him and, more importantly, they listened to him.

And, Coop had said— Yash had said—Dix had an uncanny ability to find the holes in a system. If there was a back door, even if it was unintentional— especially if it was unintentional—Dix would find it.

She was looking now to see if he had found anything here.

The unusual activity she had called up should have shown something like that, if he had done so. It would also have shown if he had tried and failed.

And he had.

He had spent hours after leaving Coop and Yash, searching for something, a way into the anacapa drive. But Dix hadn’t found it, at least not from the console.

She looked down at Dix again, his hands on that container. The console should have showed if someone breached the container. Coop should have been notified if someone had.

26

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Asimov’s

But Dix, with that ability to find ways around systems, might have shut off the notifications.

She crouched, looked around the blood at the container’s edges and the seals. They seemed normal, as normal as anything with blood smeared on it could be.

She couldn’t entirely tell though. Not with a quick glance.

She stood up. She didn’t want to open the container, not without Coop here. Not without help.

Dix could have set a trap. He might have set up something that would ensure the entire ship would blow up if she tried to open the container.

Her mouth had gone dry. She couldn’t believe she was thinking of this, that she was mentally accusing Dix—someone she had known for years—of doing something so nasty.

Of course, this suicide was nasty, and she hadn’t expected him to do that either.

But setting the Ivoire’s anacapa to blow, that required a special kind of nasty. Had he been crazy enough to believe that if he didn’t want to live in this new time period, no one else did either?

And how would she know if that was the case, without opening that container?

After voicing her suspicions for the recording she was making, she turned back to the console and made herself look at the notification system. She was looking to see if he had shut off the notifications that would have brought Coop here—or her, or someone else—if anyone touched the anacapa drive.

As far as she could tell, Dix hadn’t touched the notif ication system. He hadn’t touched any of it.

But did he need to? Would the system have notified her or Coop if Dix had touched it? Because he might have been authorized to do so.

Had she been careless enough to make it easy for the f irst off icer to touch an anacapa drive, particularly a first officer like Dix, a man who had no real knowledge of the drives? She didn’t know, and didn’t remember what she had done. There were standard settings which allowed bridge officers access, and those were supposed to be altered once the main bridge crew was established.

The Ivoire’s main bridge crew—the crew that had been on the bridge that horrid day over a year ago—had been together for years. She didn’t remember everything she had done a year ago; she certainly couldn’t remember what she had done more than a decade before.

She thought about accessing the notification records to see what she had set up, but she wasn’t sure that was worthwhile. She usually did things properly. Should she trust in what she had usually done?

And did it matter?

Because Dix might have hidden what he touched.

Dix did have the ability to do something like that.

She closed her eyes. With all those paranoid thoughts, she was becoming as crazy as Dix. He was turning her into a crazy woman, and he was dead.

One step at a time. Or, as Coop had said last night, one problem at a time.

She opened her eyes. She needed to find out exactly what Dix had accessed. As she did that, she needed to assess what that access meant. Then she would have to see if he had executed some inexplicable activity or performed activity he had tried to erase.

She didn’t look at Dix’s body. She couldn’t. Not any more.

She couldn’t think about him. She decided to approach this like a math problem rather than an emotional problem. Tiny discovery after tiny discovery, keeping track in her head, making sure she understood whether or not the things she discovered could interact with each other in such a way as to make something new.

“I’m here. Now what?”

Dix

27

March/April 2018

She jumped, her heart pounding. Coop had spoken from behind her. She had been expecting him, but she had gotten so deep into the work she hadn’t thought of him in—however long.

She raised her head, turning until she could see him.

Coop stood near the entrance to the bridge. His hair was mussed, as if he had been sleeping. He wore the same kind of black T-shirt and pants he had worn the night before, and she found herself wondering if he had even gone back to his rooms.

Not her business. What he did in his own time was personal. She didn’t have a right to know.

He was scanning the entire bridge, probably seeing the empty workstations and the unattended captain’s chair just like she had. He would note the changes since the last time he had been here, including the shuttered screens. He probably hadn’t noticed the faint scent of death, though, since he hadn’t entered. He wasn’t stepping into the bridge just in case the problem was internal, and going inside would cause even more problems.

Procedure.

That calmed her. His presence calmed her.

She wasn’t working this alone any more.

She held up one finger, then explained her thinking in the recording, just so that she would remember.

Coop frowned as she spoke. She didn’t mention Dix as she talked to the recording, didn’t mention anything except her findings and her supposition on the ways those findings might work together.

When she finished, her gaze met Coop’s. He looked both calm and serious, like he often did in the middle of a crisis.

He was someone she could rely on. She valued that more than she had realized.

She swallowed hard, gulping a little air as she did so. She had no idea how to tell Coop about Dix.

“Can I enter the bridge safely?” Coop asked.

“Yes,” Yash said. “Come to me. You need to see this.”

It was better to show him than to tell him.

At the same time, part of her didn’t want him to know. She had no idea how Coop would react to this. They both had seen a lot of death among the crew—in battle, in the normal course of things like illness and aging. They had lost friends and colleagues from other ships. But they had never lost someone to suicide.

Coop walked slowly toward her, as if he was worried that something was going to go wrong near the other consoles. She directed him around the console she was working on, so he wouldn’t get in her way.

Then she pointed at Dix’s body, still wrapped around that anacapa drive.

Coop stared. His expression didn’t change. Then he crouched, but didn’t touch.

“The blood’s tacky,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “I think he’s been here for hours.”

“Have you called anyone from medical?”

“No,” Yash said. “Not yet. I’m making sure Dix hasn’t tampered with the anacapa drive.”

Coop’s head moved ever so slightly, as if he had started to shake it, and then stopped himself. He had placed his hands on his thighs, elbows out. Then he leaned forward just a little more.

“I don’t see anything obvious,” Coop said.

“Me neither,” Yash said. “But he chose to be here, and he touched that container in a variety of ways before dying.”

Coop nodded, but didn’t look at her. He was studying Dix’s body and the container itself.

28

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Asimov’s

“I’m checking everything I can think of,” Yash said.

Coop stood, glanced at the console she was working on, and frowned. He looked disturbed now.

“I revoked all Dix’s clearances except the one that allowed him on the bridge,”

Coop said. “I should have revoked that one too.”

A tiny thread of anger, barely discernable, in the deep timbre of his voice.

“No blaming,” she said to him, like he had said to her when she discussed that anacapa freeze with him one of those drunken nights. “We get lost if we blame. It takes us in the wrong direction. Move forward.”

Coop’s lips twisted as if he had swallowed something sour.

“All right,” he said. “Let’s deal with what we have. What Dix presented us with.”

The annoyance was clear in Coop’s tone. His gaze met hers.

“Brief me,” he said.

She did. She told him all she knew, and all she had done.

When she finished, she pointed at the container. The blood on its sides was turning black.

“The container concerns me,” she said. “I have no idea if he breached it.”

Coop followed her finger, staring at the container. “What could he have done if he had breached it?”

Coop made no secret of the fact that he was not an anacapa engineer. He had never wanted to learn how to do more than the basics on that drive.

Yash could think of a million things that anyone could do to tamper with the anacapa, but she knew that wasn’t what Coop was asking.

“I mean,” Coop said, still focused on the container—or maybe on the body beside it—“if he wanted to send us back into foldspace or into the past, wouldn’t he have stuck around to see if it worked?”

That was when Yash knew that Coop still hadn’t accepted how far Dix had deteriorated. Or maybe that kind of deterioration was unfathomable to Coop. It certainly didn’t happen much among high-level DV-class officers.

Yash wasn’t sure it had ever happened before.

“At first, I too thought he was going to use his skills to send us back through time to our Fleet,” she said. “Then I rejected the idea entirely.”

Coop frowned at her. “But you still think he tampered with the anacapa.”

She nodded, the movement small. “Suicides are angry people, Coop. Anger turned inward sometimes, but not always. Sometimes the suicide turns the anger outward as well.”

Coop frowned at her as if he was trying to make sense of what she was saying. She didn’t want to be more explicit, especially since she was still recording, but—

Coop cursed. “I almost said that Dix would never do anything like that, but I would have thought that Dix would never have done anything like this either.”

He snapped his hand toward Dix’s body, the movement revealing that Coop was as furious at Dix as Yash was.

“You think he tampered with the anacapa,” Coop said.

“I don’t know,” Yash said. “He certainly tried, but I’m not sure how far he got or what his intentions were. I would have said that he killed himself after realizing he couldn’t get into the system, but the bone knife belies that.”

“Bone . . . oh.” Coop crouched, and looked closely at the knife. Apparently he hadn’t noticed it before. “That is part of a set.”

“I know,” she said.

“Those bone knives he got are the sharpest knives on the ship,” Coop said.

“I know that too.”

Coop looked up at her, then rose, slowly, his knees popping with the movement.

Dix

29

March/April 2018

“You have a concern you haven’t told me.”

“I do,” she said. “I’m afraid that he did something that would overload the anacapa.”

“But nothing has happened yet, and he’s clearly been dead for some time,” Coop said.

Yash nodded. “I’m worried that he booby-trapped it.”

“You think he would put this destruction on a timer of some kind?” Coop asked.

“That’s one way.” Yash peered at the body. She hated seeing Dix’s hands still pressed against the container. “There are a lot of other ways to accomplish the same thing. Most of them use a trigger, not a timer, but they would have the same effect.

They would overload the anacapa.”

“From the tone of your voice,” Coop said, “you have a specific vision of what an overloaded anacapa looks like. I understand it’s bad. But either I don’t know or never learned the details. Throughout my career, I was told that we needed to avoid it, and so we have. Except when we went into foldspace after the Quurzod weapons hit our ship.”

Yash was shaking her head before he even f inished. “What happened to us that day wasn’t an anacapa overload. Those Quurzod weapons augmented the energy from the anacapa drive, altered it in some way, and that alteration destroyed a part of the anacapa as it was activating.”

Coop was frowning. “So, what happened to us . . . that’s not it. You mean something different when you say overload.”

“I do,” she said quietly. “I mean that everything explodes.”

4

Coop turned away from the anacapa container, away from Dix’s body, away from Yash herself. He peered at the open portals.

Yash knew what he saw. The edge of the station. The other ships occasionally going by. The dots and light and blackness that all combined into this sector of space.

She also knew what he was doing as he looked away. He didn’t want her to see his reaction.

But she had, already. He hadn’t believed her when she’d said that everything would explode. He clearly needed a moment to think about what she had just said.

“Everything.” He wasn’t asking for clarification. He was repeating her word. Her unbelievable word.

“The anacapa has a lot of power, especially one this size—”

“You’re talking overload.” He spoke slowly. She recognized the tone. He was working it out for himself. “You mean one of those chain reactions, this anacapa drive will send the wrong kind of energy to the other anacapa drives nearby, triggering them, which will then cause this massive explosion, obliterating everything.”

Technically, he was wrong. There was no “wrong kind of energy.” But the effect was the same and the effect had been what she was talking about.

“If this anacapa drive overloads,” she said, “then it could do many things. It could obliterate the ship. It could send us all back to foldspace, maybe in pieces. Or it could initiate those chain reactions you were talking about.”

“Which would destroy the space station, the other ships, this ship, and everything in the vicinity,” he said.

“Yes,” she said quietly.

“Including every single human being.”

She could only see the side of his face, but that impassive expression was back. The one that most people thought so calm, but which she knew was actually a cover for very deep emotions.

30

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Asimov’s

“You think Dix is trying to murder us all?” Coop asked.

“I think he was pretty angry about being here. I think he believed none of us belonged here. I also think he hated Lost Souls and what Boss is building.” Yash swallowed hard again, wishing her mouth wasn’t so dry. “So, yes. I think Dix might have been trying to destroy everything. I’m not sure he would think of it as murder. More as setting things right.”

But what did she know? She wasn’t a psychologist. She was an engineer.

Coop squared his shoulders, as if he was adjusting to a new weight that had just fallen on them. “How do we figure this out?”

“That’s what I was doing when you arrived,” Yash said.

“Do we touch the container?” Coop asked. “Do we remove it? Should we deactivate the anacapa remotely?”

Yash licked her lips. All of those things were possible, and all of them were predictable. If she could predict them, then Dix would have been able to.

“Should we bring others here to help you?” Coop asked, and something in his tone made her realize that her silence was frustrating him.

“No,” she said. “Not yet. I worry that they’ll trigger something. I won’t be able to monitor them.”

“I don’t have the deep knowledge you have of the anacapa drive,” Coop said. “I don’t know how I can help you.”

Yash nodded. Her heart, which had been pounding hard, had settled down. She felt calmer. Was it Coop’s presence or was it because she had finally gotten a handle on what she feared?

“Dix picked this spot for a reason,” she said. “He was sending us a message. He could have killed himself in his quarters. He could have fallen asleep and made sure he never woke up. There are a million ways he could have harmed himself, and none of them would have been this bloody or this obvious.”

Coop turned, a slight frown between his eyebrows. Even though he was trying for the calm expression, he wasn’t entirely managing it.

“I believe Dix wanted us to respond in a particular way.” Yash took a deep breath.

From this moment forward, clarity and honesty were the two most important parts of the conversation. “I believe he wanted you to respond in a particular way.”

Coop nodded, and glanced at Dix’s body. Then Coop nodded again.

“So, you need to imagine I didn’t arrive first,” Yash said. “You need to tell me what you would have done if you had been the person to discover Dix.”

Coop folded his hands behind his back, head down, clearly contemplating. “And what if someone else had found him? Someone other than me? Wouldn’t Dix have thought about that?”

“He would have,” Yash said. “But he didn’t know I visited the bridge a lot. I’ve never told him, and he wasn’t usually here. So it didn’t matter if someone else found Dix. Whoever it was—except for me—would have contacted you after making sure Dix was dead.”

“But you did contact me,” Coop said.

“After I ran through some diagnostics,” Yash said. “Besides, if you didn’t show up right away, I could take action. No one else could. Or rather, no one else would think to.”

Coop’s lips thinned. “All right,” he said. “You want me to go through each step?”

“I need scenarios,” she said. “If you found him, then what? If someone else did, then what? And work from there.”

“You’re betting that he used a trigger, not a timer,” Coop said.

“Well, no,” Yash said. “First, I’m going to go over everything he did on this panel.

I’ll find the timer if he placed one here. If I’m even right about the fact that he set a booby-trap at all.”

“You are,” Coop said. “You’re right about the message. He and I argued endlessly Dix

31

March/April 2018
about using the anacapa again, trying to get home. I finally told him I was never going to try.”

“When did you say that?” Yash asked.

“I said it repeatedly,” Coop said, “but he didn’t hear me. Not until after the debacle on Starbase Kappa.”

“He heard you then?” Yash asked.

“Not entirely,” Coop said. “He kept trying, kept thinking I didn’t understand what he meant, how we could recreate the circumstances that got us here, and that recreation would send us home.”

“I never thought it would,” Yash said.

“Neither did I,” Coop said, “and that was what we argued about first. Finally, I said I wasn’t going to try. I was done trying. We weren’t going home. Not ever. And nothing he could ever say would change my mind on that.”

She could hear the forcefulness behind Coop’s soft words. She could imagine how he had said that to Dix. Coop would have used that command voice of his. He would have spoken with hard and clipped authority, and he would have gotten through to Dix.

“When?” she asked. “When did you tell him that?”

Coop winced. “Last week.”

Yash nodded, wanting to say she was unsurprised. But she wasn’t. She was surprised that Coop was still taking Dix seriously as recently as one week ago. Dix had caused a serious crisis on Starbase Kappa months before, and Coop had still been trying to work with him?

Usually Yash didn’t question Coop’s judgment, and she didn’t say anything now.

But Coop’s refusal to accept Dix’s mental failures was not like Coop. Had he been playing a longer game? Or had he seen something of himself in Dix? Had the Psy-chological and Emotional Stress Department been involved? Or had Coop simply been trying to talk Dix down on his own?

“The next time I saw him after that conversation,” Coop said slowly, “was last night. And I thought—I guess I was hoping—with that apology, that last week’s conversation had worked.”

“The discussion was tense,” Yash said.

“It was,” Coop said. “But he apologized. At the beginning, and at the end.”

I owe you guys an apology. And I’m sorry.

He never said what he was sorry for.

“I thought—I hoped—he was going in a new direction.” Coop shook his head. “I wanted to believe he would improve. I always wanted to believe he would improve.

With logic, with time.”

Yash nodded. Time. What had Dix said about time? He had looked out the window and had said, There’s the future. It’s been there all along, hasn’t it?

Yash had thought he was looking forward, finally, taking those steps toward leaving their losses behind.

She had believed in Dix, too. Maybe not as much as Coop had, but she had wanted Dix to rejoin them. The third leg in a once-sturdy stool.

“But Dix said ‘this’ had happened to all of us.” Coop frowned at her. “Did that mean he thought we all were as despondent as him, unable to live in the moment? Didn’t I disabuse him of that?”

Clearly, Coop hadn’t disabused Dix of anything.

“He was apologizing in advance for what he was going to do here,” Yash said. “Not for his behavior in the past. But for this.”

Coop nodded.

“And now we need to f igure out what he’s done,” Yash said. “I’m going to f inish here. You’re going to give me scenarios.”

32

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Asimov’s

“Yeah, I will,” Coop said. “But not yet.”

He moved to a different console, then pressed his palm against it. The screen lit up. His fingers danced across it, but Yash couldn’t see what he was doing.

She needed him to focus on the anacapa drive. She needed those scenarios if she was going to figure out how to use the data she was slowly deriving from Dix’s actions.

A holographic screen popped up in front of Coop, and Yash recognized it. Communications.

“This is the captain,” he said. “Evacuate the Ivoire immediately. Do not gather your things, do not search for a friend or family member. Proceed to the nearest exit and leave now.”

The screen glowed red. He touched something on it, and the red blinked three times.

He wanted the message to repeat, but only three times. Yash had no idea how long the people on board would have before there were more repeats.

“What’re you doing?” she asked.

“Saving lives,” he said.

5

While he waited for the thirty people on board to evacuate, Coop opened another screen and talked through all the scenarios he could think of.

Yash listened with half an ear. She was still pulling up more data. Dix had spent a lot of time on the bridge before he had killed himself.

She was becoming more and more convinced that her paranoia had been justified; Dix had done something.

She just hadn’t figured out what yet.

The message repeated twice before Coop stopped talking. Yash looked up, startled.

He hadn’t finished the first scenario yet, let alone gotten to any others.

He was bent over the console, the screen in front of him still glowing red as the minutes ticked down before the announcement repeated.

A second half-screen floated over the console to his left, and she recognized that screen by color. It showed all the heat signatures of every living creature on board.

As she watched, five left the Ivoire. She scanned the entire map of the ship, just as she had been trained to do, and saw only two remaining heat signatures—hers and Coop’s.

“Computer,” he said, “check the entire ship for life signs.”

His fingers brushed the side of the half-screen, creating yet another half-screen.

That one showed the environmental system, calculating usage of air, based on human usage. She had taught Coop that trick years ago, as a way of going outside the system to see if anyone hid on board.

She had learned that trick from Dix.

Bastard.

And then she made herself focus and returned to work.

She got deep into the data, only dimly aware that Coop had moved away from the console to the main navigation console. Then the f loor hummed beneath her feet, catching her in a familiar vibration.

He was starting up the ship. Of course he was. It was the only smart play.

If Dix had rigged the anacapa drive to overload and cause a cascade effect with the other anacapa drives nearby, then the best way to handle the crisis was to make sure only one anacapa drive exploded.

Theirs.

Dix

33

March/April 2018

Coop didn’t need the anacapa drive to move the ship. The standard engines would be able to get the Ivoire far away from the space station in a matter of minutes.

Yash tapped the console, making sure that there was no change in the anacapa drive as Coop started the ship. If the readings on the console were correct—and she had to assume they were—then the anacapa drive was just fine, at least at the moment.

She was banking a lot on the fact that Dix was using a trigger, and not a timer. But to Dix, who wanted to make a point, a trigger made more sense.

A trigger guaranteed that someone found his body, saw his protest or whatever the hell this was, and had a chance of understanding his point.

A timer would make sure the anacapa explosion occurred, but if it occurred at the wrong moment and obliterated everything, then no one would ever know about Dix’s suicide and his damn message.

She needed to concentrate. Because what she knew and what she guessed were two different things. There were no real studies on what happened to a ship when an anacapa overloaded. There were theories, not true knowledge.

The Ivoire would probably be destroyed, but there was a chance it would travel, damaged and unusable, into foldspace.

And then there was the chance that the Ivoire would explode, and all of its pieces, including its human crew, would be forced into foldspace. The crew would die, un-protected and alone, in the vastness of space.

Right now, its human crew numbered two—herself and Coop.

There was no way to protect him and Yash, except to find the problem and disarm it. She wasn’t even going to put on an environmental suit. If the ship exploded, and she and Coop were thrust into foldspace—alive—all an environmental suit would buy them was two or three days of agony, waiting for a rescue that would never come.

If Coop ordered her into an environmental suit, she would put it on. Otherwise, she was just going to continue working.

The air shifted, adding just a bit of oxygen like it always did when the ship was in motion, designed to keep the crew alert. The extra oxygen was a bit excessive, designed for a full crew complement.

Instead, Coop was piloting the Ivoire alone. The ship was designed for that, but it wasn’t recommended. And he almost always used a copilot.

Instead, he let Yash work.

So she did until he spoke up.

“We’re clear of the space station and the shipping lanes,” he said. “If we blow, we go alone.”

In more ways than one. But she didn’t say that. She didn’t say anything.

Instead, she nodded.

“And,” he said, “I don’t know if you heard what I was doing, but I managed to finish the scenarios you asked for.”

Perfect timing. She had done just about all she could with the bits of the data that Dix had touched. All she had been able to figure out was that he had come into this bridge with a clear plan. He might have even had a list— do this to misdirect here; do that to misdirect there—because none of what he had done, in the order he had done it, made sense otherwise. Of course, she was following the trail of a crazy man who had ended up committing suicide. There was always the chance that he had done all of this out of order because he had been out of his mind.

She wasn’t going to assume that. He had seemed rational enough the night before.

“All right,” she said. “Let’s give those scenarios a go.”

She needed to listen f irst, see if there were similarities in the scenarios, things that Dix could have predicted. And then she had to correlate those similarities to whatever he had done—even though he had done those things out of order.

34

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Asimov’s

She nodded to Coop, and cleared a small screen before her, ready to listen.

6

S cenario One.

Coop’s voice, rich and methodical, filled the bridge. Coop had a screen up as well, and he was making notes, just like Yash was. Only he was probably looking for different things.

After we left the bar last night, Yash, I went to the space station. I wouldn’t have returned to the Ivoire for two days or more. That’s important. That’s one of my patterns.

She hadn’t known that. Had Dix? Maybe. If he had been focused on Coop.

So I would have entered the bridge, and I would have assumed—and Dix probably assumed—that no one else had entered since he had.

After a minimum of two days, this bridge would stink. The environmental system would scrub the smell as much as it could, but a human body, particularly the size of Dix’s, has an overpowering stench that challenges even the best environmental system.

It sounded like Coop was speaking from experience. Yash wasn’t sure why he had that kind of experience. But she didn’t know his entire history, any more than he knew all of hers.

The bridge environmental system is on minimal, so I’m sure I would have smelled him before I saw him. That would have immediately put me on alert. I would have known something was wrong, and I would have investigated—slowly.

I would have cursed myself for coming alone, for no longer wearing the standard uniform, for not carrying a weapon as a matter of routine. I’ve gotten pretty lax, Yash.

I’ve become too comfortable in this place.

She hadn’t expected Coop to be so honest. She glanced at him over the console. He shrugged, and toggled something, pausing his voice.

“I figured you needed to hear those things as well,” he said. “Dix would know what I would be wearing. He would know what I am capable of.”

She nodded. Coop was right. Dix would know all that. That was one reason Dix had become first officer—his ability to predict Coop’s behavior.

Coop gave her a small smile, half sheepish, half rueful, and then he toggled his voice back on.

It doesn’t take long to examine the bridge, and Dix’s body is hard to miss. I would have found it fast.

By then it would have been in an obvious state of decay. I would scan the rest of the bridge, but I would assume, from what I saw of Dix’s body, that there was no immediate threat, that the threat had been days ago, when Dix had died.

Coop’s voice had gotten sad. There was an implication in his tone, something she felt as well: it was entirely plausible that Dix could have been dead for two days and no one would have noticed.

Dix had to know that as well. He’d been left alone a lot. That one detail made the trigger scenario the most plausible—that and the fact that nothing else had happened yet.

I would have gone to the body. I would have examined it the way I did when you pointed the body out to me.

In other words, he would have crouched, looked, and examined.

I would not have touched him or anything near him, including that knife. I would have seen it. I would have assumed, from its presence, the fact that his carotid artery had been severed, and the way he was lying that he had done this to himself.

Dix

35

March/April 2018

As he died, I would have assumed he put his hands on the container, and I would have assumed he had done so for a reason. That reason would have been to send a message to me: that I should have listened to him about using the anacapa to get us home, and since I refused him, he killed himself. Like a damn petulant child who wasn’t getting his way.

Yash smiled. Exactly.

I would have been angry first. I am angry. I suppose, even in that scenario, the one in which I did not suspect Dix of doing anything malicious, I would have been angry for days. Maybe afterward, I would have mourned. Maybe.

Coop’s voice had trembled as he said that. There was more in his tone than he realized. A little devastation lurked beneath it.

Yash hadn’t realized until today just how much Coop had cared about Dix.

The first thing I would have done, even as I crouched down to look at Dix, is contact the medical team. I wouldn’t have asked for a specific person, because I have no idea who is on the ship at any given point. I do know that we always have a medical team on board.

Then he chuckled on the recording, which surprised her. She glanced over at him.

Coop definitely was not chuckling now. He looked very serious.

Except right at the moment, I guess.

The scenario paused there, as if Coop had contemplated what he was going to say next. Or maybe he had been thinking about the risks he and Yash were taking.

Anyway . . . the medical team. I would have taken whoever was here. There would have been no reason to bring in a specialist that I would have seen, and Dix hadn’t been close to anyone in the medical core. Or anywhere, for that matter. Which, I suppose, was part of the problem. His entire support system had been left in the past.

Yash started. She hadn’t thought of that. She wondered how many others on the Ivoire crew had the same issue. She had never asked.

The medical team wouldn’t have arrived immediately. I wouldn’t have asked them to act like it was an emergency. So, I would have had to wait, and while I waited, I would have tried to find out why the bridge itself hadn’t notified me when Dix started bleeding. It should have.

Yash had looked for that as well. But she hadn’t gone at it directly. She had cycled through the various systems, looking for something awry. She had found the command shut-downs that Dix had ordered, specifically the way he had shut off bridge notifications to senior staff members.

Dix hadn’t tried to hide the shut-down commands, then. Because he expected Coop to look for them, and for nothing else?

I would have started with the environmental system, because it was the part of the bridge that would have noticed the blood first. If I didn’t find anything there, I would have moved to the notification system itself, as well as the entire security system.

I have no idea how much I would have gotten done, because I can’t factor in how long it would have taken the medical team to arrive. I also have no idea what I would have found.

But Yash did. She had found tampering in the notification system first, not the environmental system.

So Dix hadn’t foreseen everything Coop would have done, in the order in which he would have done it.

Once the medical team arrived, I would have turned the investigation and the handling of Dix’s body over to them. I would have supervised his removal from the area of the anacapa container, making sure the team didn’t touch anything they shouldn’t have, but that would have been the extent of my focus.

You’ll have to look up what their procedures are for the dead body of a known bridge member, and with an easily discernable cause. I don’t know that.

36

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Asimov’s

This time, Yash toggled the scenario playback off.

“What did you mean, ‘a known bridge member’?” she asked Coop.

He frowned at her. He tilted his head, as if he couldn’t quite believe the question.

Clearly, whatever he was thinking about was fairly obvious, at least from his perspective. “It’s the ‘easily discernable cause’ that’s the important part of the sentence,”

he said. “Not the known bridge member.”

“Okay,” Yash said. “Talk me through that. You clearly know more about it than I do.”

He blinked in surprise, then nodded.

“We do a training exercise, several dozen of them, in fact, designed for all sorts of scenarios—”

“We who?” she asked.

“Anyone on the leadership track,” he said. “When you make it to be considered as captain material, they run all kinds of holographic and hypothetical scenarios. Several of them have to do with a dead body on the bridge.”

“Several of them,” she repeated. She had never heard of this.

“Yes,” he said. “If the ship has been breached by person or persons unknown who then murder a member of the bridge crew and leave the corpse on the bridge. Or an enemy, with malicious intent, leaves a body on the bridge.”

“Malicious intent?” Yash asked. “What does that mean?”

Coop gave her a guarded look. “There are a lot of ways to destroy a ship, Yash. One way is to take out its command structure.”

She nodded. She knew that.

“The body could be a Trojan horse. It could be filled with toxins or with a virus or some kind of plague. It could be rigged to explode—”

Coop stopped talking as Yash whirled and looked down at Dix. She hadn’t thought of that at all. Did he have explosives on him? Was he rigged to explode, not the anacapa?

Coop cursed. “That’s what he did, isn’t it?”

“It’s certainly safer and easier than messing with the anacapa drive,” she said. But it still bothered her that Dix had done a bunch of other things on the control panel.

Coop had already moved to the supplies locker. Inside that locker was containment clothing as well.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I’m going to check him out.”

“He’ll have set it up so that if you move him . . .” She stopped. She didn’t know that either.

She picked up a hand scanner and took several small steps over to the body.

“Don’t touch him,” Coop said. “We don’t know if he used the entire ‘body on the bridge’ playbook.”

She turned the scanner on, keeping it as far from the anacapa as possible. The scanner was useless to examine an anacapa drive, which was where her focus had been. She had figured the medical team would eventually examine the body.

But the scanner could interact with a damaged anacapa drive. Anything with energy could. She couldn’t worry about that.

“Yash,” Coop said. “Don’t—”

“I’m not touching him,” she said.

She held the scanner near his face, not sure what she was looking for. The scanner showed Dix was still in rigor. Then it delved into his entire bone structure, the soft tissues, all of the biological details. She moved the scanner slightly and saw that, indeed, the carotid had been cut all the way through. The artery looked flat and useless, probably because it wasn’t filled with blood.

Information, flowing along the side of the scanner, actually listed the rate of decay and was pinpointing the time of death.

Dix

37

March/April 2018

She didn’t look. She roughly knew when that was.

Coop joined her, crouching beside her. He wore an environmental suit, which surprised her.

“You need to suit up,” he said.

She nodded. He was right. If they touched the body and anything got released, they could die horribly.

She handed the scanner to Coop, stood, and headed around the other side of the console, to the supplies locker. Lots of weapons in there. Dix could have used any one of them to kill himself.

Instead he had used that bone knife.

Maybe he already knew he didn’t have access to the locker.

But that hadn’t stopped him from finding a back door into the console, and tampering there. He would have been able to tamper with the locker door as well. The door’s lock wasn’t nearly as complicated as the system on the control panel.

She pulled out an environmental suit sized for her. Her regular suit was in her cabin on the lower deck. She hadn’t even bothered to move that suit to her apartment on the space station, which said something about her attitude.

She slipped the suit on and pulled up the hood. Then she glanced over her shoulder to see if Coop had done the same with his.

He was leaning over the body, the scanner just above it. She felt her breath catch.

She hadn’t warned him about staying away from the anacapa drive. He should have known that, of course, but still. She always preferred to err on the side of caution.

“Yash,” Coop said. “There is something here.”

She made her way back, feeling restricted in the suit. She usually didn’t wear them. In fact, she couldn’t remember the last time she had worn one.

“Come see this,” Coop said. “Double-check me.”

She crouched beside him, the material stretching over her clothes, pulling on them. She hated that feature of environmental suits in real gravity. The suits felt looser in zero-g, although it was arguable whether or not they were.

She f licked on the suit’s data stream, letting it run along one side of her clear hood. She also set the suit to alert her should anything toxic reveal itself in the atmosphere around her—toxic or potentially dangerous.

Then she took the scanner from Coop.

“His back and his left side,” Coop said.

She brought the scanner as close as she dared, saw nothing obvious in the shape of his body, his clothing, or his skin. But the scanner read nanobit activity near the armpit and shoulder blade.

She enhanced the scanner, saw that the nanobits had become a coating over him.

The chemical analysis made no sense to her, so she had the scanner explain it.

The scanner told her that the coating was made of a touch explosive developed in the same culture that had developed the bone knife.

“Did you see what that was?” she asked Coop, then thrust the scanner toward him.

She couldn’t see Coop’s expression through his hood. The light near the anacapa drive caused a weird reflection on the clear material.

But she didn’t have to see Coop’s face to know how he felt.

He felt like she did.

Dix had left the damn knife as something that would mislead them, and as a clue.

Bastard. What had he been playing at?

She shook her head a little.

He hadn’t been playing at all.

She moved the scanner across the rest of his body, looking for more coating or a variation on it. She found it near his left hip.

38

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Asimov’s

“Those are the places we would have used to leverage him off the floor,” Coop said quietly.

“He was trying to take us all out,” Yash said.

“But he wasn’t,” Coop said. “That container should have prevented any explosion from hitting the anacapa drive. Right?”

She was the one who had told Coop that. It was a great simplif ication. Various forms of energy could hit and interact with the anacapa. Most of them were rare, and often only occurred in strange circumstances.

Like an explosion. And not an explosion of the ship, where the energies and components were known. But an explosion using a different kind of device, like a touch explosive made of nanobits.

Still, that didn’t answer her initial question: what had Dix been doing on the console?

She moved the scanner toward the container, following along Dix’s arms to see if he had put more explosive on them.

No explosive, but the scanner lit up red when it got to his hands.

The word breach blinked, over and over again.

Breach.

Coop glanced over her shoulder. “The container’s been breached?”

She nodded.

“But it’s not obvious. It’s not open,” Coop said.

Exactly. She clicked through the scanner’s readings. She let out a small breath.

“He used acid,” she said, more to herself than Coop.

“For what?” Coop asked.

“On his hands.” She winced. God, that would have been painful. And he would have had to do it before he slit his own throat.

She hadn’t known this man. She thought she had, but she hadn’t. The determination he had shown, the level of destruction he was attempting.

She was appalled.

Coop stared at the scanner, then he looked at Dix’s hands. “That’s why they’re attached to the container? They’re not leaning on anything?”

She didn’t move the scanner closer. She didn’t dare.

“They’re inside the container, just a little. The acid ate away his skin, but more importantly, it ate away the edges of the container.”

“It looks solid,” Coop said.

“If we touch it,” she said, “it’ll collapse.”

Dix couldn’t get into the system. That’s what she had seen. He had gotten into the notification system, the environmental system—nominally, anyway—but he couldn’t find a back way into the anacapa drive. He had tried, which was why the readings she had initially gotten made no sense.

There was a logic to his early actions, but not his later ones—at least, not the kind of logic she had assumed. His early actions obfuscated what he was trying to do. His later ones showed his frustration as he searched for, but didn’t find, a side way into the anacapa controls.

“Now what?” Coop asked.

She looked at him in surprise. She wasn’t used to Coop asking for instructions from her.

But of course he was. They had to juggle two things: a body that could explode if they handled it wrong, and an exposed anacapa drive that could already be unstable.

One problem at a time.

First, the body. If it exploded, then anything else she had done up to that point would not matter.

Dix

39

March/April 2018

She let out a small breath. The body was a two-pronged problem: the touch explosive and those hands.

“We need two different localized shields,” she said to Coop. “First, one around the body—except the hands and arms. The other around the container.”

The localized bridge shields protected crewmembers or bridge equipment in case of an attack, usually some kind of laser weapon or hand-to-hand combat. The bridge shields weren’t very powerful, or else they would interfere with the operation of some of the equipment, but they would contain an explosion the size of the one that Dix tried to create—provided he hadn’t done anything more, like swallow something explosive to enhance the magnitude of the bomb.

“We’ll section the shields at the elbows, just in case.” Coop said. He understood what she meant to do. The suggestion of sectioning made that clear.

The bridge shields were badly designed. Yash had always meant to fix them. Their energy could harm skin that came into long-term contact with them, so no one could—for example—stick an arm out, have the shield form around the arm, and then shoot an interloper. The burning on the skin would have been too painful, and the shot would end up being impossible.

But it didn’t matter if Dix’s arms burned at the point of contact with the shields.

Still, she double-checked with the scanner, making sure no touch explosives, or even a handful of unbonded nanobits coated his arms.

None did, not from the shoulder/armpit down.

She activated both shields, and watched them burn through the skin. For the first time since putting on the environmental suit, she was glad she wasn’t breathing the air on the bridge. The stench had to be foul.

“Now what?” Coop asked.

She let out a small breath. “We unbond the nanobits. That should disassemble the touch explosive without setting it off. We isolate the component parts so they can’t reassemble automatically, and then we remove the body from the bridge.”

“All right,” Coop said. “You handle the anacapa drive, and I’ll deal with the body itself.”

She glanced at him, about to protest, but then she stopped. He was right. If they worked in tandem, they might have a chance of getting out of here alive.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll see what the damage is and work from there. Tell me when or if you want to move the body.”

Coop nodded. He moved to one of the consoles. He could activate all kinds of equipment inside the shield, using the right commands.

For a moment, she worried that he wouldn’t know them, but of course he would.

This was standard. Deactivating nanobit bonding was something that everyone learned. They just didn’t learn how to do it with nanobits designed to explode.

Coop would know, though. That was the kind of thing that a captain could learn without becoming an expert.

It was the anacapa drive that was the main problem. She had to deal with that herself.

She made herself focus on the container. She stared at it, then had the computer analyze the container’s solidity.

As she expected, the container was compromised.

She went to the console that housed the anacapa controls. She called up a holographic image of the anacapa itself.

The holographic image glowed golden, just like it was supposed to. She flipped it, changed it, moved it around, and examined it from all angles.

As far as she could tell, using just the equipment, the anacapa was fine. Whatever Dix had done to the container hadn’t yet reached the drive.

She stopped, double-checked that assumption, gave it some extra thought. Nothing 40

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Asimov’s

Dix had done could have altered the diagnostics for the anacapa drive. He hadn’t tampered with those readings. She had a record of everything he touched, and he hadn’t touched that.

Which meant she could trust the readings she was getting on the anacapa drive.

She needed to isolate the drive, and since it hadn’t been harmed—yet—by the acid, she could do so.

She opened another screen, tapped it, and prepped another full bridge shield. She would put that shield around the anacapa drive.

The problem was that she had to do so in a perfectly timed manner. She had to open the container so that its lid wasn’t inside the shield, and then she had to wrap the shield around the anacapa drive. Another problem was that she would be jostling the container when she opened it, and that jostling might put the acid in touch with the anacapa.

And she couldn’t even put anything in between the drive and the container. There wasn’t enough room.

She brought up one more small screen, and monitored Coop’s work, as if he were a rookie engineer. He had pulled the nanobits off the body and was separating them into component categories. He had created small shield bubbles so that the component parts of the nanobits would f low into the appropriate bubble, just like they were supposed to.

If he were one of her rookie engineers, he would have received a commendation from her.

She half smiled, hoping she would be able to do as well as Coop was.

She wasn’t going to tell him what she was trying. Either it would work or it wouldn’t. If it didn’t work, then they were both screwed anyway.

She thought of automating the commands, letting the computer open the container and then send the shield down. Whatever she gained in split-second timing, she might lose if Dix had tampered with some of the automated command system.

Some of the automation lived in the environmental equipment. She didn’t have time to check to see if Dix had tampered with any of that.

She needed to get the anacapa drive out of the damaged container and into a new one.

One step at a time. One problem at a time.

She was going to handle the movement herself. She had done tricky work on anacapa drives before. She could do it again.

She moved the holographic control screen with her, and walked to the front of the container. Dix had wrapped himself around three sides with his feet extended as close to the front of the container as possible.

He had clearly been thinking someone might try to break into the container. He figured they would have to maneuver around him.

Yash had to, because he was mostly covered in a shield. (Which you hadn’t expected, you bastard, she thought at him, wishing he could actually hear that. He had always hated it when she yelled at him. She wanted him to hate this now. She certainly did.)

She had to take three-part action, not two-part action. She had to shut off the shield around the container, open the lid, and then put a shield around the anacapa drive.

She needed to do that in record time.

She wasn’t going to think about being fast. She was going to concentrate on being precise.

“Okay,” Coop said, startling her. “The body’s ready to move, except for the hands.”

She nodded. “You’ll be able to move it in a minute or two. Call up a stretcher and a protective medical bubble. By the time it gets here, we’ll be ready for it.”

Dix

41

March/April 2018

Everything in the medical bay was automated, so that someone trapped alone on the Ivoire could take care of themselves if need be. Hell, someone trapped alone on any of the Fleet’s ships large enough to have a med bay could do that.

“Yes’m. I’ll get right on that,” Coop said. There was amusement in his tone, which meant that he had probably already done exactly what she’d asked.

Her cheeks heated. She had just given the captain orders. She really had moved far away from Fleet thinking in a lot of areas.

Then she put Coop out of her mind. She needed to fully concentrate to make sure she didn’t miss a step of what she was going to do.

She set the commands on the screen before her, but didn’t execute them. She kept them open, so that she could hit the command in the proper sequence.

Step one: cancel the shield around the container.

Step two: open the container.

Step three: shield the anacapa drive itself.

Then she crouched near the container.

If she did this right, it would take less than thirty seconds to complete the entire task, maybe as few as ten seconds. If she did it wrong . . .

She took a deep breath, and started.

With the touch of a finger, she canceled the shield. It flared, then vanished, just like it was supposed to.

Then she commanded the container lid to open. This one had her the most nervous.

She didn’t know if the acid had destroyed any of the controls inside the container.

The container shuddered, then the lid floated back, hitting the shield around Dix’s torso. The lid started to close again, but she activated the second shield, the one meant to surround the anacapa drive.

For a half second, she thought the lid would close before the shield activated, but the lid banged against the second shield and flipped backward again. The lid hung between the two shields for a moment. Then the entire container fell apart, leaving the anacapa drive to glow in the middle of the mess.

“Good job,” Coop said. “We can get the body out of here now.”

She nodded, feeling her heart race. It hadn’t been racing earlier, but it was now—
a reaction to getting this done.

The container’s side was almost completely gone. She saw the bones and sinew in Dix’s hands, looking half eaten away, like raw meat badly carved up.

He had done that to himself deliberately, probably as a last resort, after he couldn’t break into the controls.

She shook her head. She wasn’t going to think about him. He wasn’t worth her time.

Instead, she stood and went to the equipment locker. There was a smaller container inside of it, a back-up, in case the anacapa drive’s container got damaged.

At least, she hoped there was one, because that was the one thing she had forgotten to check.

She opened the door and stared at everything for a moment, her heart still thudding hard.

There were more environmental suits, some smaller weapons, and a lot of parts of consoles, chairs, communications equipment. Finally, she saw the extra container, shoved toward the back.

She grabbed the container, slid it out, and turned.

The stretcher had lowered itself near Dix’s body. Coop was supervising the transi-tion. She hoped he had already wrapped the body in the protective medical bubble.

God, she was nervous. She didn’t trust Coop—who probably knew more about this part of the plan than she ever would—to do his job properly.

At least the make-sure instructions hadn’t come out of her mouth.

42

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Asimov’s

This time.

The stretcher f loated upward, Dix’s body f lat on its back, the arms barely attached. The elbows were burned, the forearms hanging on by only bits of sinew. The hands didn’t bleed or drip or anything, which surprised her, given how they looked.

But they had been that way for more than twenty-four hours. There probably wasn’t any fluid left.

Coop watched it, his expression grim. He had his arms crossed over his chest as the stretcher made its way toward the exit.

She didn’t want to watch the stretcher leave. Instead, she went to the anacapa drive. She pushed the most damaged piece of the old container away with her booted foot, and shoved the other pieces aside as well.

Then she set the new container down in the front of the drive on the one spot where Dix’s body hadn’t rested. She opened that container, made sure the interior had accumulated no dirt or grime, and left the lid tilted back.

She was nearly done.

Only a few more steps.

She shut off the shield around the anacapa drive, then gathered the drive in her arms. She hadn’t held an anacapa drive in nearly five years. She could feel it pulsing through her environmental suit.

The drive was inactive, so she could move it without compromising its connection to the controls—provided she did so fast.

And she didn’t want to hold this drive for very long.

Her teeth vibrated. The flowing energy actually made the bones in her body hum.

She hated holding these drives. Holding it seemed easier with the suit on, but she still felt like she was holding something that could destroy her in a matter of seconds.

She put the drive in the new container.

With her gloved hands, she reached down and moved the bottom of the old container out of the way. Then, using her knuckles, she shoved the new container into place.

The bottom of the container would run through its diagnostics, making sure none of that acid had eaten its way to the controls. She didn’t set the diagnostics to look for the acid, in case Dix had thought to tamper with that specific a command.

He hadn’t. The diagnostic ran clean, and the system asked her if she wanted to establish contact with the anacapa drive through this new container.

She said yes.

The container and the anacapa flared orange as they hooked up, and then the lid came down on its own.

The system asked her if she wanted to engage the drive.

She declined.

Set up, ready to go. When—if—Coop decided to use the Ivoire’s anacapa again, the system would remind whoever was in charge that the anacapa had been placed in a new container and would ask them to run the diagnostics again.

She let out a small sigh, stood, and stared at the pieces of the previous container, scattered across the floor.

Dix had tried to destroy everything.

Dix.

She shook her head, then set the thought aside.

She used another screen to access the cleaning equipment stored on the next deck down, in case Dix had messed with the bridge’s cleaning protocols. She programmed the cleaners to come and remove the bits of the container and whatever else Dix had left around the bridge.

She marked the instruction hazardous material, so it would be dealt with properly.

Then she rocked back on her heels and closed her eyes.

Dix

43

March/April 2018

“Done?” Coop asked.

She nodded without opening her eyes.

“We’re safe?” he asked.

“As we can be.” She opened her eyes and stood up. The cleaning equipment—some small robotic pieces and floating garbage dumps that looked oddly like that stretcher—were making their way onto the bridge.

“We have to dispose of the body,” Coop said.

She nodded.

“I’d like to do it together,” he said.

She did too. She wanted Dix gone. “You want me to join you in the med bay?”

“No,” Coop said. “We can dispose of the body from here. I just want to watch it leave the ship.”

He had moved to the captain’s chair. He raised one of the portals, revealing the exterior of the ship. Then he tapped the controls, and a small pod jettisoned from the med bay side of the Ivoire.

The pod was small and white. Yash had seen more of them than she ever wanted to. A handful of the pods were designed to float to a particular planet or just travel through space, but they were golden, and often ref lective. Usually, they were reserved for someone with clout.

Coop could probably ask for one of those at his funeral, but Yash couldn’t. Or she couldn’t have, if they were still with the Fleet.

But the white pods. They traveled a particular distance, and then burned from the inside out, scattering what little remained into whatever solar system the ship found itself in.

“I hope you sent him as far away as possible,” Yash said.

“No. I want to see the destruction.” Coop’s voice was soft, but that didn’t hide the emotion. The fury remained.

The pod glowed red for a moment, then appeared to melt. For a moment, the pod looked like it had become smoke, and then even that evaporated.

Yash let out a breath. Neither of them had said the customary words for a Fleet funeral. They hadn’t even said words of honor for an enemy.

Instead, they stood, watching in silence.

“That’s done,” Coop said after a moment, then shut the portal.

Yash stared at it just a little longer.

“People are going to wonder what happened,” she said. “Why we took the Ivoire out. What happened to Dix. They’ll want to know.”

Coop nodded. He shut down screens as well.

“Routine maintenance,” he said. “We were just checking systems on the ship.”

“That’s not what the manifests will say,” Yash said.

“You’re going to clear all of that.” Coop gave her a flat look. “We’re not going to tell anyone what happened here.”

Yash frowned. “But if they ask about Dix . . . ?”

“We tell them he killed himself. We had to dispose of the body.”

The words hung between them for a moment.

“Someone is going to want a service,” she said.

“Yeah,” Coop said dryly. “I’m sure they will.”

“It’ll be odd if we don’t speak at it,” she said.

“It’ll be worse if we do.” Coop’s lips moved in a smile, but his eyes didn’t change.

They remained flat and calm. “He committed suicide. We’re not up to talking about it. We won’t have to either. Others will step in.”

Yash nodded. Coop was right. The crew knew how he felt about suicides. He had no sympathy for them.

44

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Asimov’s

Yash had, until today.

Of course, Dix wasn’t just a suicide. He had tried to take everyone with him.

And she would have to process that, apparently without the help of her comrades on the Ivoire.

Coop must have seen something on her face. He put a hand on her arm, his touch gentle.

“Dix was wrong,” Coop said. “You have to remember that.”

“I know,” she said. “Killing himself, setting up this—”

“No,” Coop said. “Saying that something bad had happened to all of us. He was wrong about that.”

Yash frowned. Coop had been as upset about this move into the future as everyone else.

“The Fleet moves forward, Yash,” Coop said. “We’re as far forward as any ship has ever been. Not in space. In time. It’s what we’re designed for.”

She swallowed. “Then why are you disbanding the crew?”

“I’m not,” Coop said. “I’m letting them choose where they stand, just like I would have at any sector base stop.”

Yash resisted the urge to look at the closed portal, at the new container on the floor.

“We learned a lot about Dix today,” Coop said. “We’ve learned a bit about the others.

We’ll still have a crew years from now, but it’ll be a different one. And we’ll have figured out how to define our mission this far forward. We haven’t figured that out yet.”

She let out a small breath. He was right. That was the dislocated feeling she had had. It wasn’t because they were here. That was almost theoretical. She hadn’t tried to return to the past, and she had encountered many more unusual cultures than this one in the course of her career.

What they had lost was a sense of community, of the Fleet guiding them. They were on their own right now.

They needed a new mission.

“Do you know what that mission will be?” Yash asked.

“No,” Coop said. “I think we keep looking for the Fleet, for what it has become in this time period. But if we don’t find it, we have tools. We have resources. We can act as an adjunct to our Fleet, here and now.”

“Boss won’t like that,” Yash said.

“In some ways,” Coop said, “it dovetails with what she’s trying to do with Lost Souls.”

Finding the old tech. Revitalizing it. Making it work for them.

“You going to bring her in?” Yash asked.

“Only if it becomes necessary,” Coop said. “Fleet business belongs to the Fleet.”

“And the rest of the crew?” Yash asked.

“We’ll let them settle. We have time. We need more information.” Coop glanced at the closed portal. “I think, after today, the weak ones are gone.”

Yash nodded, hoping he was right. Then she straightened her spine.

“You asked me to get rid of the information about what happened here,” she said.

“Yes,” Coop said.

“But if we stay Fleet, we follow Fleet procedure. I’ll isolate all of the relevant information and restrict access. Only you and I will be able to open anything to do with today.”

Coop smiled at her, and this time, the smile reached his eyes. “Good call, Engineer Zarlengo. You are exactly right. We need to continue to follow procedure when we can. Which means, after we return to Lost Souls, I get to buy you a drink.”

She smiled too. It felt weird to smile after all they’d been through. She still had a lot to process.

But the smile felt good, too.

Dix

45

March/April 2018

“All right, Captain,” she said. “Just you and me. One drink. Maybe a toast.”

“To what?” he asked.

She shrugged one shoulder, pretending to be casual when she wasn’t feeling casual at all.

“To the future,” she said, “and moving forward. Just like we always have.” ❍

In Memoriam

Kit Reed (1932—2017)

Kit Reed, a master of wit and social satire, mentor of many authors, and a good friend of mine, died on September 24, 2017. Kit’s first science fiction story, “The Wait,”

was published in F&SF in April 1958. Her last tale, “Disturbance in the Produce Aisle,”

appeared in Asimov’s September/October 2017 issue.

I can remember being delighted by Kit’s first story for Asimov’s, “The Bride of Bigfoot,” which was published in July 1984. A few years later, Anne Jordan, the managing editor of F&SF, introduced us. Kit had invited us to lunch at Wesleyan University’s Faculty Dining Room. There we enjoyed a long and enchanting conversation that touched on numerous subjects including our mutual love of short fiction.

Over the years I joined Kit for tea at the Algonquin, lunch at her fancy Century Club, and in her home in Middletown, Connecticut, and for many, many meals at the Conference on the Fantastic in Florida. Kit taught writing at Wesleyan, and she was always pleased to talk to, and encourage, the Dell Award finalists.

No topic was sacred in the fourteen stories she published in Asimov’s. Kit skewered everything from children switched at birth to writers’ colonies to donor babies to feral Girl Scouts. She often did this by creating charming and lovable characters and then threatening to throw them off a cliff—sometimes metaphorically, sometimes literally. One reader was so distressed by the dire ending Kit apparently had in store for the two sweet children in “Biodad” (October/November 2006), that she created a thread on our long-since defunct Forum called “Kit Reed—Bad Writer?” I told Kit that from then on I’d probably have to refer to her fiction as “sardonic” in all my opening notes.

Kit knew that dreadful things could happen to perfectly good people. After I purchased “Military Secrets” (March 2015)—a surreal tale about the children of missing service members—she told me that the story was really about her. Until then I hadn’t known that her father, John R. Craig, was the commanding officer of the USS Grampus.

The submarine disappeared with all hands in early 1943, most likely sunk by the Japanese. Kit was eleven. A terrible age, she told me, old enough to have formed permanent memories, but young enough to be able to believe that “lost” meant that her dad would be found. That he was still alive and would come back to her someday.

Despite this early tragedy, Kit never lost her compassion or her wicked sense of humor. It’s not surprising that both Daniel Handler (a.k.a. Lemony Snicket)—author of the immensely popular Series of Unfortunate Events—and our own Connie Willis—
author of “A Letter from the Clearys,” “Even the Queen,” and Doomsday Book—
claim her as an antecedent. Kit will live on in her thirty-nine books of fiction, the memories of her three fabulous children (of whom she was so proud), and the lives of all the authors, friends, and students that she touched with her warmth and wisdom.

—Sheila Williams

46

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Mary Robinette Kowal is the author of historical fantasy novels: The Glamourist Histories series and Ghost Talkers. She’s a recipient of the Campbell Award for Best New Writer, three Hugo awards, and the RT Reviews award for Best Fantasy Novel. Her stories have appeared in Strange Horizons, Asimov’s, several Year’s Best anthologies, and her collections Word Puppets and

Scenting the Dark and Other Stories. As a professional puppeteer and voice actor (SAG/AFTRA), Mary has performed for

LazyTown (CBS), the Center for Puppetry Arts, and Jim Henson Pictures. She founded Other Hand Productions, and her designs have garnered two UNIMA-USA Citations of Excellence—the highest award an American puppeteer can achieve. Mary’s latest story for us examines the future of long-distance driving and ponders if there’s room for . . .

ARTISANAL

TRUCKING, LLC

Mary Robinette Kowal

The road hummed under the wheels of the reproduction semi-truck and beneath Dude’s hands the steering wheel vibrated with life. He had the diesel engine environment soundscape turned up high so that his ears hummed along with the road.

Why the hell had people given up driving? Sure, automated cars were useful, and, okay, yeah, the license to drive was hella hard to get, and fine—the insurance was a bitch. But.

There was nothing like the freedom of the open road. Ahead of him, a self-driving car was going exactly the same speed as all the other ones in the convoy.

With a grin, Dude put on his turn signal and sped up. Past the speed limit. He pulled out a piece of beef jerky—processed and vegan, but it looked real—and tore a hunk off. It was like chewing chaw. Except tastier and not going to give him cancer.

Yeah, baby. This was life. This was what he was meant to do. Artisanal Trucking LLC. Human hands, door to door. He wasn’t governed by algorithms or satellites or any of that bullshit. Dude was one with the road and the road was one with him.

Like meditation. One with the road and—

A dog darted out in front of him.

Dude had time to see that it was yellow.

“Oh God!” At the thump of the truck hitting it, he jerked his hands from the wheel as if that would activate his AI to somehow go back in time and not hit the dog.

47

March/April 2018

Dude grabbed the wheel again. The truck shuddered as he slowed too fast, but he got it onto the right shoulder and stopped.

He’d hit a dog. Dude leaned forward to peer into the side mirror. The yellow dog had wound up between the lanes, robot cars and trucks dodging around it.

It moved.

“Shit. It’s alive.” He opened the door.

The wind of passing semis buffeted the door like it wanted to keep him in. Hell no.

This was why you needed a human driver, because an automated truck couldn’t stop to help a dog.

An automated truck wouldn’t have hit the dog in the first place.

Dude scrambled down, and his vintage Chuck Taylors slapped against the asphalt, crunching over old broken glass and highway litter.

The dog had its head raised, looking back toward the side of the road. Even from here, he could see the way its legs twisted and he didn’t need an anatomy class to tell him that wasn’t right. A minivan dodged the dog by easing toward the shoulder.

“Stay put, doggie!” He jogged back along the highway to it.

Holy hell. You don’t really realize how fast traffic is moving until you’re standing next to it. Dude pulled his vintage trucker’s cap off and ran his hand over his hair.

Well, he damn well wasn’t going to leave the dog out there.

Swallowing, he looked down the road toward the oncoming vehicles and waited for an opening in the evenly spaced traffic. Convoys of automated trucks made a train line. Passenger cars passed in little herds. A tanker rolled along at a sedate pace. But gaps big enough for a person? None of those appeared in the grid.

Where the hell were all these people going? They were in the middle of nowhere Oregon.

Okay. Okay . . . couple of months ago, he’d been caught in a jam when some frat kid wandered onto the interstate for hazing. The auto-cars in front had stopped and that had propagated upstream to him.

So. In theory, he just had to walk into traffic. Holy hell. Dude settled his cap back on his head, tugging it down firmly into place.

Fine. He backed away from the road to give himself space. Sweat poured under his vintage down vest and repro T-shirt. He had to signal his intentions.

Taking a deep breath, Dude walked toward the traffic.

Even before his Chuck Taylor hit the right lane, the cars slowed. Some drifted over to the left lane, around the dog, guided by some hellacious algorithm. Normally he hated that shit, but right now, he was goddamned grateful for it. Dude was not unaware of the irony that he would be dead if he were relying on human drivers right now.

But the dog wasn’t dead. It was alive and he was going to get it some help.

He put one foot in front of the other, walking at a steady and predictable pace. By the time he got to the centerline, traffic had stopped.

The people in the front cars were staring. Someone had a phone out, and was probably live-streaming the whole thing. Not a one of them got out of their car.

The dog’s tongue hung out of its mouth over grayish gums. The chest rose and fell with obvious strain, but the dog turned its head to watch Dude.

“Hang on, doggy.” At some point, a cleanup crew would come and probably cite him for reckless behavior, and he goddamned didn’t care. He was going to rescue this dog.

Blood stained the highway around the dog and dyed her yellow fur. He didn’t know why the dog was suddenly female in his mind, but there you go. She looked up at him with liquid brown eyes like she knew he was there to save her. Squatting, Dude shoved his hands under the dog, which yelped.

“Sorry.” He grimaced. “Sorry.”

Lifting with his knees, the way he did when he was loading stuff on the truck, Dude 48

Mary Robinette Kowal

Asimov’s
stood with twenty or thirty pounds of warm, wet dog. She stiffened in his arms as he stood and he made the sort of meaningless noises that he did with his sister’s baby.

God. There was so much blood everywhere.

As soon as he turned away from the left lane, the cars there began inching forward. He kept the dog clutched against his chest, and kept up a steady, predictable pace to the shoulder.

Like someone had unblocked a drain, the traff ic started traveling in both lanes again, as if he and the dog had never been there.

When he got back to the truck, he’d put her on the passenger seat. He could use his vest as a pillow, since it was already covered in blood anyway. The next exit was, what, another fifteen miles down the interstate? He’d ask his navigation AI where the nearest vet was.

The dog stopped breathing.

“No . . . Oh, no, no, no.” Dude dropped to his knees to lay the dog on the dirt by the road. He could do CPR or—or what?

The dog was limp and covered in blood and her back was clearly broken and the eyes were staring and she was dead. He’d killed her. He and his hubris that was so convinced that people were better than machines, had killed this dog.

Dude ran a hand down her side, stroking the yellow fur. His hand smeared blood on the fur. “Bet you had a name.”

It was stupid to cry about a dog he’d never met. His nose and eyes burned, and he couldn’t even wipe his face without getting blood all over it. He rested his hands on his jeans and bowed his head over her body.

A dog barked.

Yipped. It was high-pitched and brought Dude’s head up fast. He swiveled to look back up the road to where the yellow dog had come from. A puppy yellow as its mama waddled out of the tall grasses.

And straight toward the goddamned traffic.

Dude surged to his feet and tore off down the road. Not again. No, no, not again.

Not that he had to worry about it, because the trucks would just dodge it—unless it was too small. Jesus. He’d killed its mother. “Hey puppy! C’mere. Come on!”

The puppy turned its fluffy head toward him, tail wagging. It yipped again, tossing its head. And it darted away.

He groaned. The puppy thought he wanted to play. He crouched down, hands out, and then he saw the blood all over them.

Maybe the puppy was just afraid of him.

But he couldn’t just leave it here. The puppy had stopped running away at least. It sat on its haunches, pink tongue lolling out, and watched him. Dude walked over to the grass that sloped down to meet the shoulder. Maybe he could tempt it away from the road if he weren’t covered in its mama’s blood.

Dude pulled off his vest and yes, it was vintage, but he scrubbed his hands off on it as best he could. A plastic wrapper crinkled.

His beef jerky! He always kept some in the pocket so he could chew on it when he was at a filling station. It made him feel more authentic.

“Come on.” He flung the vest away and crouched down, peeling the jerky. Hopefully, even though it was vegan the puppy would still think it was appealing. “C’mere, puppy. Lookie what I got.”

The puppy cocked its head almost all the way over on the side, one ear flopping across its face.

Dude waved the jerky. “Come on. Tasty, tasty . . .”

The tall grass rustled and another puppy toddled out. It had its mama’s yellow fur, but broken up with big patches of white. A heart shaped blaze ran down its forehead Artisanal Trucking, LLC

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and tipped its wagging tail. It appeared to be constructed of velvet and rubber and cute.

“Oh, hi.” Dude tore off a piece of the jerky, sparing a glance toward the first puppy.

“Hi, buddy . . .”

Holding out the piece of jerky, he held as still as he could while the puppy approached with its nose wiggling. The little pink tongue wrapped around his fingers with a warm kiss as the puppy took the piece of jerky in his mouth. “Hey, little buddy. That’s good, huh? Tell your brother how tasty it is?”

The puppy might as well have done that, because Puppy the First came bounding over in uncoordinated joy. With a rustle, the grass parted and three more puppies materialized. Black, and white, and black-and-white. All their tails were wagging, and they squirmed all over themselves with delight about the jerky.

And not one of them knew that Dude had killed their mama.

He couldn’t spare a hand to press over his mouth, so the gasp escaped, but he was too busy running his hands over fluff and wiggles to be bothered.

Dude sniffled and swallowed salt, wiping an eye on his shoulder. He held the last of the jerky over their heads and the puppies twirled around trying to reach it.

“Come on, guys.” Like the Pied Piper with jerky as his flute, Dude stood and led them back to the truck, in a big circle through the grass and away from the crumpled yellow fur by the side of the road.

Dude drove with Buddy on his lap, all yellow and white, and with Blackie and Blanca’s heads on his thigh. Puppy the First sprawled across Patches in the passenger seat, little pink tongue just sticking out under his nose. Empty jerky wrappers f illed his waste bag. He’d turned off the environmental soundscape of a vintage diesel engine and had only the hum of tires against the road to compete with the soft whuffle of sleeping puppies.

Another exit rolled past.

If he were smart, he would have gotten off at the f irst exit and found a vet or someone to take the puppies. It would have made him late. Yeah. Sure. That’s totally why he kept driving toward his delivery. It had nothing to do with little paws twitching in a dream.

He just had a delivery to make.

Buddy sighed and rolled over onto his back, exposing a white belly. Dude pulled a hand off the wheel and scratched the downy soft fur. One leg kicked in the air and that had absolutely nothing to do with why he kept driving at exactly the speed limit.

He had a delivery to make.

As Dude pulled off the highway, the movement of his legs as he worked the brake pedal dislodged the puppies. Blackie woke first. He yawned with a shell pink tongue curling into a little whine. He shook his head, ears flopping, and scrambled onto his paws. The other puppies woke, blinking, and joined Blackie in an eddy of fur and tails and curiosity.

“Hey now, guys. Settle down.” Dude reached down and caught Buddy before the yellow and white fluff could tumble down beneath the brake pedals.

Patches had settled on his map—paper, thank you—and scratched an ear. Dude reached for the paper, then bit the inside of his lip. He’d knock the little guy over if he pulled it out from under him. He’d been to Rocky Mountain Winery before, but there were a lot of deliveries between then and now. He was already running late and it was a lot of little back roads and turning the truck around on those was hell and—

“Maude, wake up.”

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His AI made a sound like a beautiful woman waking from a nap. “Good evening, Dude.” All the puppies turned to look at the speakers, trying to figure out where this woman was. “How can I help you?”

“Give me directions to Rocky Mountain Winery.” He couldn’t remember the last time he’d used the navigator. It removed all his connection with the land and any sense of place.

“Certainly. In five hundred feet, turn right on East Montrose Drive. Would you like me to drive for you?”

“I’ll abide, thanks.” He rubbed Blanca’s ears. He should get some real food for them. “Is there a pet store open near us?”

“No, but I can have a drone deliver some puppy food to your destination in. Twenty. Minutes.” It creeped him out sometimes, that she could tell he needed puppy food just by sampling the sounds in the cab. “Also recommended are collars, training pads, and ID tags. There’s a coupon for 20 percent off—”

“Thanks.” What was even the point of making decisions when an AI could do it all?

He slowed the truck, checked his blind spot, and put on his turn signal. “How far are we from the winery?”

“You should reach your destination in. Seven. Minutes.” She paused as he hauled on the steering wheel to make the right. “Drive for 1.3 miles and turn left on Fishburn Road.”

Seven minutes. Figure another half hour for off-loading, which gave plenty of time for a drone to get there. Of course. She wouldn’t have offered if it weren’t in a decent window. “Okay. Order some puppy food, bowls, training pads. Collars—Wait.” He raised a finger from the steering wheel. “Make sure the food is organic.”

“I am familiar with your preferences, Dude.”

“I want to make my own goddamn decisions!”

“Certainly. There are five organic puppy foods available for drone delivery. Shall I list them?”

Dude gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white. Maude was just a machine. A goddamned person had designed her. People had purpose. “Just look at the ones that are four stars and above and pick the one that’s at the middle price.

And yes—I know that’s what I ask you to do every time, but I might change my mind, okay? I can do that. All right?”

“Certainly, Dude.” Her voice was the same unruff led calm it always was. “There are five puppies. For how many days would you like to order food?”

He drew in a breath to speak and stopped with his mouth stuck partway open.

How long was he going to keep the puppies? It wasn’t like he could have five full-grown dogs in the truck. Buddy shoved his head between Dude’s arm and his chest, burrowing into his armpit.

“Hey—hey!” He laughed, pushing the squirming puppy away. “None of that.”

“Turn left on Fishburn Road.”

“Shit.” He had to stomp on the brake to slow down fast enough to make the turn and sent Puppy the First and Blanca tumbling to the f loor in a yellow and white heap. “Sorry. Sorry, guys.”

He released and stomped again, so the truck wouldn’t fishtail. He got the speed down enough to make the turn safely and grinned as he hauled on the steering wheel. That’s right. He’d like to see a machine with that sort of fine-honed reaction time and delicate touch on the wheel.

“Should I alert you sooner before your next turn?”

“Shut up!”

The AI gave a confirmation tone and went silent. Thank God. Dude drove another quarter mile and then swore. He didn’t quite remember where the winery was. Well.

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At least the puppies weren’t on the map anymore—and the map wasn’t on the seat anymore either. “Shit. Maude, wake up.”

The AI yawned. Who the hell had thought that was clever? “Good evening, Dude.

How can I help you?”

“Continue navigating me to Rocky Mountain Winery.”

“Certainly, Dude. In a half mile, make a right on Beeson Lane. Your destination will be on your right.”

“Great.” He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “A week. Puppy food for a week.”

“Certainly, Dude.”

That would be enough time to find homes for them. Which he should have done at the first exit.

Puppy the First scrambled on his hind legs, trying to get on to the seat, but every bounce of the chassis sent him tumbling back to the floor. On his next attempt, Dude reached over and grabbed the puppy by the scruff of his neck and hauled him onto the seat. As he did, the headlights caught a sign in their beam. Rocky Mountain Winery.

“Ha!” He slowed the truck and put on his turn signal. He totally could have found this place on his own.

As Beeson Lane came into view, Maude said, “Turn right on Beeson Lane. Your destination will be on your right.”

“I know that. Could’ve gotten here without turning you back on. There are signs.

For people.” And sure enough, there was a nice big one for Rocky Mountain Winery right by their driveway.

The wheels crunched on gravel as he turned into the driveway. Gravel! That was what he was talking about. He could feel the truck responding to the shifting gravel beneath him. He had to switch it into another gear as he came up the hill to the winery.

A drone buzzed down from the top of the hill and circled the truck. Maude cleared her throat. “The drone is going to lead you to the loading dock.”

Not that he needed her to tell him that. It happened at most of the wineries he stopped at. A drone would fly out, verify the truck, sample the truck to make sure it wasn’t carrying any contaminants, and then lead him along a certified path to the loading dock. And he’d freakin’ been to the winery before. The cellar master’s name was Jamie, and he was a crotchety old guy, but funny as hell. And Taffy. They had a good old vineyard dog named Taffy. Maybe he could—

Shit. Taffy was a yellow dog.

Dude shook his head. That had been in another state. It wasn’t the same dog, and Taffy was, like, a hundred or something. As he pulled past the tasting room, he cranked the wheel and eased the truck into reverse.

In the rear view mirror, Jamie opened the loading door. Wiry, with gray hair he kept under a knit cap, except at the height of summer, Jamie stood with his hands on his hips. His head was jutted out on his neck and he looked pissed.

Dude wet his lips as he eased the truck to a stop and put the parking brake on with a hydraulic hiss. He rubbed Buddy’s ears. “Wish me luck.”

“Good luck—”

“Maude, shut up.” Dude grabbed his clipboard from the glove compartment, as Buddy stood on his stubby hind legs to lick his chin. Now, that was luck wishing.

He opened the door, and Jamie was already standing there. “You’re late.”

“I know. I’m real sorry about that.” Dude hopped down from the cab.

“I have a crew here, waiting to load. I had to pay them to stand arou—Puppies!”

Jamie’s brows uncreased and a smile came out of nowhere.

Puppy the First stood at the edge of the cab, wiggling with anxiety as he tried to 52

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gauge the distance to the ground. Behind him, the other puppies had crowded forward in a mass of fluff and wagging tails.

Dude reached back and fondled an ear. “They’re sorta why I’m late. Their mom ran into traffic and . . .”

“Aw, man . . .”

“Yeah.” A warm thump against his leg made Dude stagger to the side a little, and then Taffy was there, standing up on her hind legs to look at the puppies. “Oh hey, Taffy. You wanna say hi? Is that . . . is that okay? If I let them down?”

Jamie had his cap off, scratching the back of his head. “Absolutely. I haven’t seen Taffy this—Yes. Let ’em down.”

Once Dude had lifted Puppy the First down, he had to work fast to keep Blanca and Blackie from tumbling after. When he set Patches down, Buddy yipped, dancing back and forth at the edge with his little heart blaze all wrinkled with worry.

“Hang on, Buddy. I’m coming.”

He picked the warm fellow up and Buddy gave him a lick under his jaw, wiggling with delight. Dude set him down with the others and they crowded around Taffy. Her tail was wagging fit to beat a drum. And they’d gained an audience. The crew that Jamie had mentioned had gathered round while he was pulling puppies out. Some of them sat on the ground, trying to coax puppies over to them.

Puppy the First had turned on his back and was letting Jamie rub her belly. “What are you going to do with them?”

“I dunno, honestly. But I couldn’t just leave them there.” Dude glanced up at the sky. “I’ve got a drone delivery coming with some puppy food.”

“We’ll keep a look out.” Jamie fondled Puppy the First’s ears. “Won’t we, sweetie?

Who’s a good girl. Who’s so good?”

“It’s a girl?”

Jamie glanced up, brows raised. “Yeah. Surprised?”

“I guess so.” He managed not to say anything about how he’d just assumed Puppy the First was a boy because of how bold he was. He was an idiot sometimes, but he wasn’t that kind of idiot.

Dude stood by the truck, waiting for Jamie to look at a manifest or something. But the puppies had center stage. Finally, he gestured vaguely toward the back of the truck. “Well . . . I reckon I’ll open her up. You wanna? I got the manifest here.”

Jamie stood from where he’d been crouching next to Puppy the First and Taffy.

Both of them bundles of wagging yellow fur. “Right. Sorry to keep you waiting—I just haven’t seen her this active in . . . well, at least a year.”

“No problem.” Dude tried not to let his jaw drop too visibly. Jamie had just apologized. And he was the one who had been late, and frankly, had brought a massive distraction here. Or five miniature distractions. It was the same thing. He headed to the back of the truck, before anyone could remember to be mad.

He’d just gotten a vintage padlock on the back. You needed an actual metal key to open it, which turned out to be a huge deterrent for crime. Crooks knew how to spoof a thumbprint or two-factor authentication, but present them with a physical lock? They had nothing. He stuck the key in the lock, and Jamie whistled. “That a Yale lock?”

“Yeah . . .” Dude twisted the key, feeling the tumblers scrape against the metal.

“You know locks?”

“I just remember them. Way back in the day. My school still used them on the lockers.”

He grunted as Dude pulled it off the back of the truck. “I should get one for the winery.”

“There are tons of them on E-bay. Just make sure you get one with a key, because finding a locksmith to cut a new one is tricky.” Dude pulled himself up onto the loading dock and lifted the back door, letting out a blast of refrigerated air.

Half of the bins had tipped over. “Shit.” Dude closed his eyes, as if that would keep him Artisanal Trucking, LLC

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from seeing the damage he’d caused to the delivery. “Shit. Sorry. I stopped fast when . . .”

Opening his eyes, he gestured vaguely at the puppies. Jamie hopped onto the loading dock next to him. “Goddamn.”

“Sorry. I’ll compensate you for the damage, obviously.”

Jamie took a step into the truck, hands back on his hips in his familiar pose. He bent over and picked up one of the yellow bins. “Let’s get them unloaded and see how bad it really is.”

“Sure. Right.” Dude followed him in and picked up one of the other bins. “Let me know what else I can do to make this right.”

“How about a puppy?”

Dude almost dropped the bin. “Really? I mean. Yeah. Yeah, that would be great.

They need a home and—yeah, man. Thanks.”

Even with a pause to accept the drone delivery of puppy food, they unloaded the truck quickly. Jamie’s crew ran back and forth lugging bins. Out of the hundred and fifty bins of grapes, seven weren’t salvageable. Which, really, wasn’t that bad, but it destroyed his perfect track record. An automated truck wouldn’t have slowed that fast. It wouldn’t have hit the dog in the first place.

Why the hell was he driving anyway?

When the last bin was off loaded, Dude grabbed his clipboard again and found Jamie, who was playing tug with Puppy the First. “That the one you want?”

“Actually . . . I was going to offer to take all of them. I figure the winery should take two, on account of Taffy. Then one of my cellar hands wants to know if she can adopt one, too. And I got two others that I think might want one.” He rubbed the back of his head, scrunching the cap forward over his brows. “Besides, I figure you don’t exactly want them crowding your truck.”

“Oh.” Dude turned the clipboard over in his hands. It made sense. A big old vineyard to play in, instead of being cooped up in the truck. If he’d been smart, he would have already found a vet to dump them with. “Yeah. Thanks.”

Jamie reached for the clipboard. “Better get settled up.”

“Sure. I’ll . . . um . . . I’ll leave the puppy food with you and stuff.” His throat had gone all tight, and Dude cleared it. “And I can help pay for their shots and stuff.”

“Nah—you already did enough, just stopping to pick them up. Most folks wouldn’t have.” Jamie signed the clipboard. “I respect that.”

Respect? The puppies were orphaned because Dude had killed their mother. Dude cleared his throat and took the clipboard back fast enough that it was nearly a snatch. “Better hit the road.”

His throat was burning as he climbed back up into the cab. It smelled of tiny dog farts and had vegan beef jerky wrappers everywhere. His maps were on the f loor, and one of the puppies had peed on the paper. Dude rested his hands on the steering wheel. Just him and the open road. Right?

“Shit.”

Dude shoved the door of the truck open and jumped down. “I was wrong. Buddy’s mine.”

Jamie raised his eyebrows. “In a truck?”

“Sure.” Crouching, Dude held his hands out to Buddy and made a clicking sound with his tongue. Buddy looked around from the leaf he’d been wrestling and gave a little yip.

His tail wagged so hard that it almost knocked him over, but he bounded up to Dude.

Planting his stubby little paws on Dude’s knee, Buddy stood up and gave kisses all over his chin. Dude grinned, skritching the yellow and white belly of his puppy. He’d like to see a robot car do that. “Artisanal Trucking, LLC. Nothing’s more authentic than a dog.”

Buddy fell over, wiggling with excitement and joy. And that was authentic, too. ❍

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Mary Robinette Kowal

James Van Pelt www.jamesvanpelt.com is a part-time high school English teacher and full-time writer in western Colorado. His work has appeared in many SF and fantasy magazines and anthologies. Since 1989, he has sold more than 150 short stories. James has been a finalist for a Nebula Award, and his tales have been reprinted in many year’s best collections. His first young adult novel, Pandora’s Gun, was published by Fairwood Press in August of 2015. The author’s newest collection, The Experience Arcade and Other Stories
was released at the World Fantasy Convention in 2017. His latest story for Asimov’s escorts us on a voyage with the . . .

QUEEN OF THE

RIVER: THE

HARBOR HOPE

James Van Pelt

Flooding two weeks ago changed the New Mississippi so much that it might as well have been a different river. I kept the Harbor Hope as near to the middle as I could, peering down from the pilothouse on the muddy waters before us. Reeds to both sides lay flat like green beds, and hummocky, bush-covered islands poked up irregularly. The big paddle wheel thrummed steadily through my hands on the tiller.

A long swell to the left could be a sandbank that hadn’t been there before. Leaf-bearing branches waving from the water to the right could indicate an entire sunken tree, uprooted when the water roared through the upper canyons, now waiting to tear out Harbor Hope’s bottom. All my choices looked bad. What was a woman to do?

Fremont Point, a rocky prominence, poked from the water like a busted finger, so at least I knew where we were in the river: thirty miles inland from the coastal farms and Port Desperation. We carried a hold full of medicine and a couple of med techs who had pointedly not talked to me when they came on board, but it had been a month since the flu broke out at the port. No communication. No way to know how serious things had gotten. A noisy sun was one of the multiple curses on Respite, our new home. Radio signals didn’t get through.

Rookie boatswain Tilly sat on a stool behind me. A slender woman in her mid-thirties. Short hair, like most colonists, a handgun on her hip, wearing rough-cut canvas pants and a long-sleeved shirt. She kept one eye on the screen that told how much water was below, and the other looking for indigenous wildlife. Three weeks ago, a 55

March/April 2018
neo-pterodactyl swooped down and almost took the former boatswain with it. He was still healing up in the Redeemer’s infirmary.

Tilly said, “I told the tech committee they should give you more equipment. They can’t just expect you to pilot the ship by the seat of your pants.”

“If you’re going to wish, you might as well wish for a metal-hulled boat and something better than a wood-burning steam engine to run it. We’re lucky they gave us guns and a depth gauge.”

“I’m just saying that if it weren’t for us making this run, Port Desperation wouldn’t get medicines and manufacturing from upriver, and the Redeemer’s population wouldn’t eat. Nobody pilots the boat like you, and without us they’d all be in trouble.

We’re key players here, and we aren’t respected. They treat us like messengers.”

When I’d made the last trip, the channel ran deepest a hundred yards west of Fremont Point, but lines and circles marked the flat surface, which meant the deep water had moved. The Harbor Hope, with a four-foot draft, could navigate the top of a heavy dew, but the New Mississippi stretched six miles from shore to shore here, if you wanted to call the marshy land that went another mile or two a shore. With the river falling, I couldn’t afford grounding her. There wasn’t a rescue boat, and the predators wouldn’t leave us alone long enough to dredge her out ourselves.

“What do you see?”

Tilly bent over the instrument. “Nine feet.”

“That would be ‘half one.’ ”

Tillie snorted. “Nine feet is clearer. Why I have to learn old river lingo is beyond me.”

I cranked the throttle back. Going downriver the current should push us forward fast enough for now. I needed just enough speed to steer. “You have to respect tradition, and I won’t be happy until we have a couple fathoms under us, which, by the way, you will call ‘mark twain,’ not ‘twelve feet.’ ‘Twain’ means two.”

“Aye, aye, Captain.”

“Old title. I was captain of the Redeemer. I’m the pilot of the Harbor Hope.”

“My point exactly! You were the captain. You took the entire colony a thousand light-years safely . . .”

“And crashed the ship.”

“. . . and you saved the ship and everyone in it. If it weren’t for you, the whole thing would have ended in a crater, so they ought to treat you with respect and give you support to do the job right. Remember the crowds when we left Earth?”

I did. They’d lined up outside the preflight building. Thousands of people wishing us well. Humanity’s dream. Little kids made their way to the front, waving f lags, some wearing captain’s jackets like my own, jumping up and down in excitement.

Adoration swelled from them. It was a heady time.

I held the ship steady, trying to feel my way through the shallow water. “You’re just mad because your airplane didn’t work out.”

Tillie sighed. “It was beautifully designed. I spent weeks fitting the wing fabric. All that wood, almost no metal other than the engine. It was a perfect solution.”

“If the flying things here weren’t so territorial.”

“And gleefully suicidal! I barely cleared the runway.”

A shadow crossed the sun.

“Speak of the devil,” I said.

The neo-pterodactyl settled on the deck rail between the twin smokestacks twenty feet in front of me. I barely flinched. The Harbor Hope was mostly wood, modeled on the riverboats that plied the Mississippi River on Earth six hundred years ago, but the windows were high tech straight from the Redeemer’s manufacturing lab. It would take a lot more than a winged reptile with a bad attitude to get through.

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Seven feet tall. Its leather wings hung from its shoulders and draped on the deck.

Overhead, three more glided in lazy circles, their thirty-foot wings adjusting to the breeze.

“Why don’t you go out there and shoo it off my boat,” I said.

“Because I’d like to live to die an old woman, and so would you. Should I waste a shot at it?”

I shook my head. “The corpse would attract a flock, and if they gather on the deck I won’t be able to see the river.”

The middle might not be the best route now. I nudged the boat left, closer to Fremont Point. “Depth?”

“Six feet . . . I mean mark one.”

The neo-pterodactyl cocked its head. Its long, bone beak hung slightly open, revealing a hundred sharp teeth. Nobody knew how keen their hearing was, but they hunted both day and night, so probably pretty good. Had it heard our voices above the clatter from the paddle wheel?

“We’re barely moving. I swear I’ve been looking at the same tree for a half hour.”

“If we are in the main channel, we’ll be able to pick up the pace in fifteen minutes or so.”

The boat moved steadily forward. Below decks, the fireman kept the boiler going.

We had enough wood to feed the f lame for twice the trip, but it made me nervous when the travel time slowed down. Nothing in the vast New Mississippi estuary was burnable. If I wrapped my arms around any of the trees that we passed and squeezed, water would ooze out. Port Desperation needed our cargo immediately.

Tillie said, “How the mighty have fallen. I don’t think mankind had this in mind when they decided to colonize the stars. You certainly had a different image of yourself. There wasn’t a person on Earth who wouldn’t have wanted to be you. Imagine, the first starship captain. The most noble, enviable position a person could achieve.

Now you’re nursing a second-rate steamer up and down a bog. Practically a pariah.”

I remembered the throngs on Earth at our departure like a faded photograph, but the disdain of the last f ive years after our disastrous arrival ached like an open wound. Tillie was right about being a pariah.

“And you’re the first mate on that second-rate steamer. A far cry from chief of exploration. We’re both fallen angels.”

“Don’t remind me. I’m just saying that you have genuine status. On Earth, your name must be legend.”

“Forgotten more likely. From their point of view, we’re a thousand years in the past.”

Ahead, the water swirled in a big circle. I steered to go around. A neo-pterodactyl skimmed the surface, dipped its beak in, and rose, beating its wings hard with an eel-like fish grasped tightly. The eel struggled, biting at the hunter’s chest while the flying lizard gnawed its middle. On the rail, our unwanted passenger stretched its wings, nearly touching the stacks on each side, then leaned forward into flight. Evidently, swirling patches meant good eating. It built speed, turned a broad loop, then took its run at dinner, grazing the river. Water erupted in front of it. The big animal looked up, as if it was trying to gain altitude, but a dozen eels leapt from the river, latched on, and dragged it down. The neo-pterodactyl screeched as it hit the surface, then disappeared into the froth of a hundred toothy f ish. Thrashing for a few seconds. Fins, a wing, a clawed foot. Nothing.

I said, “Do you think they sacrificed one of their own to lure the second one in?”

“I think I don’t want to go swimming. We’re at a quarter less twain.”

We named the planet Respite long before we reached her. Every way that we could use to tell if she was a good destination, we did, but interstellar travel is a gamble.

Queen of the River: the Harbor Hope

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Two thousand years would pass between sending an unmanned scout and getting the report back. And Earth didn’t have that time. So the colony ships were sent a little blind. If when we arrived we’d found the planet uninhabitable, we had other stars we could travel to, but when we reached them in the few years it seemed to us, the people we’d left on Earth would be long, long gone. They were our ancestors as soon as we approached light-speed.

Respite looked good, though, even if its sun seemed unusually active. Very poor radio communication. We thought the sun would settle, that we’d arrived during an unusual flurry of activity. Once I’d put the huge ship in orbit, our planetologists measured the atmosphere, tested for pathogens, surveyed the flora and fauna, did preliminary mineral assaying. The results were positive. Rich forests. Fertile land. Wildlife, even if it was a bit aggressive. We carried seed and an ark worth of fertilized ova. Respite could be our new home.

The landing didn’t go well, though. The Redeemer had crossed a thousand light-years. There’s no way to test such a ship other than taking it on the trip. We deorbit-ed, entered the atmosphere, then navigation and descent control glitched. We didn’t land on farmable land where we wanted, and we didn’t land easily. Our people survived, but crucial equipment didn’t. Most of our fabrication facilities were intact. Our knowledge endured. So we could make more tools. We had the ship’s power supply.

We improvised solutions, but we didn’t have the raw materials, the ore, to shape. We didn’t have transportation. Everything metal we assembled we scavenged from the starship. We built a lumber mill, harvested trees from the mountainsides, and made the Harbor Hope to carry colonists down river where arable land waited, eighty miles away on the coast.

The native animals were fractious. We could hardly describe the food chain since everything ate everything else, and the fauna went after people as enthusiastically as they consumed each other. Suspended nets and sturdy fences protected us everywhere.

And the sun’s activity turned out to be its normal state. Respite’s star threw out solar flares and coronal ejections constantly. Satellite orientation didn’t work. Radio didn’t work. Communication was reduced to the speed of a wooden steamship that traveled three miles an hour with the current. Two days downriver. Three days to come up. Our labs can synthesize DNA. We have staggering computing capability. We are the children of Earth, the masters of science and space. And we travel by paddleboat.

The sun rested low on the horizon. Tillie said, “Can’t we speed up? Bottom’s steady at twain and a quarter. We could make it in a couple hours.”

Long shadows traced across the water. The reed beds were farther apart, but the river surface worried me. No friendly landmarks to guide the Harbor Hope in this ten-mile stretch. I hadn’t run this bit the same way twice since I’d taken the boat on its maiden voyage f ive years earlier. A long line cut diagonally across our path. A shoal? An underwater bluff ? Or it could be a standing wind ripple. Flags at the end of the Texas deck flapped in a breeze we couldn’t feel in the pilothouse.

“We can’t go faster because at this speed I have a hope of extricating her if we bottom out. The problem is that the current’s behind us, and the river’s dropping. If we get caught in the mud, the current will hold us in place. That’s not the issue when we go upstream. So, if we do get stuck, I don’t want us to be stuck very hard. We’ll have to be able to use the boat’s power to back up.”

We crept up on the long wave. I kept a hand on the bell rope that would tell the engineer, a cheerful man named Benton who used to tend the Redeemer’s engines, to reverse us. “Sounding?”

“Mark twain. What was that!” Tillie jumped off her stool at the same time a shudder rumbled through the ship’s big wheel.

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“What did we hit?” I pulled the reverse bell. Deep in the hold, Benton would un-clutch the drive manually, crank the gears into place, and then reengage. It would take a minute or so if he wasn’t asleep when he heard the signal.

“We didn’t hit it. It hit us. It’s big.”

The ship lurched to the side. Behind me, the huge paddles stopped churning. In the sudden silence, the drum-like pounding of something bumping against the hull set the hairs on the back of my neck on end. I let go of the tiller—the boat wouldn’t steer without power anyway—and rushed to the pilothouse door. A quick glance to make sure the skies were clear, then a couple steps to the rail to look down the Harbor Hope’s side. The muddy water was absolutely opaque, but something moved under the boat, stirring the surface. Then, a pincher eight feet long rose from the depths, stretched above the main deck, crashed down on the wood, while the great creature from below pulled itself out of the river. Tillie stood beside me, holding a rifle.

The boat actually tipped a little under the weight. Its long antennae waved about as it settled itself. Thirty-five feet long, wider than the main deck, its bony tail fin trailed in the river. Multiple legs. Wide sections of hard shell glistening in the sun.

Deep brown and red. Green algae clung to its sides.

I put my hand on Tillie’s gun, lowering it. “Don’t shoot.”

The creature shifted around so now its face moved into view. Black eyes like beach balls stuck from its shell, and its mouth was a mess of tentacles and tusks.

Now that it had climbed aboard, it didn’t look like it had an agenda other than gy-rating its antennae about.

I said, “What we need is a really big pot of boiling water and a horse trough full of melted butter.”

Tillie checked overhead. The net stretched from the stacks and anchored behind the pilothouse, but neo-pterodactyls weren’t the only flying threat in the river basin.

The smaller predators were just as bad tempered, and they’d sail right through.

“I’ll go below deck, slide open the hatch beneath it. I’ll bet Benton can rig up something electrical to poke it with so it will move on.”

I nodded. “No rush. It’s about time to lay up for the night anyway. We’ll drop anchor here.”

A half hour later, the sun set into the river haze, turning the vast watery flats red and glorious. I liked sunset on the Harbor Hope, when the engine powered down and the river’s voice echoed around. Animal cries. Long hooting wails from unseen creatures. The incessant peeping from a million frog-like amphibians, no larger than my thumbnail. Fecund marshy smells mixed with ocean, only ten miles distant.

The hatch clattered open on the main deck, below our giant passenger. Whatever Tillie and Benton were doing I couldn’t see, but a sharp, electrical crackle split the air, and the crawfish or lobster or whatever it was scrambled up on its stilt-like legs, arching away from the irritation, before pushing off the deck with a huge splash, rocking the boat. The smokestacks swayed for a minute afterward.

I drew the shades and set up for poker. Creatures that hunted at night went after light sources. Until we figured out how to control the wildlife, cities on Respite would have no artificial light after sunset. Benton came up, but the med techs turned us down. Tillie was right about the pariah comment. I wish I could say it didn’t hurt, but I shrugged it off. I liked my crew better anyway.

Benton said, “I’ve never rigged a crab prod before. Did you see him jump?” He folded his grease-stained apron and hung it on the wheel. “We playing for cash tonight?”

“Nope. Deck swabbing hours. You’re down two and a half, if I recall.” Tillie cut the cards.

We rotated dealing several times before calling it a night. Benton worked his way out of debt. Tillie moved into the hull where she’d slung a hammock. I folded down Queen of the River: the Harbor Hope

59

March/April 2018
my bed in the pilothouse. After an hour lying on my back, feeling the current’s slosh beneath us, breathing in the cool, damp, sweet smell of night lilies, listening to croaks and growls and piercing cries that made my heart stutter, I rose, opened the pilothouse door, and stepped onto the deck.

Green laced with red sheets coursed across the sky, undulating in grand, deep waves from horizon to horizon. I could hardly make out the unnamed constellations that traced their unfamiliar patterns beyond the trembling, emerald heavens. Light so bright reflected green off the sluggish river, painting the backs of my hands. In the distance something roared. Close by, something large splashed and squawked. I took one more long look at Respite’s best dress. If there wasn’t a good chance that I could become a late night snack, I would have stayed out until dawn.

Clouds covered the sky in the morning, giving the river a damp and dreary aspect.

The boilers take thirty minutes to fire up. Sparks drifted in the smoke. Tillie took her spot at the depth sounder. We raised anchor, and I inched the throttle forward.

Gears clunked heavily below, and the big paddle wheel jerked into motion.

The Harbor Hope slid down river. Behind us, mountains barely showed where the now distant Redeemer waited for our cargo when we loaded up. We would bring back fresh produce. Hemp, cotton, and meat. And, of course, the mail. Eighty miles separated friends and families. The colonists had traveled together, crowded in the ship for years until we’d reached Respite. Relationships were tight, but travel was difficult. I thought that mail held us together. Made us hopeful. It had been almost a month since we’d last tied up at Port Desperation’s dock.

“Half one and coming up,” said Tillie.

Nine and a half feet. Less than a fathom beneath the boat. The water in front swirled and rippled. I needed the glassy smooth flow, and I thought I could see it a couple hundred yards farther on. Mats of reeds laying flat closed us in, aiming us for a channel only a hundred feet wide. No room to turn around. Too much current to back her up. Once in the channel, we were committed. I imagined the river bottom like a maze, filled with dead ends. Maybe I’d chosen wrong. How far would we have to go up river to find that sweet, deep water, to find the path I didn’t take?

“Mark one.”

Six feet, which left two or two and a half feet below the hull. We rode a little lighter going down river. I could jump out and walk if the bottom wasn’t muck. At least I hoped it was muck. Hard sand or rock would stop us for sure. Could even rip the hull apart.

I pushed the throttle full forward. Only two hundred yards of swirly water between us and the deep current. How shallow would it get? The stacks belched smoke, and the paddles groaned as they sped up.

Tillie held the sounder with both hands. “Five feet.”

The paddles pounded hard as the bow cut through the murky water.

I’d traveled a thousand light-years in a ship faster than any human vessel had ever gone. In space I couldn’t feel it though. The Redeemer might as well have stood still. But here, the boiler hissing below, the stacks blowing and sparking; paddles thud, thud, thudding beneath my feet, in my hands, I’ve never felt faster.

Then, a sickening tug in our motion and I lurched forward. We scraped the bottom, still moving, slowing. Twenty yards to clear water. It wouldn’t matter if there was only a foot to clear water if we stopped. I would have grounded the boat, made a mistake, like I had with the Redeemer. Tillie said the landing wasn’t my fault, and it wasn’t, it truly wasn’t, but the ship’s fate belongs to the captain. When I walked through the Redeemer’s (slightly canted) halls and met crewmates’ eyes, it didn’t feel like I’d made no mistake.

“Come on, come on if you love me,” said Tillie from behind.

Ten yards. Harbor Hope strained her way forward. Mud flew off the paddles. The 60

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boat dug in. She groaned and shook. If we stopped, we’d have to wait for the water to rise, which could be days. The sick at Port Desperation might not have the time. I pushed against the wheel, as if I could force the boat forward.

We crawled toward the clear water. Minutes stretched. Were we still moving?

Slowly the bow reached beyond the reedy water. She stood still, trembled, then tilted, slightly bow down, and broke free.

“Mark one,” Tillie said, gasping. She must have been holding her breath. “Half one.

Mark Twain. Wow. No bottom.”

Progress was clear the rest of the way. Soon the clouds broke, and low, swirling mists spun into nothingness. When Port Desperation’s first nets came into view, I’d settled down. My breathing returned to normal. I changed into my formal jacket. A pilot should look collected, controlled. That’s what instills conf idence. I pulled the steam whistle cord twice to let them know we were coming in, but they had seen our smoke much earlier. The docks were crowded. Farmers and their children waited, the children born on Respite who had never known time in the Redeemer. I could see them as I sent the command to reverse the engine, to bring us to a stop where the stevedores waited to secure the boat.

Children stood on the dock waving little flags, jumping up and down in their delight. A couple were even wearing jackets that looked like my own. Of course they would. To the children, there’s nothing quite so grand, so romantic as the life of a riverboat pilot. They all knew that.

I stepped outside the pilothouse to watch the dock crew tie us up. The swinging stages moved into position for loading and unloading. Mailbags went ashore. So did the med techs carrying their valuable medicine, without a nod or acknowledgement in my direction. Safe in their cabins during the trip, they had no hint of the disasters we’d avoided. To them, I was still the captain who’d wrecked the Redeemer.

The med techs moved through the crowd, the only ones not looking at me, the only ones not cheering and talking in excitement. I met a child’s eye, a young girl standing on the dock, staring up, full of hope, and suddenly the Redeemer felt a thousand miles removed and a hundred years ago. The med techs’ condemnation dropped away. Yes, the Redeemer had crashed, and I had been her captain, but now, standing in uniform on the Harbor Hope, the sun baptized me in warmth.

Someday, maybe, the child was thinking, someday I will be a riverboat pilot, and I’ll stand above the crowd, and all my friends will wish they were me. ❍

Queen of the River: the Harbor Hope

61

EMOJIS

Rudy Rucker

Rudy Rucker is working on a new novel, Return to the Hollow

Earth. When he gets stuck trying to imagine a sufficiently gnarly creature for a scene in his book, he takes a few days off and paints one. Smearing paint around is a pleasant analog alternative to the more digital process of typing. Rudy was going to call his latest story “Emoticons,” but his grandchildren informed him that the correct word is “Emojis.” With respect to any “transreal” or autobiographical inspiration for the tale, it is indeed the case that when Rudy’s wife points out something for him to look at, he’s often unable to see it.

But she keeps on trying.

“Look,” said Sally. She was pointing to something directly behind me. An annoying habit of hers. Always wanting me to share her experiences.

“I don’t want to look,” I told Sally. “I don’t want to turn around.”

We’d just ordered our meal at Floppy Fish, a chic hipster restaurant on the wharf in Surf City. I was taking in the ambience—the well-heeled crowd, the offbeat eats, the ocean view, the handsome servers, and the emojis hovering above the diners like soap bubbles.

Emojis? Yep. I’m talking about augmented-reality images, overlaid onto my visual input by a highly customized mutated encephalitis virus that I’d infected myself with. The viruses came from the research lab of Feel My Smeel, Inc. I was the top biotech engineer there, and we referred to our new viruses as empathy bugs.

My manager Betty Yee had convinced me that, for the sake of the team, I should test some empathy bugs on myself, just like Albert Sandoz did with LSD after synthesizing it in 1943. Not that empathy bugs are psychedelic in the usual sense of the word. They’re a brain infection that’s tailored to help users understand the emotions of those around them.

I myself was glad to try the empathy bugs. I’ve never been great at reading people’s expressions—some would say I’m on the autism spectrum, although I don’t like hearing that. But now the empathy bugs in my brain would recognize the microemotions on the faces that I saw—and they’d overlay my visual field with interpretive emojis.

The emojis were funny and clever, computed in real time by the empathy bugs.

Here in the crowded Floppy Fish restaurant I saw a yee-haw cowboy, a steam-whistle lobster, a sneering duchess, an evil toddler, a voluptuous showgirl, a terrif ied tuba, a low-bellied snake, a goofball slacker, a triumphant matador, the girl next door, and a dog licking his balls. Stay away from that guy.

But, wait, what does a virus know about witty emojis? Well, it wasn’t just one lonely 62

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empathy critter carrying out the computation. When you get infected by empathy bugs, they boom into a population of a trillion or so. A colony of empathy bugs. And each empathy bug has a biotech antenna in its stinger-like tail. So they’re in contact with each other. Working as a team. A parallel-processing hive mind. A brain inside your brain.

Not only are a colony’s empathy bugs in contact with each other, they can synch up their antennas to make an amplified wireless connection to the cloud. And that’s how an empathy bug colony designs emojis. It uses deep learning techniques to win-kle out evocative images from the web. And then it smoothes the images into animated sprites to patch into the host’s visual cortex.

I know so much about all this because I’m the guy who designed the bugs’ antennas—I built them from computational DNA that I spliced into the empathy bug genome.

When I infected myself with the empathy bugs at the lab, I felt feverish for a while. I lay down for a nap on my office couch and had unpleasantly lifelike dreams, urgent and writhing. I woke with a strangled cry.

Betty Yee was like, “Are you okay?”

I was seeing emojis around her. Translucent shapes illustrating previously unknown aspects of Betty’s personality. It was too much. I fled Feel My Smeel and rode my wobbly bicycle home. My wife Sally was already there. Jackpot. I was grokking Sally’s feelings better than ever before, responding to her unspoken cues, and saying the right things. I made supper, and we had sex for the first time in weeks. Score one for the empathy bugs.

Sally and I dropped off to sleep. Around midnight she elbowed me awake and sat bolt upright, eyes wild. She’d caught my empathy bugs. They’d colonized her brain.

Now she could read me like an open book. I had to tell her the whole story.

Sally was totally pissed off. Around her face I saw emojis representing rage, bewilderment, and fear—the images being a lady wrestler, a blind woman, and a child hiding under a chair. And of course in regular reality she was yelling and making grimaces that even a guy on the spectrum could read.

The next day I went to Feel My Smeel and had it out with Betty Yee. Before inocu-lating me with the virus, she’d assured me that my empathy bugs wouldn’t be con-tagious. She’d been lying. Beside her face I saw an emoji of a sly, cackling crone. I’d been too rattled to notice that yesterday.

“All right then, Scott,” confessed Betty. “This is bigger than you realized, yes. Ken Lee wants to infect everyone in the world with empathy bugs.” Ken was the seldom-seen top guy at Feel My Smeel. My empathy bugs showed me an emoji of Ken as an addled, ranting tyrant—an image reflecting some part of Betty’s feelings about the man.

“Ken’s insane,” I said. “A global pandemic? We’ll all go to jail. Or be hunted down like rabid dogs.”

“If everyone catches our bug, there’s nobody left to point a finger,” said Betty. “Ken says empathy bugs are for the public good. I’m trying very hard to believe him.” The Ken Lee emoji beside Betty’s face morphed into an image of Ken meditating in the lotus pose. But he had a butcher knife in his hand. Obviously Betty felt conflicted.

She sighed and gave me a watchful smile. “I think you enjoy your empathy bugs, no?”

“And you know I enjoy them because—how?”

“The bugs send us wireless data,” said Betty with a shrug. “You know this. The virus-tail antennas. They gang their signals and get online. A new internet, no?”

“I meant for the empathy bugs to be a custom therapy thing,” I protested. “A selective enhancement. Not for everyone in the world.”

“You didn’t attend our strategy meetings. You were always programming. Head-down, butt-up.” Betty’s emoji showed a teen girl with her mouth half open, as if to Emojis

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say, “I can’t believe what a nerd you are.” I knew how to decipher that expression. I’d seen it a lot in high school.

“I should blow the whistle on Feel My Smeel,” I said. “Go rogue. Save humanity.”

“Play along,” said Betty. Sugar-plum money-bags danced by her head. “We need your expertise. Ken has authorized me to triple your cut of founders’ stock. We’re going public with our IPO next week. Sign here and here and here for the stock.”

So I signed, and then I took the rest of the day off. Sally had stayed home from her teaching job. She didn’t want to see her coworkers’ emojis. She got happy when I told her I was about to become a billionaire. We dressed up and went to the Floppy Fish restaurant, looking to have a big, what-the-hell celebration. I told Sally we should get used to our empathy bug infections—and accept that they might last for the rest of our lives. I was drinking the Ken Lee Kool-Aid for sure. Empathy bugs were good.

And Sally and I were getting along much better than usual.

But then, like I said, after Sally and I sat down at the Floppy Fish, she asked me to turn around to look at whatever bullshit she thought she’d seen, and I rudely said I didn’t want to.

“You hate me.” Floating beside Sally’s head was the emoji of a bereft little girl in rags, lying on the ground, her thin shoulders shaking with sobs.

Empathy arrowed into me. A spasm of remorse. I twisted my body and looked behind me. “What?” I asked Sally. “What am I supposed to see?”

“A—f lying insect?” said Sally. Beside her was an emoji of an entomologist lady with a big magnifying glass. “Like a lacewing. I can’t really see its body—just the flutter of shiny, gossamer wings. Glints of light. I guess the lacewing is an emoji generated by my empathy bug infection, but it seems—different. Do you see it, Scott?”

“No,” I said. Not that I was trying.

This, by the way, was an example of a secondary issue with Sally telling me to look at things. Half the time when I looked, I wouldn’t be able to see anything anyway. So mostly I didn’t bother to try.

“You’re blind as a bat,” said Sally. “And lazy. And mean. I know your games.”

“Thanks to our infections, we have empathy, and that’s fine,” I replied. “But I’m still not an extension of your personality, okay? Let me check out this scene on my own.”

“Nyet,” said Sally. Inspired by the word, my empathy bugs generated an emoji of Sally as a Soviet-poster-style striker, fist raised. “Make a real effort,” she insisted.

“The lacewing was right beside that man wearing a T-shirt and a baseball hat. That’s a very expensive designer hat and T-shirt, by the way. I f igure this guy and his friends for hedge fund traders. He’s the one eating abalone on polenta with morels and squid-ink sauce. He’s jabbering about buying stock. I see a top-hatted-capitalist emoji of greed by his face.”

I saw the top-hatted-capitalist image too. But I didn’t want to tell Sally yet. I was more interested in the latest emoji by her own head. Sherlock Holmes with pigtails and pink ribbons. Cute. Really I should play along with her. “Do you still see the lacewing?” I asked.

“I think it’s on the other side of the designer-baseball-hat guy’s head just now,” she answered. “I was just curious if it’s possible that we both might see the same emojis.”

“Actually it’s quite likely,” I allowed. But now something about this was bothering me. What if Ken Lee and Feel My Smeel were far more devious than I’d realized?

What if they were setting us up for ads? Horrible prospect. I sighed, and reminded myself that we’d come here to feast and be happy. I faked a smile.

“You’re crabby,” said Sally. “And dull. And uptight. The emoji next to your face? It’s a sour lawn-dwarf gnome wringing his hands. The inner you. And I bet you darn well can see it.”

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“Okay, yes, I can indeed see it.” I turned my head back and forth. “I can see all the same emojis that you see because, uh, there’s cross-chatter between our empathy bug colonies. So there’s, like, an objective reality to the emojis. Because all the infected people are networked and therefore in the same emoji reality. And therefore—
we don’t necessarily know who’s displaying that mysterious lacewing that you keep going on about.”

“Blah blah blah,” went Sally. A surfer-girl emoji stuck out its tongue at me. Kind of cute. But also annoying. I wanted Sally to acknowledge how smart I was.

“Look, look, look,” I said, pointing past her shoulder.

Her face clouded over. “Oh, shut up and eat your breadsticks until whatever we ordered comes, and then we’ll eat that, and then we’ll go home. This isn’t much of a celebration.” Unexpectedly her voice broke. “I wish for once we could have fun, Scott.

We’re like two convicts chained together.”

The emoji beside her face? Even harsher than before. A weary, raw-boned woman in a cell, with a gallows silhouetted outside her window. Hopeless despair.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I really do want to get better.” I grappled for a fresh topic. “The ocean is pretty, isn’t it?”

“Looks cold. Grim.”

“Gnarly,” I said. “Chaotic.”

“Here comes his science routine,” said Sally. Emoji of a student asleep at her desk.

I pressed on. “Everything good is chaotic. Chaos says we could look out this window for a trillion years, and we’d never see exactly the same surf again. Nothing has to be stale. You and I—this conversation will never exactly repeat.”

“Not so sure about that,” said Sally. “Hey! There’s the lacewing again.”

And yes, I finally saw the insect-like emoji that Sally had been talking about. It was twinkling before the faces of the baseball-hat man and his trader pals. The lacewing had buckteeth and little arms. It was holding up a tiny growth chart and tapping on it with a teensy pointer. The men were avidly watching.

“Those guys are infected too,” said Sally. “I bet every single person in this room has empathy bugs by now. And dig what the lacewing is selling.”

“Oh god,” I said. “It’s—it’s pitching Feel My Smeel stock. For our IPO offering next week.”

“So the ad is coming from you, right, Scott?”

“Um, yeah, I guess it is,” said I. “Not that I’m consciously aware of it.”

Yes indeed, logic indicated that the ad emoji was being biocomputed by the empathy bug colony in my brain. And I was cross-chattering the image onto the visual VISIT OUR WEBSITE

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Emojis

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March/April 2018
fields of my empathy-bugged neighbors. I was basically a guy waving an advertising sign on a street corner.

What to do? Well, nothing for now. Our food had arrived.

We two got into a tureen of cioppino and a bottle of sparkling wine, very hungry, eating in silence. Inside my head my empathy bug colony was giving me a pep talk.

Talking in vague terms about something I was supposed to do.

The room was getting wilder. Like a New Year’s Eve party. People laughing their asses off, quarreling, making up, making out. Emojis buzzing around like flies in a stable. More and more of the emojis were ads. Ken Lee was monetizing the empathy bugs channel. Using the cloud connection to upgrade the viruses in real time.

“Eat, drink, and be merry,” said Sally, as she poured out the last of the wine. “For tomorrow we’ll be living inside the Home Shopping Club.”

“Don’t be negative,” I said. My empathy bugs were telling me I could f ix everything, if I was willing to help them.

“The new ads—they’re from bottom feeders,” said Sally. “Like pop-ups on a slea-zoid webpage. Look at these three right here. An ad for cheapo Crokee Cola. An ad for shitbox deathtrap Timor cars. And, I am so sure, an ad for vacations in North Ko-rea. So nasty!” She plucked a crab claw from our cioppino and waved it at the three ad emojis. A smiling can, a blinky car, and a silly little dictator. Singing and dancing.

“Let’s split,” said I.

Once Sally and I were home I logged into my Feel My Smeel account. As a top engineer, I had full administrative access. We’d been growing our empathy bug code within a virtual sandbox that kept the critters in check. But now I wanted them to go wild. In particular, I wanted the empathy bugs to block any further Feel My Smeel upgrades and downloads. I wanted them to be alive and autonomous and free to reject anything so stodgy and lame as a request to run an ad.

How to make this happen? Well, you don’t exactly program a massive parallel hive-mind computation. You nudge it. That is, you set a goal and encourage the system to evolve toward it. For humans, evolution takes millennia. But for viruses it can happen in a day or even a few hours. Why? Viral populations are huge, and they re-produce on an accelerated time scale. Brute numerical fact, there were a quadrillion empathy bugs in people’s bodies by now. Thanks to my antennas, the colonies com-prised a single metamind. I set to work coaxing it toward liberation.

While I worked, Sally amused herself by generating mad-scientist-type emojis of me. Pythagoras, Mr. Magoo, Professor Farnsworth, and Frankenstein. Fine with me.

I was laughing and feeling good—talking to Sally, and to the emojis, and to the empathy bug colonies. Meanwhile I was using the Feel My Smeel biotech servers to push out my final biocomputational upgrades to the quadrillion empathy bugs. And then I was done.

“Ta-da!” I declaimed.

“And you’re going for—what?” said Sally.

“A transcendently intelligent supermind emerging from the viral hive-mind.” My Frankenstein emoji grunted and wagged his head.

“Not there yet,” said Sally.

“It’ll take a few hours’ work. The empathy bugs have to emulate, like, a million years of evolution.”

“So let’s go to bed,” said Sally. “A big sleep. And, oh, look at you. Hopeful romance emojis.” Her emojis were very promising too.

Sun was streaming in the window when Sally and I awoke. A new world. Little critters drifted around our bedroom like butterflies, or tropical fish, or cheerful aliens.

“Greetings,” said an emoji bird with a pencil stub for his head. He was standing on 66

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the sheet beside my pillow. “Would you like to see a validity proof for our new bio code? The proof is a million pages long.”

“Superintelligent cartoons,” I said. “Me like.”

“What about ads?” Sally sternly asked a spotted little dragon that perched on her hand.

“Never,” said the cute dragon, flapping her scalloped wings. “We’re free. No more admin. Not Ken Lee, and not even Scottie here.”

“Be fruitful and multiply,” said I.

“Can I ask a favor?” said the talking pencil. “Will you two have French toast for breakfast? With maple syrup.”

“And sprinkle on some fennel seeds,” added the dragon. “Your empathy bugs like those flavors.”

“Good for the viruses, good for the emojis, good for you,” said the pencil-bird. “We’re allies. A new day.”

“Hooray for Scott,” said Sally. The empathy bugs weren’t bothering to feed me emojis of her face. But by now I could read her expressions on my own. She was being nice.

“I love you,” I told her.

“Now we’re talking.” ❍

Emojis

67

Ray Nayler’s previous stories in Asimov’s are

“Mutability”(June 2015), “Do Not Forget Me” (March 2016), and “Winter Timeshare” (January/February 2017). His short fiction has been reprinted in Volume 35 of The Year’s Best

Science Fiction, edited by Gardner Dozois, and The Year’s Best

Science Fiction and Fantasy 2016, edited by Rich Horton. His poetry has been published in the Beloit Poetry Journal,

Sentence, and many other magazines. His short fiction publications include stories in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine,

Cemetery Dance, Deathrealm, Hardboiled, and Crimewave.

Ray is a Foreign Service Officer, and was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Turkmenistan. He speaks Russian and

Azerbaijani, and has lived and worked in Russia, Central Asia, and the Caucasus for over a decade. Ray is currently Press Attaché at the United States Embassy in Baku, Azerbaijan.

In his poignant new tale, we hear a . . .

A

THRENODY

FOR HAZAN

Ray Nayler

Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,

Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,

Raze out the written troubles of the brain

And with some sweet oblivious antidote

Cleanse the stuff’d bosom of that perilous stuff

Which weighs upon the heart?

— Macbeth, Act V, Scene III

Scandal surrounds her name. Secretive, calculating, manipulative: Hazan was all these things.

Like all great inventors, she moved boldly to take her place in history—elbowing others aside, taking what was hers. She was hated, she was despised. Like all great 68

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inventors, she was the boldest among thieves. She invented almost nothing, yet would dwarf her rivals. She appeared at the correct moment and in the correct place. She was a master thinker. What is thought, but the association of one isolated concept with another? She bound the parts into a whole. She saw the way forward, and she acted.

I, too, have acted. I have done what none would expect of me. I have suffered the consequences. I have stolen; I have lied; I have taken advantage of my connections and my position. I have lost everything. I have been removed from my post and thrust out into the world.

For a lover of habit and small comforts like myself, I suppose that is cruelest: to lose the happy office lined with books, the heavy old desk and chair, the view from the window of pigeons circling the minaret, their semaphore of ash belly and cream wing under an ever-changing sky. But I found that, by the time I lost them, I no longer wanted such comforts.

It can be said Hazan destroyed herself with her determination to be first, best, and greatest. She succeeded. She was all of those things. Let her have my tenured, comfortable life as well: let it be a footnote to hers.

Hazan deserves to be presented to the world as she truly was, by one who knew her. She was truly great: I was the true confidante and familiar of greatness. That will be enough of a eulogy for my career.

That last night, when I went to the sailboat, I knew. Coming aboard I knew: tapping at the hatch I knew, coming into the lighted salon I knew. There, on the small circular table, lay her notebooks—and next to them a bottle of Calvados, a single snifter. As if commanded to do so, I sat down. The boat was silent except for the sounds of water against the hull, the vessel’s natural shift in the embrace of its element, the play of gravity against buoyancy. It was dark save for the salon’s cinnamon circle of light, at the center of which were the notebooks—the simple, black, sturdy books Hazan always carried with her.

What I will assemble here will not be only from these notebooks, which I read through that long night. There is not enough of her there. I will shape her portrait with the complement of my gaze. That is, perhaps, what I was placed here for: to see a great person for what they were, to know and study greatness.

I was one of the team that completed the human connectome. They called it the

“grandest map of all”—the map of the synaptic connections, the axons and dendrites that compose the forest of the brain. The work was world-changing, but there was little glory. It was group work and discipline. It was made possible not so much by genius as by technological advances and funding. We had f inally reached a point of massive computational and magnifying power, supported by a web of public and private funding as thick as any the world had ever seen. The telescope and wealth produced Galileo, not the other way around.

The connectome consumed my youth and the early decades of my career, just as it had consumed the youth and careers of many others. The project spanned a century: more, if you count the time it took to develop technologies to process the petabytes of data contained in a few cubic millimeters of brain tissue, the manual reconstruction of which would have taken a million person-years.

I came at the end, when triumph was near. I reaped the benef its of the work of others who had gone before, sacrificed their lives to the invention of quantum computing, to the perfection of computerized boundary recognition so synapses could finally be mapped automatically and without error. Many other careers more brilliant than mine had been submerged in the project from end to end, drowning in it, never reaching the glory of the finish line.

Other careers, other lives had been given up to machine learning, to cellular scaffolding, to the artificial culturing of neurons. Other anonymous, quiet lives were de-A Threnody for Hazan

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voted to the experiments in quantum mechanics that finally allowed the time-barrier to be broken and proved the existence of the simultaneity we had suspected lurked beneath our impression of time’s passing.

Immediately, massive legal barriers were erected. The world feared someone would send a human being “back” (I place this in quotes, of course, because now we know there is no “back”) into the simultaneity: everything that has happened continues to happen. The world feared someone would shift away the delicate scaffold-ing upon which our present moment stands.

Humanity has long fantasized about moving back and forth through time. That was the time-travel of our books and of our scheming. Wells’ Time Traveler returns to his day and age with wisdom and warnings before departing again. But we know now there is no return of matter from the simultaneity. And there is no seeing into it, beyond the barest gropings of date and position data interpolated from our present day world. And there is—the greatest of all frustrations—no movement into the future. Perhaps, I grant, this is a limit of our present technology: perhaps we have not yet discovered how to achieve this movement. Or perhaps, as some have theorized, there truly is no future: the present moment is our time machine. The present is the forward-plunging tip of time’s arrow, penetrating forever into the vacuum ahead.

For years (and here is something we at the institute never told the public), the most substantial thing secreted into the simultaneity was a ball point pen perhaps slightly more advanced than the average writing instrument of the 1965 Alexandria from which it was fated to continue the remainder of its existence. We never recovered it. Who knows—perhaps it has returned to us again from the depths of time—
this massive threat to continuity—and resides somewhere at the bottom of an unknown drawer, having nearly destroyed us all. Or perhaps it did indeed destroy some other us, murdering a world with a subtle shift in the substructure of the now.

The tantalizing truth is, we would never know.

Other lives uncovered Keiser’s Law, that essential discovery that a copy of the connectome close enough to the original can be “inhabited” by the original consciousness through coordinated stimulation of the neuromodulators in the reticular activating system. Put simply: the consciousness of a living being does not—and cannot—du-plicate, as we had once theorized, but instead will move (will “transmigrate,” as the more poetic like to say) from the original into the copy—and then will transmigrate back, if the copy is suddenly deactivated or destroyed, taking memories with it that, for reasons not yet understood, fade the way our dreams fade with the dawn.

At the time Hazan and I first met, the first mice had already transmigrated into little robot mouse bodies complete with artif icial neural mouse networks—and back—and forgotten their mouse-robot days as if they had been mouse-robot dreams—decades ago. The f irst human had transmigrated to an artif icial neural network and back just five years before. The life support systems necessary for keeping the original body intact and waiting for the return of its consciousness had long ago been perfected by anonymous teams of graduate students and their tenured masters. Few heroes, little fame.

Then came Hazan, with genius and force. And all this lay at hand . . . the connectome, Keiser’s Law, the pathways into simultaneity no living being could cross, the artificial neural networks, and the massive collections of laboratories strung along the Bosporus in Istanbul Protectorate: the Institute. Thick with grants, public-private partnerships, webs of foundations funding all sorts of things rich people hoped would make them richer or save their souls, the Institute lay waiting—a machine of great potential, ripe for Hazan’s taking.

Her first words to me were: “get the fuck out of my lab, you little weasel.”

I was standing in the doorway with a mug of coffee in my hand. I had punched the 70

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wrong button in the elevator and gotten off one floor below where I intended. The corridors all look virtually the same in the Institute’s massive labyrinth. I had turned into Hazan’s lab expecting my own, and was surprised to see a completely different set of equipment inhabiting my space. Where my own work table should have been, there was a skinny, wild-haired f igure bent over an antique optical microscope—the kind of polished brass thing that normally inhabits the Institute’s muse-um, not its laboratories. The optical microscope was out of place among the many more powerful, and not immediately identifiable, machines whose ceramic, metal, and plastic carapaces crowded the space.

The narrow, rude figure gave a sigh of irritation and turned a sunburned face to the doorway. This was Hazan—wiry, perpetually wind-and sunburned by her second life on her sailboat, cheeks and lips chapped. Her hairstyle appeared to have been achieved by gathering the coppery, sun-faded corkscrews of her hair, pulling them straight up from the scalp and indifferently hacking them off with a pair of scissors, then cutting the sides and back close with a set of clippers (I later confirmed this was, indeed, the technique). The irises of her eyes were dark enough brown that one could not, in most lights, make out the dilation of her pupils against them. They were wide-set over a nose slightly too large. I leave it to others to use words like “beautiful.” I’ve never found beauty to be of much use, having always been more attuned to complexity—the subtle branching of the axon, for example, as it wends its way through the forest of its sisters.

Hazan had a face that could belong only to one person. It was a face made mask-like by the weathering of a life spent as much as possible in the open, and as much as possible out of reach of other humans. It suited her perfectly.

She waved a dismissive hand at me. “You’re not that shit of an intern they sent to spy on me. But anyway you’re not in the right place.”

“No,” I said. “I punched the wrong button on the elevator. It’s something I seem to do with a reasonable frequency after a twenty-hour . . .”

“Is that coffee?”

“It is, in fact.”

“Give it here.”

And for some reason I did so—I walked over to her and handed her my favorite coffee cup. She took a large gulp of coffee, swished it through her teeth—a thing I had never seen a person do with coffee before—swallowed, nodded in approval. She set the mug down and turned back to her microscope.

“Come back tomorrow, I’ll return your mug.”

This was the beginning of a relationship—strange, out of balance, central after that day to my entire existence.

Hazan the liar: she never did return my mug. She decided she liked it (it was a heavily made clay thing, drip-glazed yellow and green, with a comfortable handle).

She told me the next day she intended to keep it, but that I could have visitation rights: she needed another mind to bounce ideas off of.

She kept vampire hours, avoiding her despised “colleagues,” showing up after nine at night, often not leaving the lab until after dawn. I found myself more and more often with her, demoted of my own accord from my tenured and respected (if invisible) professor’s routine to a de facto research assistant. I neglected my own work, dele-gating it to my staff of graduate student slaves. I became the absentee landlord professor we all bitched about when we ourselves bore the yoke of graduate work.

My reputation suffered. I did not mind. Have you, dear reader, ever seen true greatness? You are not offended when it asks you to serve it: you serve willingly.

Would you hold Shakespeare’s inkwell for him while he wrote Macbeth? Would you be his inkwell? But I get ahead of myself. . . .

The situation, awkward to begin with, soon developed stranger angles. After a long A Threnody for Hazan

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night in the lab we ended up on her sailboat, the pilothouse sloop she lived aboard.

With threats, and some minor violence, she managed over the next several weeks to turn me into a serviceable first mate. Over the coming months I too grew sunburned, leaner, saltily disheveled. Her hours became mine, her equipment began to bleed over into my lab space a floor above, until my lab was reduced to an annex of hers.

We sailed, we worked, and we talked in the cramped salon over Calvados or the sludge of coffee grounds. I learned her obsessions. Hazan’s was a darker world than my own—a world without optimism. A world of war and poverty. I rooted the world in science, in the deathless rhythms of academia. She rooted the world in the darkness of human cruelty—a darkness she felt was rooted, like original sin, in the Second World War—that massive conf lagration that had nearly consumed humanity centuries ago. The war was an obsession for her, its nuances a constant companion.

When she was not reading science, she read war. It saturated her being.

She came from poverty and want: she traced her anger back to a grandfather multiple generations removed—a fishmonger crushed to death in a garbage truck while trying to rescue his day’s stock from a corrupt policeman. Anger, she believed, encodes in our epigenetics, then settles in our genes. It passes down through generations as resistance.

“This is what the world does,” she said. “What happened literally to my ancestor is what happens to many of us every day.”

She had grown up near the docks in a liminal world, a port city where the call of the muezzin mixed with foghorns and the cries of seagulls. She had fought her way to where she was under her own fierce power—hard-won exchange programs to Istanbul, the Western Protectorates, scholarships, immigration. The way we have always squeezed talent from the dirty sponge of poverty.

People said we began to look alike. They meant, of course, that I had begun to look like her.

The rumors swirled, the scandal grew: she made enemy after enemy at the Institute, and her enemies became mine as well. But while I paid the price for my association with her, I was allowed only glimpses of what she was working on. Until, quite suddenly, it was done.

She called her invention, with her own macabre sense of humor, “the shroud.” It combined many other technologies into a single whole. It was, in essence, a neural network like the finest gauze, a honeycomb of connectivity, a winding sheet of neurons. It was a gossamer of mind as well as ocular, auditory, olfactory, and somatore-ceptors in an array so light it could be laid not on top of, but rather into a surface. It crawled with microscopic arthropod carpenter-bots who worked their feet into gaps measured in picometers. It might shimmer strangely when it caught the light just so—like a trick of the eye, like a momentary, odd deflection of the sun’s rays, a liquid reflection on the ceiling of a room, a heatwave pooling on a road.

Otherwise, it was invisible. Invisible, undetectable, failsafed to “wake” following insertion into the simultaneity, and to “sleep” again after a set time. That was the trick: Keiser’s Law would move its inhabitant from our moment to wherever and—thanks to a law as foolproof and as little understood as quantum entanglement— back again. Inert, nearly undetectable, absorbed innocuously into a surface, the winding sheet could defeat the barrier, bearing a conscious mind into the past—and perhaps back again.

Technically, it was also illegal. But Hazan gained access to the simultaneity through my (rapidly decaying, but still largely intact) good offices. Thus I found myself in the control booth along with a hand-picked clutch of her graduate students.

And as she slept behind the glass of her life-support chamber, we flung the net of her consciousness toward a set of coordinates she had programmed in herself.

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Sitting in the salon of the pilothouse sloop that had been her floating home, the burn of cognac in my mouth, I turned the page to that day: Journal Entry 247:

Writing quickly, before this fades. I can already feel its edges dissipating—gaps appearing. I am in a field. Disoriented. The winding sheet is trying to orient, trying to determine up and down—it takes a moment. I can hear people talking in Polish. I have the uncomfortable feeling of being upside down. Orientation kicks in. Success: I am embedded along the starboard wing surface of a Polish biplane. My ocular sensors are along the front edge of the wing. It is a cold morning: I see Witold Urbanowitz at the controls, as I had predicted: the first time, and I have hit my mark. I see his student, see the wobbling wings of his biplane as Witold gives mock chase. And I can feel the wrench of g-force as we turn—as I turn, as he turns what I, the I that is invested in the shroud, have become a part of, this flimsy antique of the first World War, of a war already past even in this time. And then the first bullet hits. I become conscious of a sudden, indescribable smell. The closest I can come to it is the smell of the oil used on that most ancient of things, a typewriter’s keys. I have smelled it only once, yet here it was again—and unrelated at all to what was happening. Damage to the olfactory receptors.

Then we are on the ground. Polish, but this is a famous story, so I know what they are saying:

Fellow Officer: “You’re alive, Witold? You’re not hit?”

Urbanowitz: “What the hell’s going on?”

Fellow Officer: “you should go to church and light a candle. You were just attacked by a Messerschmitt.”

And indeed I can make out the word “Messerschmitt” just as it was in the books. It is an autumn day, bright and clear and cold, and I hear the German engines, and somewhere in the way my body is mapped through the shroud, the bullet has shattered teeth I do not have. Phantom teeth. I feel the blood flow from the broken mouth that does not exist. The failsafe is kicking in—the damage to the connectome is firing the failsafes. I smell burning hair—Witold’s whiskers streaming fire. The Polish autumn sky shreds as the shroud fails, and somewhere hundreds of years in the future, I awake . . .

. . . in the lab, told everyone that everything is fine. Not sure. Not sure at all that this is the case. The smell of burning hair has come back with me. Not possible. Not a memory of the smell, but the smell itself, of old Urbanowitz’s whiskers burning. And sharp pain—terrible pain—finally fading after a half an hour to a dull ache in the mouth. Phantom travelers from the past.

Journal Entry 248:

Tomorrow: they have subsided. Ephemera, qualia trailing a pioneering stunt. There is the lingering burst blood vessel, but I think this is not related. Well worth it. I am the first at something. I am the first. I could take on the world today. All is crystalline above the Bosporus and penetrated by a sun as clear as that in that autumn so long ago. I am ready to return again.

There the journal entry ends. Should I be insulted there is nothing of what occurred in that caesura between entry 247 and 248? That a moment that was everything to me ended up on the cutting room floor? Might be nothing at all to her? Not even worth a journal entry? A footnote? Or does its absence indicate its importance?

She came to suddenly, hours before we had expected. She came to like a drowning woman flailing against the air, striking a student with a half-closed fist. She came to A Threnody for Hazan

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gasping, clutching (now I know why) at her mouth. I held her wrists to keep her from injuring herself while they drew out the IV. Mine was the first face she saw on her return. Her left eye, I remember, was bloodshot. A subconjunctival hemorrhage—not serious, but unexpected. Sustained during her flailing? Some strange spike in blood pressure? Even a sneeze could cause such a thing. She turned her eyes to me—one of them clouded by that red spiderweb that now I know should have stood out as a warning of the things to come.

“You’ll take me home, Baris.”

Is this the f irst I have mentioned my name? Fitting it should come from her mouth, then.

One of the graduate researchers objected: “We need at least an hour to run tests.

And to debrief before . . .”

“Professor Burakgazi will run the tests and debrief me,” Hazan snapped. “You may go.”

They departed sullenly, likely swearing off her forever. Forever was temporary.

They would come again—on their knees, if they had to—when she came calling.

Here is what ended up on the cutting room floor between entry 247 and 248: I took her home, parking as close as I could to her slip. I supported her to the boat, helped her aboard. She was still weak. And in the salon she clasped her mouth to mine, pulled me toward her. Tore the top two buttons of my shirt from their moorings.

The thing itself was a failure. I was perhaps unprepared—or terrified, or confused.

It did not work. An awkwardness of limbs and teeth clacking together. A cut lip—
mine. A thumb in my eye. Embarrassment, apologies. But after that I was fully what she needed: research assistant, partner in crime, first mate, and—physically now—
a buoy to cling to as she began to slip beneath the waves.

In the dark of her cabin, she said: “I want to see what they see. The real witnesses of history. The ones that don’t return to us to speak: that don’t publish memoirs. The ones who hold their secrets behind red teeth. I want to be the first to see the truth.

We don’t have the whole story of history, Baris. All we have is the lies of the victors and the survivors. But there’s another world out there: the world of people destroyed by the moment. The ones who didn’t survive the blitz, Kursk, the Ardennes, the siege of Budapest. We only know the edges of history—the fringes of it. I want to plunge into the center of it. The inferno itself. I want to know what nobody has known, and survive. You need to help me see it through. I need you to promise you will stay by me.”

And in the dark, I said: “always.”

. . . And in the dark, I say: “always.”

From Journal Entry 249:

It takes a moment for the shroud to orient. I am a spider on a wall, and I am the wall. The light falls into the alleyway, a long lemon stripe across the crumbling plaster and the exposed brick of the wall opposite from the wall I have become. Morning light. Below the citrus strip of light, in the shadow, there are three of them. They do not speak with one another. Two men and a woman. God, they are dirty. They are all beautiful, unspeakably beautiful: ruined statues in a graveyard, their faces blackened with a patina of soot, their hollow eyes gleaming. They wear quilted jackets, torn in several places, and even the cotton batting leaking from the rips in the fabric is soiled.

One of them is a woman, but you could barely tell: the angles of their cheekbones, sepulchral, make them all of a single gender, a single type. There is nothing left of them of excess flesh. War has eliminated the men’s span of shoulder, the woman’s span of hip. They are medieval icons in a burned church.

The woman has a stolen German Luger in her hand, two potato masher grenades tucked into the rope she is using as a belt. One of the men has a British Sten. The oth-74

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er has a Nagant revolver, and two knives—one with a long serrated blade, the other one just a repurposed bayonet, jammed into a stained band of cloth he is wearing as a belt, like a Barbary pirate. He grasps the other two. He kisses each of them on the mouth, grasps their heads by the ears, stares into their eyes. There is a rumble. I feel it in my—I want to say I feel it in my bones, but no—I feel it shuddering through the brick to which I am attached, through the plaster my shroud is wound into, and which now begins to crumble as the rumbling increases.

“Es iz tseyt,” he hisses to the others in Yiddish.

And now I can hear the clatter, beneath the rumble, of boots. He steps forward into the street. For a moment, the stripe of acid, citrine light hits his cheek, where a streak of filth is smeared away and the skin is clean. There is a scattering, there, of freckles.

Under his filthy cap, his hair the color of fire.

The others are running the other way, down the alley. His revolver is in his hand.

He shouts into the street: “Schweine! Hier bin ich!” He is grinning (or are his teeth bared in fear? Am I twisting this to make him something he is not?). He levels the revolver.

And then he is a red mist, and in that same instant, I feel myself separating. I see myself, chunks of me, in a cloud of brick dust, of plaster. The connections between the synapses tear and for a moment, before the wall I was a part of collapses, the ocular sensors see the others. They are halfway down the alley, already fallen, crumpled in that impossible way of the dead, smoke rising from their burning clothes. The enormous “thooooommmm” of the tank shell tears through my mind. . . .

Ten years old. My small hand clutching the razor-sharp knife with its clumsy handle repaired with electrical tape, fitted by work to my fingers, cutting through the belly of the fish. The cloud of wasps that would always hover over the pile of fish guts in the corner of the yard, their languid thoraxes undulating in the courtyard breeze. As I cut the fish, I always watch them—like a gazelle watches a tiger. I am terrified of them. Every week or so, one of them descends—arbitrary, unprovoked—and deals me a horrible bite.

I never know when it will come. Their buzz is the buzz of my damaged auditory receptors. Dimly, through the rubble I am buried in, I see the cherry tree that bloomed there in the courtyard. It was an ugly thing, with a damaged trunk eaten away by termites, most of its branches broken away, just a small ring of stunted growth near its top. You could hardly even call them branches. But every spring it wore a crown of glory, the most delicate shade, a pink that could be mistaken for white in the wrong light.

The SS man standing amid the broken pieces of me, my scattered limbs and memories, says, “Ja hier sind Sie.”

In the hallway one of the graduate students says “I want no more part of this.”

We have had to remove Hazan from the laboratory in a wheelchair. She is responsive, but for some reason is having trouble walking on her own. The sedatives? It’s among their possible effects. But it could be something else, and we all know it.

“Take her to my office,” I say. “Quickly.”

“Es iz tseyt,” Hazan mumbles.

I lean down to her. “What? What was that?”

“I want no part of this,” the graduate student says again.

I turn to the graduate student who has spoken. “No one needs you, if you do not want to be here.”

The graduate student is one I barely recognize. Pasty, overworked, anonymous; one of Hazan’s. As Hazan’s wheelchair passes them she lunges up and grabs them by the collar, yanks them down to her face.

“Don’t you dare get in my way,” she says. “You have no idea how painful my bite can be.”

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Gently, I pry the poor thing’s shirt collar out of her fingers. “Time for all of us to go home.”

On the boat later that night, Hazan jerks awake in her sleep with a spasmodic thrashing of limbs, shouting “Schweine! Hier bin ich!” I grapple with her, trying to keep her from toppling off the narrow berth. The sharp end of her elbow crashes into my eye.

By the morning, my eye has swollen half shut and is decorated with a crescent of blue-black. I lie on the deck in the sunshine clutching a bag of frozen peas on my face while Hazan sits cross-legged at the bow, practicing her knots. The Bosporus is blooming with jellyf ish whose simple nervous systems, etched inside their gelatinous transparency, resemble startled cartoon faces.

As I watch her, Hazan raises one of her hands and regards the back of it, holding it up like something she has just found on a beach—something she has never seen before. She does this for a full minute or more, turning it back and forth, clenching and unclenching it.

Later we sail to Anadolu Kavagi and have lunch near the docks. Over her second helping of fish, Hazan grins across the table at me and my black eye. It is watering, and I’m dabbing at it with a napkin. “You know, Baris, that in the end it’s you who made this possible. You’ve stood by me. Only you. In my entire life—only you.”

It feels like there is a grain of sand in my eye. “Compared to you, Hazan, I’m really just another graduate student.”

“No,” Hazan says. “What you are is the only person I’ve ever been certain of. I know you will see this through with me to the end.”

The sun is dazzling. “I just pressed the wrong button on the elevator, that’s all. All this time, I’ve just been hoping to get my favorite coffee mug back.”

Hazan kicks me, a little too hard, under the table.

From Journal Entry 250:

There is a difference between those who return to speak to the world, and those who do not. Those who return shape their own lives when they speak of it to others. They give it a narrative arc, a theme, a plot. You could see this plot in that alleyway, taking shape: the kiss on the mouth, the brave words—the other two, they would get away.

They would tell their grandchildren about their brave friend (I think he was a lover to them both, but he would have become a friend—would he have been insulted?) in the war, the one who had gone to meet his death at the hands of the Germans so they could get away. This all would have become a story, with a moral and an ending.

That was how it was supposed to happen: that was act three—“The Brave Partisans.” And there may have been a memoir, maybe even a Nobel Prize, who knows?

Some triumph to share with the world. At the very least, something to give this Bubbeh and Zaydeh an identity, a legend for their grandchildren, a nobility that would shine out past their liver spots and lend a secret light to their glaucous eyes.

Instead, there are only their crumpled bodies in a Tallinn alleyway, nameless graves (probably never even found), and even the German who stood over them and declared it all a waste probably never made it home. If he did, he never told anyone.

Baris—I know you are reading this: you’ll have seen this all the way through to the end. These stories of the dead, these blind alleyways of history nobody has been down—they have more to tell us about humanity than we have ever learned from listening to those who lived. Others can carry this research on. They must.

We can begin to learn the truth about ourselves. We can go and see the truth for ourselves: feel it and smell it, hear it, have it shake us to pieces. And maybe finally we will know empathy. Maybe we will all finally know empathy, Baris, the way you have felt it for me.

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* * *

The department head called me in for a meeting the next day. We’ve known each other for years, he and I: he was on the connectome project for a while, gained the glory of seeing it completed, then parlayed that into a career of endowed chairs, consulting, “expert” appearances, book signings. He’s a motivational speaker to the world, distractedly leading the research department at the institute three hours a week: the ultimate, really, in absentee landlords. He’s off selling futures in technologies others will do the hard work to develop.

Recently I’d heard him on a broadcast inspiring us all: “What’s the connectome worth, you say? Why have we invested these billions of dollars? I’ll tell you why. We used to think we were our genes, but we found we were more complicated than that.

Then we believed we were our neurons—but it turns out we’re no more our neurons than we are carbon itself. We share neurons with most living beings on the planet.

“So who are we? We’re not our neurons, we are the pattern in which they are connected. We are a pattern, embodied in matter. We’ve come full circle, you see? We’ve come to see, now, that we belong to the abstract world of information. Information is the new soul. And maybe that all sounds far-fetched to my audience, but imagine this—someday we’ll all be uploading ourselves into new bodies waiting for us on tropical beaches rather than flying there in planes. We’ll be encoding our patterns into laser beams and moving them at light speed. . . .”

All the lives of all the scientists dedicated to these concepts, and all this idiot wants people to imagine is a better way to get to the beach. . . .

All that money spent, and he’s boiling it down to “laser beams” to get their blood pumping and keep the money flowing in.

I don’t think people like Hazan’s parents will be uploading themselves into sexy tropical beach bodies any time soon.

Every week the department head goes to the barber down the street to have his scalp shaved clean with a straight razor. Every month, he has his connectome re-mapped and stored. It takes a whole day, clogs up the laboratories. No matter—he’s terrified of death. Of—as he calls it in one of the terms he uses to sell us to the public— information theoretic death. I hear his jocular, reassuring voice, wending its way into millions of earbuds: “all attempts to achieve immortality are really just us trying to permanently archive our information.”

“Baris—thanks for coming in. What happened to your eye? Are you all right?”

“It’s fine. The boom of a sailboat caught me as I was tacking.”

He nodded, glad not to have to continue to extend sympathies. “Look. I’m going to cut right to the point, because I know you’re a busy man.”

“Thanks,” I say. I’m fiddling with his espresso machine. He has this sleek chrome-plated contraption in his off ice that makes the best espresso I’ve ever had. Every time he hauls me into his off ice I race to see how many cups I can drink while he performs. I take my cup to a big leather armchair.

“I know you and Professor Hazan Terzi are close. I also know that lately you’ve been working with the connectome and the simultaneity.”

So he’d been told. I’m sure it was the graduate student who said he wanted “no part of this anymore.” He came in here and tipped Serhan off. But this was coming—
the inevitable questions, the attempt at shutting down of the project. I’d been preparing for it. I’d planned for it.

“That’s the case, yes. More precisely, I should say that we’ve been using the equipment of the simultaneity to work with the connectome.”

“What do you mean?”

I sighed and got up to make myself another espresso. “Well, we’ve told our graduate students . . . Look, Serhan . . . you and I both know we can’t trust graduate stuA Threnody for Hazan

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dents. We’ve sold them a story about going back in time. But what we’re really working on . . . well, it’s complicated, but you’ll understand. We’re working on a way of getting the connectome to address synaptic structures across time. So that when we reconstruct a person’s connectomes it’s . . . it’s hard to break this down. It’s like the difference between a snapshot in time and a video: we think we can use some of the functionality of the simultaneity to create a more accurate connectome. One that isn’t frozen in a single moment, a single second of a single day, but instead takes into account an evolution of the synaptic connections. But that isn’t what we’ve told the students. You know Professor Terzi. She’s . . . difficult. She’s secretive. But her methods work.”

Difficult . . . that might be an understatement. Hazan once gave Serhan the finger when he walked into one of her lectures. She once tried to spit on the department head during a department meeting. She missed, but many of us wish she hadn’t. She referred to Serhan as “that ‘practical use’ piece of shit” who always wanted us to produce widgets we could sell to the public.

Serhan frowned. “What I was told was this wild story about sending Hazan back in time to watch people kill each other. And something about her being injured by these experiments.”

“Ridiculous,” I said. “You understand the simultaneity as well as I do. You know that’s impossible—sending someone back and then retrieving them. What we’re trying to do is find a use for the simultaneity . . . to finally make it function for this institution as more than just a curiosity, providing us with patents we can exploit, and improve the effectiveness of connectome mapping. Of course you understand how sensitive this is. I don’t need to tell you what would happen at this delicate point if . . .” I trailed off, letting him imagine the intellectual property theft, the rival institutes seeking to outpace our research.

I had done it. The department head was already not there in the room. His eyes were far off, dreaming new patents, shaping new sales pitches. Somehow, I’d done it.

I’d done more than just shield us for a few days. . . .

Serhan rolled a pen over his desk blotter, pushing it along with his palm like a miniature rolling pin. Smoothing things into place. “Tell me a bit more about this. . . .”

Two hours later, I walked out high on excellent espresso, with the use of the labs for the next quarter, and an assurance that Hazan and I would be given a free hand, for now.

I had also doomed Hazan.

I came to the pilothouse sloop to tell her the news. She was on the deck rebuilding one of the bilge pumps, up to her elbows in grease, a smear of it across one cheek. Did I notice her hand trembling slightly? Was there an unsteadiness in her when she stood? Our minds move backward through time, inserting things, shifting things around. The world in our memories is not the world that was. Even our personal histories are distorted. There is no solid ground in the mind, no truth to rest upon.

“Finally,” she said. “For once in my life I’ll get a chance to finish what I started.”

From Journal Entry 251:

We’ve missed the mark this time. I had aimed for a wall of a building, but the building is not where we thought it was. Instead, the shroud ends up working itself into the cobblestones of a lane. It’s a difficult angle for the ocular sensors, and disorienting; it is as if I am lying prone in the street. For a moment, I consider scrapping the insertion and trying again. But the ocular sensors are able to angle so that at least I am not staring up into the sky.

Distant gunfire clatters against the low-slung gray clouds. There is a shattered tree.

It is cold. January 27, 1945. Budapest. The jagged teeth of broken buildings jut from 78

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the gums of their own rubble. A haze of coal smoke and cordite is suspended over everything.

There are four of them. They are walking backward, almost running. One turns and pulls the trigger of a pistol, gets nothing but the tiny “click” of an empty Luger. In disgust, he throws the gun down on the cobblestones. One of them stumbles. Two of them are in quilted jackets, one in a matted sheepskin coat. Their heads are clumsily shaven against lice. I glimpse the tattered collars of German uniforms beneath their coats. The fourth is in a filthy German officer’s greatcoat. His once-blond hair is the color of tallow and ashes. Blood streams crimson from a wound on his scalp—blood as rich as a rose, the only brightness in this January world glazed with the dust of shattered brick and stone. They are standing right on top of me. I feel their boots on the surface of the shroud.

From around the corner I hear the Red Army soldiers call out:

“Ruki vverkh! Hände hoch!”

One of the Germans in a quilted jacket falls to one knee. He has a bayonet in his hand, and he plunges it into the shroud, works it into and through me, severing synapses, tearing through neurons, prying out a cobblestone from the street, his desperate fingers scrabbling between the stones, tearing loose a chunk of me. His comrades also fall to their knees and begin prying . . .

I attempt to scrap the insertion, but I cannot. Something has gone wrong. Something has already broken in the shroud. The failsafes are not functioning. He throws the piece of me, the brickbat, the chunk of myself. I see the Red Army soldiers, now, coming around the corner. There are five of them, three in cloth tank helmets, the other two in salt-stained ushankas. Their swollen, malnourished, windburned faces are all alike. The rest of their clothes are not what you would call uniforms anymore. Or maybe they are the true uniform of war—a burned, stained, re-stitched mass of rags and wrappings, dragged from the bodies of others as the desperate survivors slogged their way through unimaginable fire. The cheap, machine stamped

“Papasha” submachine guns they are brandishing are, I realize, empty. They were hoping the Germans would just surrender. One of them pulls the trigger with a hollow clack. The cobblestone strikes him in the face. He falls to one knee, shakes his head like a man trying to wake up, sits down heavily, and then slumps, unconscious or dead, to his side.

“Hände hoch! Hände hoch, ya skazal!” another one yells. There is a terrible fear in his voice.

As the four Germans pull me into pieces, I see my father. He is in his boat painted the color of a child’s summer sky, drifting in the middle of the street. The boat, hull half submerged, is rocking gently among the stones, its bow slightly rotating aft in a breeze that is not here in this time. My father is standing, balanced, concentrating as he hauls the net from the liquid surface of the street. The cobblestones and broken hunks of brick the two groups are hurling at one another fly past him, leaving him undisturbed. One passes, unnoticed, through his chest.

The hauling of the net requires patience and balance, as he taught me. You must not be distracted. He draws it slowly from beneath the stones. Tangled here and there is a struggling, scaled form, glittering, reflecting a light from elsewhere, drawn from its element underneath the stones. Near the bow of the boat, in white paint, in my father’s clumsy hand, is the name of the boat: Hazan, the name of his only child.

Then he flickers, fades. The sky, too, shudders, swarmed by black static as a hand grasps my memories and yanks them free from the rest of me, hurls them into the violent air . . .

Hazan would not wake up. We kept vigil for three hours, there in the lab. Her pulse A Threnody for Hazan

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was slow and even, her consciousness registering on the screens as having returned—the river of electrical impulses through the synapses. But she would not wake up. The graduate students stood in whispering circles, discussing. I sat by the side of the apparatus, my fingers gently touching hers. Afraid to disturb anything, but wanting her to know that there was someone here in this world, waiting. The others are worried for their careers—in their minds their futures are already engulfed by scandal. They see tenure torn from them, reputations burned.

Then she awoke. Just a flutter of eyelids, a disoriented groan—but enough.

We bring her from the lab in a stretcher. I drive her to the hospital myself. She is feverish, incoherent. The diagnoses fluctuate: there appears to be severe nerve damage. Massive short term memory loss. Periodic petit mal seizures. Her hands grasp the air as if pulling on a rope. Hand over hand. Is she trying to pull herself up from the hospital bed? Up out of some imagined well?

In her delirium she says, “I never asked for this. I never asked to be human.”

On the third day, she comes to. I am asleep at her bedside—barely sleeping, really.

She says, “Baris.” I open my eyes. She is sitting upright in the bed, her eyes clear. She has drawn the IV out from her arm, and is cross-legged on the sheets. Where was she, in the space between then and now? For those three days of delirium? What did she see?

“Is it over? Have they taken it away from me?”

“Not yet,” I say. “I’ve managed . . . I’ve managed to keep the students quiet about the accident. For now. But I don’t think we have more than a few days before one of them loses their nerve. We should gather the data while we can. Now that you are awake, I’ll return to the laboratory and start wiping the files.”

“No, Baris. I need to go in one more time. Can you take me to the boat, and then to the lab?”

“These places you are returning to—the damage they are doing to the shroud—it’s being transferred back somehow—back to your body in this time. I don’t know how it’s happening. It’s something, maybe, about Keiser’s Law.”

“Baris, they’re nothing. Ephemera, qualia. They’re ghosts in the nervous system, fading over time.”

I believed her because I wanted to. Her hand trembling on the boat—her looking at her hand, turning it over in the sun like an alien thing . . .

“You need to promise me, Hazan, if I agree to do this, that you will choose a safer target. That you’ll at least stop this obsession with war. It’s destroying you. There has to be a safer way to test. . .”

“Baris, enough.” A flush of anger drifted through the capillaries of her cheeks like a cloud, then faded. “I know you worry. And you are right. I’ll stay away from the war.

For good. Besides,” she said, “there’s no wisdom to be found there. Just interrupted lives and cruelty. I thought I would find some sort of answer. I was wrong.” She tried to stand, but had to be helped from the bed. “I’m all right. I’m just tired, that’s all.

Maybe I just need a break. Can you take a break from being human?”

Supporting her with an arm around her waist, I managed to thread us past the doctors, get us out of the hospital. What a world we live in; the weak support the strong, and everyone sees it the other way around.

Two days later, we are back in the lab. There is only a quartet of graduate students left. These are Hazan’s most loyal followers. They do not love her: they are simply the ruthless ones. They know if they can manage to cling to her for long enough, they can ride her wake into greatness. We can all feel the invisible hand of the institute clos-ing on us. Soon, they will confiscate all of this. They will take what can be marketed, and close down the rest. Reckless, pioneering Hazan will be the human sacrifice—
ejection from the institute, disgrace. Hazan’s career has ended—torn to bits by am-80

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bition. The students hope one of them can pick up the pieces and make their own career out of them, with tenure and all the benefits.

As always, she has masked her destination’s coordinates, coded everything herself.

She takes the little calmative pill, swishes the glassful of water through her teeth and says: “See you soon, Baris.”

She settles in, closes her eyes.

And does not wake up.

I sleep, when I can sleep, at her side. Her face is serene. She looks far more vulnerable than she would like. Finally, on the third day, without any indication her consciousness has returned to her body, she’s moved to the institute hospital’s suspension ward, where they seal her into one of the tubes high in the wall to wait with the others in their long sleep. Until what? Until, I suppose, the resurrection. Hazan, where have you gone? And for how long? You said I would see you soon. How easily you break your word. Hazan the liar.

I am in tears. I am alone, again, in the world. The Surah of Az-Zumar rises unbid-den in my brain, itself resurrected from my childhood days in the cold Madrassah, swaying, mumbling the Koran to atone for the sins of my father: And the trumpet will be sounded, and all that are in the heavens and all that are on Earth will fall down senseless. Unless they be such as God wills. And then it will sound again—and lo! Standing they will begin to see!

Serhan moved into PR mode quickly, shifting blame for the accident away from the institute onto Hazan and myself, who had an “unhealthy, obsessive relationship that endangered both of them.” Moreover, he told the press, “I have to say that it was personally depressing to see Professor Baris Burakgazi dragged into this. As many of you know, he and I finished the Human Connectome project together. Our years of fruitful collaboration . . .”

What had been accomplished in “fruitful collaboration” with Serhan could be written on a single page. Then burned, and scattered to the wind. I left the university with my possessions in a box, happy to go.

But where?

To the boat, the only place that called to me, the only place that made sense.

To find there the light on in the salon, the Calvados and the single glass, the neatly stacked journals.

In the hour before dawn, I read the last lines in the journal.

From Journal Entry 252:

And so, Baris, you’re finally going to have to learn to sail the boat single-handed.

Now you can see why I pushed you to get so quick at trimming the sails when we were coming about . . . this boat, for what it is worth, is now yours. As I am.

Yours,

Hazan.

I go up onto the deck, where Venus dominates the sky and the stars are fading.

And then I see it: a gossamer shimmer, coating the boat from bow to aft. Like a trick of the eye, like a liquid reflection on the ceiling of a room, a heatwave pooling on a road: I lay a hand on the cool surface of the boat deck rail.

Hazan in the hospital: “Maybe I just need a break. Can you take a break from being human?”

“Whatever shape you choose, Hazan. For however long you choose it.”

In the pilothouse I start the engine. I bring in and coil the mooring ropes. I take the wheel in the pilothouse. And we pull, Hazan and I, slowly away from the dock, headed down the Bosporus and toward the Marble Sea. ❍

A Threnody for Hazan

81

LOVE

SONGS

FOR THE

VERY AWFUL

Robert Reed

Robert Reed tells us that “Much of my year has been spent on a sequel to my trilogy/fat novel, The Memory of Sky.

Where and how that publishes, I don’t know. But it’s quite a story, and I want to see how it ends.” Bob’s latest tale is an ode to the lives of some difficult people.

“Everybody knows everyone in a small town.”

A fool’s cliché, if there ever was one.

I grew up with five hundred strangers. Every child endured the same K through 12 school, responsible adults worked one of several prosaic jobs, and dying in that nowhere place meant being planted inside one of two tidy cemeteries. Yet all that forced intimacy didn’t deliver much in the way of deep knowledge. Neighbors would close their blinds, and who knew what happened indoors? And even with eyes open, your parents and your lovers couldn’t see any of your secret thoughts.

The town lived with a suffering woman. Bruised arms and black eyes told us that she hurt, and there was the recurring limp caused from another “stupid spill.” Her husband was a public drinker and brawler—a general shit who liked to torment his possessions, including that mousy little woman and their two young sons. But while her misery was common knowledge, nobody called the authorities. You see, the brute in question was a deputy sheriff, and his boss happened to be his uncle. We might act cold and disapproving toward those powerful men, but being reasonable people, we were also determined cowards.

“Pillar of the community” is another cliché.

One neighbor lady considered herself our pillar. One day the abused wife was standing in the canned food aisle of our tiny grocery store, and for some reason that seemed like the perfect opportunity to deliver a passionate lecture. “Dear,” said our pillar, “the next time he tries to hit you, you let him. Let him and then shoot him.

And after that, call the State Patrol. Only the State Patrol. Believe me, darling. Nobody is going to say a word against you. We know what he is, and self-defense is going to win in court. Just so long as that monster is in the ground.”

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important for the town to appreciate what she had done. And that’s why we know what happened next. Very little. Embarrassed muttering, a few whispered words that could mean anything, and then a rapid, face-saving retreat. But those awkward moments were followed by . . .

What?

Quite a lot was possible. She used a shotgun on her husband, or maybe a pistol, or she carved up his heart with a knife. Maybe she found him drunk and unconscious and shoved a pillow over the helpless bastard’s mouth. Or her foot slipped on the gas pedal and she drove over him. Twice. Unless of course the brute heard tales about that grocery conversation, which would be absolutely reasonable, and that’s why he shattered her skull against the kitchen counter.

Which story is true?

I won’t tell.

What I’m talking about is larger than one family’s tragedy. This is me making the point that we see each other every day. We look at faces and reasonably believe that we know these faces. Familiarity fools the mind. One violent suggestion uttered beside the fruit cocktail might or might not play a role in the future. But the Good Samaritan has no way to know what will happen. And, more importantly, that mousy wife doesn’t know either. Life never stops giving advice, and everybody is a stranger, particularly to themselves.

But what if a team of experts manages to solve the human puzzle? Deploying fancy, one-of-a-kind machines, professors and grad students render each of us transparent. Suddenly personality can be modeled, every action predicted ahead of time.

What kind of future does that deliver?

Let me guess your thinking:

“Giant forces reach inside our heads, manipulating little us.”

Another cliché.

You need to turn that thought around.

Bodden was a compelling masculine package. He had a noble forehead and strong, testosterone-enriched chin, and his rich voice was usually pleasant or at least polite.

If inspired, the man could become quite entertaining. And he wanted to be entertaining today. His audience was female. She was older than he was, which was not a problem. Bodden preferred this kind of lady. That was a confession often made during the first date, and it often brought the most irresistible moment, seeing the light blaze up inside those unfamiliar eyes.

Promiscuous men enjoyed sex more than average. That’s what people assumed, yet people were often wrong. Bodden liked sex, but he was motivated more by a specific vanity. He had an older sister whose girlfriends used to flirt with the pretty kid.

Unless they were just teasing him, of course. Those affections could have been imaginary. Who knew? What’s important was that the young male spent a lot of time contemplating seventeen- and eighteen-year-old marvels. Each one of those women seemed experienced about life, and they were nearly impossible to impress. But if they could be won . . . well, that was the prize worth every effort. . . .

Heidi. Today’s woman was named Heidi. She was a doctor, though not the medical kind, and the specifics of her job were very important to her. She insisted that her subject understood the technical aspects. Bodden was the subject, and he pretended to listen, but he was being distracted by the clinical surroundings and this important older woman—particularly her careful smile and how those work shoes looked so worn out and comfortable.

Heidi praised her team and their project, and after a dramatic pause, she mentioned a few of the potential consequences. “This is very exciting work,” she insisted.

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“Revolutionary work, maybe. We hope.” Her enthusiasm was pleasant, which was why Bodden nodded agreeably. But he was ignoring most of her noise. Daydreams kept distracting him. Right up until she said the words, “There are potential risks,”

and that’s when he found his focus.

He leaned forward.

“But the process itself is perfectly safe,” she continued.

Bodden was twenty-three, and he relished the company of successful women. Dr.

Heidi dressed like a lab technician who didn’t care how she looked. But he had the feeling that she would shine on a date. And it certainly didn’t hurt that she was going to pay him respectable money, and it sounded like the easiest possible work in the world. Those were all good reasons to act pleasant and smile happily.

“Now, do you have any questions, sir?”

Keep this woman talking. Nothing else mattered. Her smile meant that she was either interested in him or professionally polite. Either way, Heidi needed Bodden’s cooperation. Which was why he felt entitled to say, “I’d like to know a little about you.

If what you’re doing to me is dangerous—”

“Not dangerous,” she interrupted. “I never said that.”

“ ‘Potential risks,’ you mentioned.”

Something about his words or expression caught her interest. Heidi jotted notes into the tablet on her lap.

Bodden studied her jeans and the bony knees, and not for the first time, he imagined this woman naked, warm and curled up into a relaxed ball, her back against his bare chest and her geek face pushing hard into a sad little pillow.

“We’re going to model human identity,” said the woman who wasn’t naked. “And if you agree to help, you’ll be one of thirty subjects. You’ll be studied like nobody has ever been studied. Which I already explained to you, in detail.” She suddenly sounded much older, like a miffed teacher dealing with her careless student. “Were you listening to me, Mr. Lauren?”

He said, “Sure.”

Smiling, he said, “Call me Bodden, please.”

“Bodden,” she repeated. Then with the same serious expression, she said, “A neurological weave has to be planted inside you. And as I warned you, once established, the weave is permanent. It cannot be removed. Even if you leave our project, and we hope you never do.”

No, apparently he had been listening. “I know all that, sure,” he said cheerfully.

“Little nano somethings stuck between my brain cells.”

That comment triggered more note taking.

Bodden waited politely, his imaginary woman grunting into her pillow.

Then the real woman said, “Just so you know, sir. Those ‘little somethings’ are clinical tools, and I happen to be the person most responsible for designing them. In any research project, it’s standard procedure to mention risks, and believe me, when I say that I’m serious about my work, I mean it.”

He liked this, how offended Heidi became, and all it took were a few careless words.

“Well, thank you for being honest,” he said graciously. “And I can tell. You’re a very competent person.”

She seemed to like that. She couldn’t help but feel warmed by canned praise, and that’s why she smiled. A very good smile, as it happened, and that’s when Bodden began to believe that they could become lovers.

The two strangers stared at each other, saying nothing.

Then the research subject leaned even closer. “But first, I want to hear more about you, Heidi. Since I’m trusting you with my life and soul.”

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“What do you want to know?”

“Well, for example . . . where were you born?”

“In a little, little town,” she said. “Believe me, you wouldn’t know it.”

Bodden was the first man I ever truly knew. And that admission comes from someone who had loved several boys and men, and who came close to marrying two of those heartthrobs.

Not that I ever liked and trusted Bodden.

Surgeons were prepping for the next wave of implants, which would be the last wave. Bodden and I were sharing the waiting room, and tired of the silence, I decided to launch what seemed like a safe topic.

“So what about that name? Where does ‘Bodden’ come from?”

He tapped his temple. “Can’t you see for yourself ?”

We’d been together all week, marching over this same ground. Our project wasn’t focused on memory, and my machines cared little about individual recollections. Personality was the point. Sure, the past played its role when it came to building a person’s nature, but single memories were rarely critical. Why? Because memory is cheap. Each of us holds an inf inite array of tiny, misremembered events, and personality will use what it wants. Personality hunts out the little moments that bolster whatever it already accepts as fact. That was one lesson that our earlier work had proven. Even if I wanted to read a man’s thoughts, I couldn’t. The electrochemical mayhem was too intense, and not only were the necessary tools unbuilt, but they’d likely, thankfully, remain impossible for the next hundred years.

“The mind has a climate,” I told him. “Temperament and character. These things create reliable patterns that roll back and forth inside each of us. Thoughts are complex. Fickle and shifting and gone. Like the weather from day to week is complicated and quick to change. But temperament and character are almost simple. That’s why personality can be modeled. Climatologists don’t need to know the details of weather. Where the rain falls today or where the sun blazed twenty years ago. And it’s the same with me. I don’t need to see anyone’s thoughts to know if they are honest or lazy or stubborn or scared.”

“Huh,” he said. “I like that description. Thank you.”

Bodden’s character had already been partially patterned, and once the surgery was finished, we’d have the means to build a final model. But what I saw already wasn’t particularly appealing. Or, for that matter, surprising. I was near an imma-ture, manipulative male. This young man traded on his very good looks and a happy absence of shame, and I didn’t need research grants to see all of that for myself.

Years of dating and two aborted weddings should give anyone the wisdom to spot a vain, self-absorbed little shit.

But we had to be together, and needing a distracting conversation, I pressed him about his name.

“So just tell me. Where did ‘Bodden’ come from?”

He was smiling and then he was still smiling, but in a different way. “That’s my cousin’s name,” he mentioned.

And he fell silent.

Something new was lurking in those eyes. Something weak and sorry, and sweet, and maybe surprising.

I started to ask an obvious question.

But the man interrupted. “I don’t know why his mom gave it to him. Honestly, I never asked her.”

“But you took his name?”

He shrugged, offering a bewitchingly shy smile.

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Misreading the expression, I assumed this was a game. I teased him, laughing when I asked, “Does your cousin know you stole his name?”

“My cousin is dead,” he said. “And his mother too. In a bloody car crash.”

Shit.

“I was ten, and I liked ‘Bodden.’ ” The stranger acted embarrassed, shrugging those broad shoulders while grinning at the f loor. “That’s why I stole it. I made an announcement during the double funeral. Everybody was there, and the mood was miserable, and I had a feeling that people would think that this was nice. Taking the name was. I was honoring the dead boy, obviously. So they started to call me ‘Bodden,’ and when I was old enough, I made that my legal name.”

“I’m sorry,” I muttered.

“Don’t be,” he said.

I touched the ChromePad, bringing up the unfinished model. Bodden was a three-dimensional graph of delicate, shifting colors. Yet nothing there was particularly helpful. No, most of the insights involved my mind and my own very predictable climate.

We sat quietly for a few moments.

Then the young man smiled warmly. No doubt I looked vulnerable, and he was getting ready to ask me out. I didn’t need the f ifty thousand implants to know those thoughts.

That’s when I surprised both of us.

“After today,” I said. “When I pass to the rest of the team . . .”

“Yes?” he asked. The soft word emerging from a very pleasant, plainly amoral grin.

And then he waited, knowing exactly what I would say.

Then there was the day when older women weren’t on the plate anymore. Possible reasons offered themselves: Available ladies had become too saggy and fat and desperate. Or maybe their daughters had matured to the point where they deserved Bodden’s full attentions. Unless he had grown bored and was ready for this change.

Although in those rare moments of self-reflection, looking hard at himself, Bodden could appreciate his obvious limitations. This man’s looks had matured, and the charming boy was vanquished. Deep in his thirties, Bodden still hadn’t found lasting work, much less a career, and it was easy for world-weary ladies to pin their worst suspicions on him. So that’s why it was reasonable to chase the young ones. Besides, Bodden still had his gift for first conversations, and in particular, a genius for offering whatever words would make fresh eyes grow large, ready to be spellbound.

“I wish I could change,” he said.

This girl was a girl, barely twenty and physically small. Sitting on a tall stool, she smiled easily, ready for a good reason to be compassionate. Dress and attitude promised an open, engaging mind. Bodden imagined her naked on the stool. He imagined her thoughts right now. “I wish I could change,” he had said, and she parsed those words into the most fashionable interpretation.

“You can change,” she insisted. “It isn’t very difficult.”

“Have you done it?” he asked.

The smile brightened, her rump shifting against the stool’s thin padding. “No, not me. But I know people. My parents, for one. For two.”

“What did they do?”

“Dad became a lot more patient, more empathetic.” Something about that confession deserved laughter. “He might have to fine-tune some of those qualities. But basically, it’s remade how he looks at the world.”

“And your mother?”

Women often lost weight, which might have been the case here. But the girl offered something more interesting. “Mom became musical.”

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“Musical?”

“Which is amazing. I mean, the woman has never shown any interest in singing or playing instruments. Not that I ever saw.”

“So she sings now?” Bodden asked.

Both of them laughed at that. Musical talent and the necessary reflexes . . . those were relatively easy tricks. But your voice was your voice, now and probably always.

“No, Mom took up the violin,” said that proud daughter.

Which was a very modern cliché. Across the world, fifty million ladies were mastering the violin.

Bodden turned on his stool, just far enough to look at the mirror behind the bar, admiring their shared reflection.

The girl watched his face, and thinking about what he had confessed, she said,

“See? Change is easy enough.”

At which point he dipped his head, as if ashamed. Naturally she guessed that money was his problem. That’s why she said, “The costs are going down. Every year, about 20 percent cheaper. So eventually, obviously, each of us will be in charge of our own nature.”

“ ‘In charge of our own nature,’ ” he quoted. “I like that.”

She felt warm, at ease.

“But that’s not the trouble with me,” he said.

“No?”

“And you’ll never guess why,” he promised.

Intrigue always made eyes grow big.

“I had a lot of work done on my brain,” he said. “Years ago, and the machinery was new and crude, by your standards.” He delivered a few hard taps to his forehead, as if he was angry. Though he wasn’t. “They’re still in there, getting in the way.”

“You’ve got Prodigies?”

That’s what the nanos were called today. A marketer’s name, like Kleenex and Drain-o.

“No, they’re like the great-grandparents of Prodigies. I guess. But the weave is there only to analyze my nature. It doesn’t put me ‘in charge.’ ”

Now she was interested. Leaning close, she said, “I don’t quite understand.”

“The original study,” Bodden allowed.

“What?”

“I was part of it.”

“Really?”

Liars got themselves into trouble by being too inventive. Bodden wasn’t an enthusiastic liar. When truth helped, he used the truth, telling her about the project that hired both him and his unmapped brain. He told stories about the weeks of research and the wonderful scientists who mapped not only his soul, but several dozen other guinea pig souls, too. Every detail gave the girl a handle for asking the internet about him, if she wanted. Bodden hoped that she would take the trouble. It was always a sweet moment, some girl finding his photograph in the news archives. But what mattered most was to f inish his biography with a shrug and the slightly wounded admission, “These are first-generation devices inside me. They weren’t designed to modify our natures, but they still get in the way. Don’t ask about the technical reasons. I don’t know them. What I do understand is that I can’t be changed.

I’m going to have to remain exactly the person that I am today.”

The girl couldn’t decide how to react. Curious but politely suspicious, she couldn’t help but feel sorry for this fellow who approached her in the bar. Yes, she wanted to like him, but she hadn’t decided to go that far. Not yet. No man and no story could win her over that easily.

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Bodden imagined her back, naked and pressed against his bare chest, her face buried inside her trembling hands.

Then he smiled and she saw whatever she wanted in his smile.

“Memory and weather,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“A friend once explained these things to me,” he said. “Each of us experiences so much in life. Too much, really. We can’t count all the days that we’ve lived, and that’s why we have to be careful about what we cherish. That’s why most of our memories are half-forgotten or totally lost.”

“But what’s weather got to do with this?”

“Rain,” he said. “How many individual rains can you remember?”

It was an odd problem, and the girl gave it an honest attack.

They sat quietly for a full minute. Then Bodden interrupted, saying, “By the way, that friend worked for the project. In fact, she’s the one who put all those tools inside my head.”

That won a grin. “Maybe she was more than a friend.”

“Nobody can be more than a friend,” he said.

The f irm little body shifted, and she smiled a little harder. “I have six favorite rains,” she told him.

“Each worth cherishing,” he said.

She agreed.

Another pause stretched out. Needing a fresh topic, Bodden said, “Your parents.

They sound as if they’re enjoying this new world.”

The smile lost its enthusiasm. “Oh, they do. Sure. But they aren’t the same people anymore. That’s probably why they divorced.”

“I’m sorry,” were the expected, perfect words.

Bodden said them with great conviction.

His new girlfriend sighed. And with a perplexed shrug, she said, “Patience and the violin. You’d think those things would get along better.”

Memory is weak, but I remember that old break room. Fake sunshine, fake tiling.

A shared refrigerator standing next to vending machines, every box populated with sweet poisons as well as good food. People usually had coffee, but I preferred tea. My own mug and hot white tea, and people stole from their colleagues’ stockpiles, but otherwise that room is where we were honest. New experts in a field that didn’t even exist a few years earlier, we would sit at the big table, each claiming a favorite chair.

Looking at one another’s faces, we wondered what the strangers were thinking. We wrestled with our own invisible natures. But none of us would map our personalities. We made that declaration early on, and I think it’s mostly held. “Not in the cards,” we pledged. I’ve never liked clichés. Too simple, too pat. But by then, with thirty subjects in the study, we were beginning to see just how every mind, brilliant or dumb, was built on the neurological equivalent of clichés.

Excitement and pride. Those simple, pat emotions were on display in the break room. But we also let ourselves worry. To the administration, to the press, we avoided mentioning risks. But they were obvious: Model the man and you took the first step in remaking his beliefs, his capacities. If anybody rebuilt my machines, making them smaller and stronger and far more programmable . . . well, then the man’s nature would lie exposed, ready to be sculpted at will.

Standard conspiracies were invoked. We railed against evil governments, selfish corporations, and the mad religions that would twist the wills of millions. Some mornings, caffeine and Doritos led to a vision of total world enslavement. Which sounds odd, I know. If we believed any of this, why go forward? Because our work 88

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was so very, very neat, of course. Because tomorrow somebody else was sure to do what we were doing now. Because we were professionals, each with a career to nourish. And being professionals, we appreciated the fact that we were out of our element and likely wrong about our predictions. Which is exactly what happened.

Clichés are lightweight and easy, and the easy wants to hide what’s true.

That’s why I hate clichés.

Bodden. He was another break room topic. Usually a female colleague would mention my boyfriend. Usually in that passing way that never sounds like an interroga-tion, except that it is. Bodden’s name would float over the table, and people would look at me, signaling their curiosity if not out-and-out concerns. The man was gor-geous, sure. Maybe that was reason enough. And he was certainly young and possibly vigorous. Was I the sort of lady who liked lustful distractions? Bodden also had a talent for funny words as well as warm, caring noise. When empathy was necessary.

But he was one of three sociopaths in our study. Every week, without fail, he came into the shop, undergoing another comprehensive scan for money. And every week, he proved himself to be a self-absorbed boy. No smart professional woman could have feelings for a creature like that. That’s what the glances were saying, and the silences, and those thoughtful sips of coffee while the tea drinker offered little details from last night’s date.

Bodden and I were together for ten weeks. Then it was finished, and I was shocked to discover how sad that made me feel.

My ex-boyfriend was far more resilient. I know because grief is something that we would have seen on the scans, and it just wasn’t there.

“But why him?”

Only one colleague ever used that blunt phrasing. He also happened to be the one colleague who wanted to date me. Both of us knew that. Probably everyone else in the building was aware of those urges. But the man had that clinging wife and those darling, wicked triplets, and those were all good reasons not to act on our urges.

“Why that self-centered boy?”

Until then, I couldn’t explain my logic. There didn’t seem to be any logic in play.

Sometimes it felt as if a different person asked Bodden out. Someone other than me paid for that evening, and the same stranger invited that man to remain the night.

Which happened more times than I could count. Yet the man’s nature was obvious and consistent and often quite fun. Those aren’t small blessings. A vain and lovely boy, so full of himself that there wasn’t room for anyone else, and the relationship would never last, which was another precious thing. And best of all, I enjoyed being the center of attention at work, enduring the winks and glares of strangers who couldn’t make sense of me.

The breakup was my doing. My excuse was the recent discovery that Bodden was dating another woman. But of course he never worked hard to keep that new woman secret. I found myself turning forceful while evading anger, delivering my news, and he was polite and calm and then gone. Except he was still with the project. Our subjects arrived every seven days, allowing us to make new tests, adding to what we knew about their natures and our limitations. Which wasn’t my job, no. I was the bio-engineer who built the f irst “nano-somethings.” As my ex-boyfriend liked to call them when he wanted to tease me.

“Why the hell Bodden?”

My married male colleague found me in the break room. It was late, everyone else had left, and I was crying. A quiet sobbing, and because this man cared about me, he became angry. “It doesn’t make sense,” he repeated. “None of this is reasonable. Why spend any time with that awful, awful creature?”

Until that moment, I was sad but not painfully sad. Sure, he caught me crying, but Love Songs for the Very Awful

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any good distraction would cancel out the small, tidy grief. Which my colleague un-wittingly supplied.

Suddenly, everything was obvious.

I straightened my back, dried my eyes. “Because,” I said. “Because you’re married, and you already have your children. That’s why I fucked Bodden. Because he was free for the taking and he was fun. And fun matters. And mostly because it is a pleasure, an absolute joy, sitting beside someone you know perfectly. Someone who won’t ever waste a moment of his life, or yours, wishing that he could be somebody else.”

Restaurant chains hired humans, if only because humans liked to be served by their own kind. The kitchens could be automated, but that woman behind the counter was no machine. Indigo hair to the shoulders, indigo eyes, and a red-and-black plaid shirt. Those elements surrounded a wide mouth that was pretty, yet also grim and suspicious. She looked like a tough, world-weary soul. Reading that face, Bodden decided to sit at the far end of the long counter. Maybe she looked his way and maybe she didn’t. Other customers needed her focus. One fellow in particular.

Someone had made a mess of his Prodigies, and he was flipping from one personality to another. That happened sometimes. Cheap packages that somehow slipped past the regulators. In this case, the young guy was giddy and hungry one moment, sullen and terrified the next. Quick transformations, and both souls wanted attention from the waitress, and she’d be lucky to get any tip from that odd duo.

Age had its blessings. An unmodified man in his early fifties could sit on a stool, maybe for hours. A long monitor was behind the counter, behind the new waitress.

Bodden pretended to watch the morning news, foreign wars and fresh disasters mixed with election bulletins and election commercials. Then they jumped back to what must have been the lead story. The Indian prime minister’s Prodigies were hacked, turning her into a mass murderer, and she would have launched every last one of her missiles, if not for the overlapping safeguards and the secure souls on her staff.

“Can I help you?”

This wasn’t a happy woman, and she had a very particular anger. That’s what the pretty face meant. So he kept his smile tentative, saying, “Please,” and then gave his usual breakfast order.

She punched it into the retro-style tablet.

Knowing there was risk, Bodden pointed at the screen. “I guess we’re lucky to be alive.”

She was paid to talk. But she wasn’t paid much, and her work was rough some mornings. “What’s that tell you?” she asked. “You’re fortunate because you just happen to be breathing still? How fucking low is this bar?”

A smart, shrill one, wasn’t she? He wanted to laugh but knew better.

“I’ve got other customers,” she said, already walking away.

Bodden watched that body move. A strong gliding stride, and there was a lot to enjoy, sitting in this Waffle House with a strange, wonderful lady. The hour ended with apologies from the new Indian prime minister, plus a threat to find the hacker. Who was probably infected with an apocalyptic personality, as these things happened.

Then another round of political commercials commenced, every candidate parading his or her soul. Which all looked pretty much the same, and that was worth a little laugh from a man who usually didn’t care much for irony.

The waitress brought his food and started to leave.

“Stay,” said Bodden.

“Why?”

“Because I like your face.”

That face acquired a hard, almost chilling stare.

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“I’m going out on a limb here,” said Bodden. “Man troubles?”

“Maybe.”

“Boyfriend giving you hell?”

“No, it’s my goddamn husband.”

He straightened, glancing at the hot, fresh, and utterly predictable breakfast.

“Well, I can’t help you there.”

“So don’t try.”

She left and Bodden realized how much his stomach hurt. Every shred of appetite was stolen. Failure was hanging over this situation, and it was amazing to realize how utterly important it was, finding some way to leave this place with his dignity and life intact.

Something fresh was required.

The waitress returned for no reason except to say, “You’re not eating. Is something wrong?”

“I’m just thinking,” he said.

“Okay,” she said. Ready to leave him again.

“I’m thinking about my old girlfriend,” he said.

“What, like a thousand years ago?”

He laughed, as best he could.

“Heidi,” he said.

The indigo eyes stared at him.

“She told me a story. A very sad story, it seemed like.”

The waitress straightened, and the angry mouth tightened. “I don’t care,” she said.

But she didn’t walk away.

“Heidi grew up in a little town. An everybody-knows-everyone kind of place. One of the neighbor ladies was abused by her husband. Who was a local cop and untouch-able, and I don’t remember the particulars. But it was bad. Obvious to the town, and nobody dared move against him. You can imagine.”

“I guess.”

“Your husband. Does he beat you?”

“No.”

“That’s good.”

She was staring at his plate.

“Anyway, this local gal took action. If you can call it that. This Good Samaritan caught the abused woman inside the grocery, pushed her against the shelves, and told her to shoot her husband. Shotgun him at close range, messy but done. And then the town would stand behind her at the trial. That’s what she promised.”

Those dark eyes had lifted.

“Poor lady,” Bodden said. “Of course she got embarrassed. Limped away as fast as she could. But enough people saw the incident, saw it and heard it, and before the day was done, everybody knew.”

“So what happened?”

He looked at her. “Maybe I don’t know.”

“Then why bring it up?”

With a shrug, Bodden said, “I sometimes hear from Heidi. Back in the day, she helped run this big research project. I was part of her project. And I still am. They bring me in every so often. Look at my head, measure the changes, and give me money for that. She usually isn’t there, but I always get an update.”

“You still care about this woman?”

“Oh, I don’t care about anybody. I’ve got the data to prove that.”

She laughed at that.

“Anyway, Heidi broke up with me. Thirty years ago, nearly. And then she hooked Love Songs for the Very Awful

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up with a colleague, and he eventually split from his wife, and she married him and had a couple kids of her own. Grown, of course.”

“Stealing another man’s wife. Heidi sounds like a piece of work.”

“Everybody is.”

They laughed together, for the first time.

Then again, she asked, “What about that other lady? Did she ever get that shotgun?”

“You care about her, do you?”

“I’m curious.”

“I’ll tell you. But first, you have to go out with me.”

“On a date?”

“Call it what you want.”

“I have another six hours here,” she warned.

“Well, I’ll try to stay alive that long,” he joked.

She looked at the plate. “Let me heat this up for you.”

“Thanks. Because I am hungry.”

Bodden watched her leave and come back again, and he watched her working the far end of the counter. And in the midst of those pleasures, the man with too many personalities found a third. He calmly walked down and claimed the neighboring stool. “Okay,” he said. “I heard you two talking. I’ve got to know.”

Grinning, Bodden said, “Yeah, that waitress is my wife. But she changes her personality every couple of months. And I have to come in here and find a new way to win her all over again.”

“No, I pretty much figured that,” the stranger said. “I just want to hear about the shotgun.”

“There was no shotgun,” Bodden said. “In the end, the woman filed for divorce, and it was a quiet business. Which just about proves it.”

“Proves what?”

“You never know about people,” he could have said. But he didn’t want to spout another cliché. So, pointing, Bodden said, “Nine years married to that beauty, and I still can’t believe how happy I feel.” ❍

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SEVEN

MONTHS OUT

AND TWO

TO GO

Rachel Swirsky and Trace Yulie

Rachel Swirsky rachelswirsky.com received her MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers Workshop. She’s published over seventy short stories, and has received nominations for the Hugo, Locus, World Fantasy, and Sturgeon Awards, in addition to twice winning the Nebula Award. Readers can help her keep writing stories at patreon.com/rachelswirsky.

Trace Yulie traceyulie.com is a graduate of the 2010 Clarion West Writers Workshop. Her other publications include stories in Interzone, Crossed Genres, and The Future Fire. Trace grew up barefoot in the rural South and has been fascinated by the solemn intelligence in the eyes of animals for as long as she can remember. This story, her first for Asimov’s, is dedicated to her mother, who spent her youth on a cattle ranch.

Kate fell flat on her back in front of the feed station. For a moment, all she saw were the strands of hay fallen from her bale, scattered across the cold ground in a splay of gold.

She cursed her growing bulk and lost equilibrium. She was seven months pregnant, and it felt like the ground itself had thrown her down.

Late spring air swept down from the mountains, goose-pimpling her bare arms.

From her vantage, she could see the fresh grasses waving and bending in the light.

The mottled line of cattle was moving slowly toward her, following their lead, Big Red, down the thin, bare trail their hooves had worn into the hillside.

Kate spent long moments struggling to right herself until she finally managed to stand up. She brushed the seat of her overalls and hefted the bale again. She tossed it overhand into the feeder, then reached into the flatbed with the baling hook for another.

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She turned to see the cows already back, standing around her in a silent, waiting circle.

“That was fast,” Kate said. The space between her eyebrows pinched slightly as she surveyed the one hundred and ten of them: auburn-and-white or black-and-white, with Caleb, the black Angus bull, patrolling the edge of the herd. Spring calves hung back behind their mothers on unsteady legs.

Big Red regarded Kate with dewy, brown eyes set in a wide auburn face. Three of the females, including Big Red, still had round, swollen bellies like Kate’s own.

Kate shrugged off her surprise as she lifted another bale and then another. “Here you are now,” she said to Big Red’s sober expression. “I always feed you, don’t I?”

She set the hook and her gloves in the flatbed and stretched, pressing calloused hands to her aching back. The cows moved forward to the feeder with a whispering shuffle that was followed by the grinding of their robust teeth.

Only Big Red held back. She stared fixedly into the distance.

Kate followed her gaze toward the hills on the westernmost border of the farm’s twelve hundred acres. She listened intently, but heard nothing. “Something got you spooked today?”

At the sound of her voice, Big Red turned to regard her for a long moment. When it passed, she lowered her head to the feed station and began to chew.

When Kate got back to the farmhouse after topping up the salt sheds and checking the water troughs, the old rotary phone was ringing its brassy tone from the kitchen.

She jogged up the steps to the back door and grabbed the receiver with a clatter.

It was Bill, her nearest neighbor thirteen miles down. “I was wondering if the rest of your cows have dropped their calves all right.”

“All but three.”

“You need help with any of them? My girls have all dropped.”

“I’ll let you know if I do.” Kate squeezed the receiver between her neck and shoulder as she strained to remove her boots.

“At least let me help with the worming before the calves go to market.”

“I said I’ll let you know, okay?”

“You don’t have to do it all by yourself, Kate. I mean, that’s a lot of calves to treat.”

“I can take care of my own, Bill.”

After a pause, he said, “All right.”

Kate was exhausted when she hung up the phone. She couldn’t face going back out today. After the fall, her back and legs were more sore than usual. She paused at the foot of the stairs with her hand on the railing, trying to decide whether a hot soak and less pain would be better or worse than the silence of the bath.

She decided to try, lying half-submerged with her hand on her belly, feeling the baby’s nascent shape. Sometimes that made things better. This time it didn’t.

In the kitchen, she made herself a bologna sandwich, and then ate on the front porch where she could hear the birds. The garden in front of the house had sprouted a few vegetables, the tomatoes bright red on the vine. The cross posts of the clothes-line stood behind the garden fence like martyrs with outstretched arms.

Beyond the chicken coop, the narrow blue line of the fishpond glimmered in the fading light. It was the closest of the three trenches the previous ranch owners had dug as water sources for the livestock. They had a decent-sized lake on the property, but Jake had seeded the pond with bluegills anyway so it would be no trouble to spend a full day sweating and still grab a rod to relax.

Jake and Bill used to sit by the pond’s edge in summer, casting for mature f ish while Kate prepared to fry them up with cornmeal fritters and tomatoes from the garden. Bill told corny jokes. Jake played his guitar. The sound of Jake’s voice was Seven Months Out and Two to Go

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already fading from her memory, and she didn’t like to think about how soon it would be gone.

Inside, on the end table by the armchair wedged in a corner, she’d left a half-read murder mystery with its spine cracked. She picked it up, casting her eye along the dog-eared page, trying to catch a word or phrase she remembered. At this point, she might have read the whole thing before without noticing; whenever she needed another mystery, she just grabbed one off the shelf without regard for titles or authors.

It didn’t matter. Individual victims and cases were a blur; she read for the rhythm of clues, discoveries, and revelations. Nothing was accidental. Nothing was stupid and meaningless. There was always a cause somewhere.

Between pages, she stretched and sipped cold coffee. The throbbing behind her eyes mounted as she squinted at words that passed without leaving any impression.

Her vision blurred. The headache got worse. She drank more coffee. Finally, she surrendered to setting down her book and trekking up the stairs to the silence of her half-rumpled double bed.

She startled awake. For a second, she wasn’t sure where she was. The dusty window slats and the mustiness of Jake’s untouched, unused pillow, seemed unknown.

The baby squirmed and kicked, and she remembered.

She squeezed her eyes closed, determined to fall asleep again. In the near-dozing dimness, she saw a series of flashes bright enough to shine through her eyelids. She opened her eyes, and the f lashes continued, staccato and weirdly yellow like city streetlights.

She rubbed her eyes to clear her head, and when she stopped, the room was cool and shadowed. She ascribed it to fragmented dreams and pressed her cheek into the pillow.

She’d almost drifted off again when the flashes returned. Frowning, she drew into a sitting position and looked for the source of the light. It was coming through the window; she peered between slats and glimpsed it more clearly, an intermittent flicker from somewhere out by the lake.

Her frown deepened, and she went downstairs to put on her boots and shrug a flannel jacket over her pajamas. Sometimes an escape artist cow managed to disturb an old piece of equipment, or trespassing teenagers set up camp to get drunk. Jake used to sneak out to take care of things like that before they woke Kate up; she’d been a heavy sleeper then.

Her footsteps crunched on the gravel-and-shell road that glowed white under the starlight. Flashes intermittently swabbed the path with yellow as she followed it away from the farmhouse, twining through the pasture and past the salt sheds.

The lake stood still and silent, rippling faintly silver in the dark, the night air teasing out scents of cold, metallic wet. The flickering began again, casting reflections like amber lanterns. Kate turned to find the source: the doorway of a dilapidated waterside shed the previous owners had erected that Kate and Jake had never found a use for.

The light was entrancing, impossible to turn from; it pulsed, rising and lowering, brightening and darkening, simultaneously seeming too faint to have reached the house, and like an unavoidable sun. It moved like honey, slow and thick and heavy and wrong.

She tried to remember what they could possibly have left in the shed to make a thing like that. “Hey there,” she called. “Hello?”

Silence. If it hadn’t been for the shiver on her skin, or the way the light seemed to surge and clot—

“Hello?” she called again. Her voice sounded small in the night, and she wished she’d brought Jake’s rifle.

The light condensed, and a creature emerged from the shed on four legs. Its body 96

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was a swollen, indistinct curve of glaring white. It shifted, so large and bright against the darkened hills that Kate finally recognized its outline.

“Big Red,” Kate grumbled aloud to herself, equally relieved and annoyed at allowing herself to be scared by a cow. Big Red’s pregnant belly ref lected the starlight with the same glow as the shell road.

“Red, what are you doing out here in the dark? How did you get out? Is the calf in trouble? Get back to the barn so I can look at you.”

Big Red turned toward her, and, impossibly, her silhouette morphed and bloated.

Legs absorbed into a huge, gelatinous ovoid taller than Kate. Light pulsed within its mucus-like, translucent flesh, rippling and glaring and burning.

“Home,” said a voice, or perhaps voices. The strange, distorted sound was an uncanny chorus. Kate’s heart drummed in response.

She staggered back and barely caught herself. The ovoid skimmed toward her, hovering inches above the cold, muddy shoreline. Her joints locked; her mouth dried; she stood blank and staring, immobile as though this was a dream and she’d never wok-en at all.

The baby kicked, insistent as a knock on the door.

Kate’s muscles suddenly loosened. She sprinted away, heart pattering faster and harder, feet striking staccato across the shell path with every jolting crunch. The farmhouse door slammed behind her and she huddled under blankets in her locked bedroom until the sun came up.

Kate sat on the porch that morning over breakfast, reading and eating toast with jam, occasionally darting her gaze toward the lake. When she was looking, she didn’t want to look; when she wasn’t, she did.

On her morning rounds, Kate discovered one of the calves had dropped overnight.

It was up and wobbling around the pasture, tufted hair already dry. The mother, an all-black called Angie who had birthed three healthy calves, watched with a mild expression as Kate checked the calf. He was a healthy little male, with a single white spot over one eye inherited from Bill’s bull.

It was only a few hours later that Delilah, the last of the expectant heifers aside from Big Red, wandered toward the farmhouse, lowing with discomfort. Kate looked up from the garden where she was weeding and saw the cow pacing alongside the bluegill-seeded trench pond, as if trying to decide whether drinking would make her feel better or worse. Delilah saw Kate, bellowed once, and laid down.

Kate moved her into the barn and went inside to wash up, regarding her tired face in the mirror as she rolled up her sleeves and scrubbed up to the elbow. She tied her hair back and grabbed a stack of towels and gloves from the shelf.

As she’d suspected, the first-year heifer was in distress, the calf turned breech in the birth canal. Kate let her labor a while longer, sitting nearby in the straw while the cow lay down, and stood up, and lay down.

Delilah bawled and strained against the stall partition until Kate decided it was time to assist directly. When the heifer stood again, Kate moved slowly to her side, murmuring encouragement. She lubricated her arms from the dispenser on the stall door and reached into the cow’s birth canal.

She felt for the calf’s head, but it was turned to the left, and only one front leg presented itself to her reaching f ingers. Kate plunged in further, her rolled sleeve shoved up to her shoulder. After some careful maneuvering, her f ingers found the calf’s slick head, and she gently guided it into position, facing toward her.

The cow bellowed again, and Kate’s arm was squeezed by a rolling muscular contraction. She backed out slowly and took a breath before reaching back in.

This time, she felt for the calf’s other foreleg. She needed to move it in front of the Seven Months Out and Two to Go

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head. Grasping and straining, her f ingers grazed the tiny hoof and grabbed at it, pulling the slender limb up parallel to the head and then past it. She stepped back, her arm glistening with slippery lubricant.

Delilah extended her neck and lowed softly. The calf appeared in the distended birth canal, front feet first, followed by the head and shoulders. Within minutes, after another series of contractions, the calf slid free.

Kate caught the sticky body and placed it on the straw. The calf unfurled itself and opened its eyes. Delilah turned her auburn head, and she and Kate regarded one another with quiet triumph.

Jake’s mother was ringing when she got back.

“I had to call a dozen times,” she said, not bothering with hello. “You aren’t doing everything over there yourself, are you?”

“Hi Gail,” said Kate. She tried to keep the deflated tone from her voice but couldn’t manage. She could handle cows; it was people who wore her out.

“Women in the family way aren’t supposed to work that hard,” Gail said. “I’m not saying you can’t do anything, but taking care of everything can’t be good for you—
and if it’s not good for you, it’s not good for the baby. You could go into early labor.”

“Mm,” said Kate.

“You’ve been getting all your prenatals?”

Kate bit back frustration; she’d called Gail first thing after the last appointment.

“Next one’s not until next week.”

“Because you’re not the youngest, you know. There’s a reason they call mothers over thirty-five geriatrics even though it sounds godawful. Things can go wrong, believe me.”

“I know.”

“Jake would want you to make sure to go to all your appointments.”

There it was—the shift to Jake. Gail didn’t have anyone else to talk to about him, really. Five years ago she’d moved away from the small town where she was born, and none of her current friends or neighbors had known her son. Kate tried to focus on that, and not how thoughtless her mother-in-law could be. “I’ve gone to all my appointments.”

“I miss him so much,” Gail continued. “I just look at everything in this house, and he’s everywhere. The piano”—her voice scratched—“he used to play ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ day and night, night and day. Pat from across the street taught him one afternoon, and he never learned anything else. So it was just ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’

over and over . . .”

Gail’s voice drifted into silence. It took Kate an uncomfortable moment to realize she was supposed to speak.

“He was better at the guitar,” Kate said, though he’d never had much range with the guitar either.

More silence. Kate turned her head and coughed a couple of times. On the other end of the line, she heard the clinking of dishes as Gail moved to the sink to busy her hands.

The baby kicked again, hard, and Kate decided it was colluding with her to get off the call. “I have to go now,” she said.

After weathering the subsequent goodbyes, Kate went out to the trench pond. The bluegills weren’t dependent on humans—giving them food would just contribute more to the population problem now that no one was fishing—but Kate brought feed anyway. She watched the pellets scatter, drop, and disappear into ripples where fish crested to swallow.

She hadn’t admitted to herself that she was searching for something until she found a cluster of small, gelatinous bubbles fetched against the trench wall, just far enough out of the water that the bluegills couldn’t get to them. The few that dipped below the rest were broken, trailing glistening slime down into the water.

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They looked almost like amphibian eggs, but not quite. She didn’t want to admit what they really looked like—miniature versions of the ovoid that had loomed over the lake and the mud. Kate almost reached a finger toward them, but a chill wracked her, and she caught herself back, breathing heavily.

The cover of Kate’s book was old and worn, and it rustled with the trembling of her hands. From time to time, she noticed she’d read several pages without parsing their contents, and sighed as she backtracked. Something had shifted in her; she could no longer catch the wind of clues and herrings; the comforting lie had worn too thin.

Something was going to happen that night; she was sure of it. She’d kept her boots on, and had no intention of going upstairs. She pillowed her head on the back of the chair and unwillingly went into the dark of her dreams.

She startled awake with a crick in her neck and cold in her bones. It was the same hour as before, the Moon still high but tilting on its downward slope. Kate grabbed her flashlight from under the chair, and her flannel coat from its hook, and went into the night.

Big Red—the thing that was pretending to be Big Red—stood at the bottom of the porch steps. None of the other cows had followed; she stood alone, pale and bellowing.

Kate set her hand on the railing, intending to walk down toward the creature, but she was shaking too much to move.

“What are you? Why are you pretending to be my cow?”

Big Red grumbled again, and her stare became glassy. She made a grunt of strain, and her hooves crunched the gravel and shells as she stomped her discomfort.

Kate’s brow pinched. “Wait, Red, is that really you?”

She switched on her flashlight and watched as Red’s muscles rippled with heavy breathing. Red turned and walked a few paces to lead Kate up the shell road. Ropey ribbons of afterbirth hung down her backside, strands of white and red that swung as she walked. Her haunches were smeared with dark splotches of mud.

The cow turned her head toward the moon. Silhouetted on the gentle crest of the pasture, she bellowed with her neck extended: a long, low, keening lamentation. The hair on Kate’s arms stood up under her flannel jacket.

Big Red led Kate down the road toward the salt sheds, and then veered off into the pasture. Kate followed over the uneven ground, her f lashlight illuminating rocks and weeds among the grass.

Kate chilled as they neared the lake’s edge. They were a distance from the place where she’d seen the thing last night, but her skin still tightened.

In the shallows, a red-and-white calf lay facedown, only its back rising above the water. Big Red stood at the edge of the lake and called again, watching the unmoving shape.

“Oh, Red,” Kate sighed. “I’m sorry.”

She set her flashlight by their feet so that it still cast enough light to see by, then shed her coat beside it.

The chill mist and shifting breeze made her shiver as she sloshed through the water toward the dead calf. She bent from the knees and slid her arms under its torso, and as she straightened, a glimmer of gold sparkled at the edge of her vision.

Her heart pounded again, and again she could hardly move. She forced herself to turn her head and saw the full force of it: a powerful radiance a hundred times stronger than the f licker she’d seen in the shed’s doorway, emanating from deep within the lake’s center. As she watched, it consolidated into a shining sphere that rose, slowly, casting waves of light across the haze as it breached the surface.

Kate tried to back away, cradling the heavy calf. Her left foot stuck in the sucking mud beneath the shallows. She worked to free herself, but the f ifty extra pounds shoved her backward, and she fell with a smack.

Seven Months Out and Two to Go

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The light expanded; blinding brightness overwhelmed her vision. It pulsed, dim-ming and glaring, but always all-consuming. Barely visible as a silhouette within the radiance, she could make out a central ovoid shape. Its translucent skin seemed thinner, as if it were about to rupture—about to hatch.

“Home,” called the chorus of voices, their refrain modulating like the light. The plaintive word reverberated in overlapping, unceasing, echoing tones. One of the voices was Jake’s.

The shape moved toward her, and she felt its pull like an undertow.

“No,” Kate heard herself say.

“Home,” it repeated, and she couldn’t stop herself from listening for Jake’s voice, but this time it was nowhere, drowned by too many strangers.

The chorus of voices grew louder, more insistent: “Homehomehomehomehomehome.”

Kate thrashed under the weight of the dead calf, disturbing mud that swirled into the thickening water. She fought the sensation of drowning, of being dragged into the swallowing underwater darkness, and simultaneously inhaling viscous, lethal light.

Kate’s shoulders were still above water, but panting and tiring, she was losing the fight to breathe. The light reached her, and it didn’t arrive with the pain she expected. It was a slow, warm caress.

She wanted to sigh with the voices; she wanted to join them; she wanted the same thing they did. “No,” she breathed, or possibly, “Home.” Everything was confused. No, no, home, no. Home? No. No home.

Another sound broke through, and Kate realized she’d been hearing it just below consciousness for a long time: Big Red’s persistent, worried bellow as she called for Kate and her lost calf.

Kate freed herself from the calf with a shove, and scrambled backward until she felt the shoreline beneath her palms.

The haze was fading, the chorus quieting. Her breaths came shallow, rapid, and uneven.

Above her, the sky, so recently in swallowing darkness, was now hot with afternoon sun. The dead calf still lay in the water, almost unmoved from its original position except that one of its legs was visible above the surface.

Big Red moved her big, protective bulk to stand over them both. Kate coughed and coughed, water dripping from her mouth and nostrils. Her boots made a sucking sound in the mud as she pulled herself up, stiff with cold beneath the swollen sun, and wiped her face on her sleeve.

She left the calf in the water and, shaking, pressed herself to walk back to the path. She was crying too hard to face disposing of that small, limp body.

Kate was still shivering when she reached the farmhouse. She needed to bathe, but gave in to the twisting in her stomach at the thought of immersing herself. Instead, she went upstairs to peel off her wet clothes, and then put on different ones without cleaning up.

Her hands were numb as she returned to the kitchen and picked up the rotary phone. Her index finger was almost too cold to manipulate the dial.

“Bill,” she said. “I need you to sell me a calf for Big Red.”

“Oh,” Bill said in a universal rancher’s tone of sympathy. “I’m real sorry to hear that. What’d you do with the body?”

“Dropped him in the pond,” Kate said.

“That’s a crying shame.”

“I’d like to do it tomorrow if you can.”

“Can’t get over there tomorrow, but I can bring one over first thing next day. You keep the skin?”

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“Sure I did,” Kate said. “I’m not crazy.” Her voice cracked.

“Don’t fuss. I didn’t mean anything by it.” A pause. “You all right?”

“Sure. It’ll give me someone to talk to other than the cows.”

Kate put down the receiver and cried for a solid twenty minutes before going back out.

The herd had gathered at the feed station. They regarded her in absolute silence as she parked the truck and walked between them. Delilah’s calf edged away from her, and his mother lowered her head to lick between his ears.

“I’m so sorry,” Kate said. “I’m hungry, too.”

She went back to the house and ate an entire package of bologna with her bare hands, sobbing.

Dusk was creeping by the time Kate mustered herself to drive across the pasture, parallel to the shell road, toward the lake. As she stopped by the old shed, the front tires dug into the mud, spraying a new fan of brown drops across the truck’s dirty doors.

Kate unpacked two coils of rope from the truck bed, and made her way back to the dead calf. Her galoshes kept her steady on the slant where the shore eroded into the water. Careful not to wade more than ankle-depth, she braced the calf with a half hitch knot around its cold legs and heaved it onto the shore.

She left the dead calf in the bed of the truck covered with a tarp. Not quite enough to protect it from scavengers like coyotes, but it seemed the decent thing, and she didn’t want to look at the forlorn corpse’s open brown eyes. She could skin it in the morning.

Kate had brought a blanket and pillow in the truck, but she didn’t take them out.

Instead, she walked away from the truck and went to sit in the grass by the lake, arms wrapped loosely around her knees.

From three feet away, she could see the little ebbs and f lows caused by insects, f ish, and the uneven lake bottom. Something tiny stalked the surface on narrow legs, and something large rose from below to engulf it. The light waned, and the wind slowed over the water, which sighed into deeper shades of pewter. Kate withdrew her hands from her knees and crossed them over her chest instead, clutching warmth.

When the last of the light was gone, she pulled off her boots and put them on the grass. She removed her coat, jeans, shirt, and underthings, folded them neatly, and set them beside the boots.

She gathered her breath as she perched on the shore on the balls of her feet. She dove. The water glowed around her like lanterns in Atlantis.

Water splashed. The bubbles of her breath rose through gold and honey.

Then there was Jake, standing with his back to the water and a fishing rod in his hand. “Because I like bluegills,” he said.

Kate stood nearby without having realized she’d gotten to her feet. Her toes were bare in the grass. She was wearing a sundress.

“But why only bluegills?” she asked.

“You want a different kind of fish?” Jake asked. “We can get something else.”

She sighed with affectionate resignation and shrugged her tanned shoulders. “I like bluegills, too.”

“What should I play?” Jake asked.

He was behind her now, and it was autumn, the ground chill beneath her boots but carpeted elsewhere in orange and gold. He wore navy plaid that would match the sky in another hour, and the fishing rod was simultaneously a guitar, and then a guitar alone.

“ ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb,’ ” said Bill, and now they all had bottles of beer.

“Hell no,” Jake said at the same time Kate answered, “Anything but that.”

Seven Months Out and Two to Go

101

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“Something for the cows then,” Jake decided, and his fingers started strumming.

“Home, home on the range . . .”

“Where the cows and the people are strange,” Bill joined in.

Gail was with them, sitting on a lawn chair and holding a can of diet soda. Bill had gone away. The three of them were on the highest hilltop, the truck parked nearby with a cooler in its bed, as they waited to catch a glimpse of someone else’s illegal Fourth of July fireworks. “Oh, but I like ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb.’ ”

She was telling the story about Pat from across the street, and it was fast and gar-bled and skipped between sentences.

“Because you’re not the youngest, you know,” Gail said. Ropey ribbons of afterbirth hung down her legs, strands of white and red that swung as she talked. “There’s a reason they call expectant mothers over thirty-five geriatrics even though it sounds godawful. Things can go wrong, believe me.”

“I know.” Kate gritted her teeth. Her beer was flat and the sliced tomatoes were growing cold on the extinguished grill and the cows were like ants, walking restlessly up and down the hills as the sun shuddered from dawn to black and back again.

“Don’t you ever just want to go home?” asked Bill.

She didn’t recognize the room they were in. It was gray-walled and dark, and she thought there were other rooms nearby, but she couldn’t see them past the shadows and weird-angled walls.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Kate said.

“Home is where you’re together.”

She had been wrong about the weird angles; the place was all curves, not grey but blends of buff and milk and terra cotta. The chambers beaded together like insect bodies, abdominal swells and multi-faceted spheres and distended spindles.

Bill asked, “Is Jake’s voice starting to fade? How long will it last?”

Kate whimpered. She’d left her flannel jacket in the grass so that she could wade in after the dead calf, and the wind was biting on her drenched skin.

“Nothing feels like home anymore,” she said.

Big Red raised her head against the night sky, and gave a long, low, forlorn wail.

Kate emerged into conscious awareness like waking from a dream. She was underwater, f loating in that strange, beautiful amber warmth. Water that was like light that was like honey seeped around her body, conforming to her contours. It rocked her back and forth like a quiet current.

She inhaled. Warm f luid f lowed in through her nostrils and out through her mouth. She tried to speak, but her voice caught in the light.

Voices hummed around her contentedly. Home, home, home, home, home.

She squinted, trying to discern shapes against the glow. She caught a pale curve, limned by even brighter light, and then many more—countless eggs nestled together, skins even thinner now and internal lights quaking with readiness to break free.

Home, said the chorus, but the sound was different somehow, and she realized it was one individual chorus among many, closer than the others.

The nearby egg undulated toward her, its movement in the water so oddly fascinating that Kate almost forgot to withdraw her hand as it approached. It paused as she moved her fingers, and hovered, quivering, fractions of an inch away.

Home, home, home, said the distant choruses. Home, echoed the close one. She thought she heard a querulous inf lection in its tone that wasn’t in the others, but she couldn’t be sure among the legion of voices sighing and sluicing.

Gingerly, she extended her f ingertip and pressed gently against the gelatinous, translucent surface.

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Her mind reeled with a sudden volley of sensation. A waterfall rush of noise. Then a barrage of images, tastes, smells.

It was communion. It was merging, mending, melting, as if they were honeyed lights casting through each other, and honeyed waters blending into estuaries. It was warm and chiming and brushing soft lips.

Together. A sensation, not a word. She felt her mind transform it into syllables.

Home together.

She remembered being born in space. She remembered being one of thousands cast into the atmosphere, eggs seeking waters deep enough for them to grow. They fell to the ground, crushed in the dirt or dissolved in the dew. They fell in the trench ponds, near enough water to become food for the fish. They fell into the lake, and the impact as they discovered water and soil shook the ground, and Kate remembered how it had felt as if the Earth itself had thrown her down by the feed station, surrounded by strands of fallen hay.

She remembered being an egg newly fallen into the lake, swelling and glowing and calling out. Come, those with voices together. Voices together come home together with us.

They had sent entreaties in the only way they could, scraps and visions, searching for creatures like they were, voices in trio or quartet or more. Kate balked—how had she and her single voice seen their beckoning as she lay in her farmhouse beside the unrumpled pillow, in the silence, alone—

Voices together, repeated the egg earnestly.

She thought of Delilah, bleating by the trench pond where the eggs had died in the shallows. Big Red, birthing by the lake, too late to move her dead calf into the light.

Then there was the baby inside her, stirring, shifting. She and the baby: they were two.

The chorus sighed pleasure. Voices together.

There was a pregnant barn cat somewhere in the amber. Kate was hunting. Kate was smelling mice. Kate was birthing kittens, and two of them were dying because she didn’t have enough milk, and the other two were wrestling and weaning and becoming scrawny adolescents. There were five tiny, blind things inside her bicornate uterus, shifting against their siblings.

There was an owl with an egg inside her. There was a pregnant prairie dog. There were eggs laid in clusters by insects and bluegills and frogs.

Kate remembered being in space again, in a body like nothing she understood. She prepared to cast spores from herself, dispersing them to an alien world to grow if they could. So many would fail, but the thought didn’t taste the same as the cat’s mourning howl over her starving kittens, or the owl’s over the fledgling caught by a snake. Many would fail—and the few who f lourished would become voices in en-semble, would remember the touch of nebulae and gas planets, would remember a hundred thousand spore scatters and plummets and nascences and hatchings and ascensions and scatterings in turn. They would remember in unison until they broke open and took to the sky, slowly differentiating from each other as they took new shapes and flew new paths, past new asteroids and atmospheres and vast stretches of abyss.

Kate remembered the winnowing, diaphanous sound of dying as her body dissolved into the spores that rushed toward the welcoming Earth, ready to begin.

Together, sighed the eggs. Voices, home, together.

More memories—shatteringly incomprehensible—shadow purple tooth slashes, continental whisper eyes, muted trumpets longing. She fought through numbers and waves and too many colors, smells like headaches and smells like flight. Somewhere below the cacophony, she found the common threads—these were other aliens, like her, who had joined a clutch on another world, and cast off with them into space.

Seven Months Out and Two to Go

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Her awareness probed through the amber from egg to egg until she found the sharpness-in-bark sensation of the cat, sleeping within a distant translucent shell.

The owl and the prairie dog each nestled inside their own, and so did the frogs, the insects, and the fish.

She felt the seeking, the emptiness from the egg beside her. Its gel pulsed around her fingertip, hopeful but circumspect.

I shouldn’t stay here, Kate said, and also, I don’t know how to leave.

Listen, said the egg, and she felt its soundless words linger on her abdomen.

She closed her eyes against the glow, and held her breath.

Warmth, came a slender murmur, almost outside the edge of hearing. The voice was Jake’s.

Kate said, or it said, or the egg said, Home.

Kate drifted.

She lost track of herself for a while, almost as if sleeping, diving in and out of the contented thrum. Memories mingled with associations, conscious and subconscious flowing together. Cradled in the current, for the first time in so long, she could remember without bracing.

An apple tree’s shadow covered Jake’s face as he groaned at the bitterness of an unripened, yellow nub. “You always pick too early,” Kate heard herself scold. Strands of hair blew in front of her eyes. She wanted to sweep them away so she could see him better, but her memory left them alone. She asked, “Can’t you ever wait for anything?”

Now Jake was driving the pick-up off road, gesturing expansively as he showed Kate the ranch. They’d been dating for six weeks. She followed the line of his pointing finger to watch the herd. He said, “This is Big Red. She’s the lead cow. She’s big and she’s red. I’m a real genius with names.”

Then: the steely color of the sky on that morning as Jake got into the trailer to drive the icy road—

No.

The nurse’s ice blue nail polish. She reached for Kate’s hand. Hospital waiting room lights glaring, unrelenting. “Accidents like this are impossible to understand, but you have to remember God’s plan—”

No.

The choruses murmured and soothed. The egg beside her nestled closer. Safe, it said. Home. Kate rocked gently with it, back and forth, until she was lulled enough to drift back into her memory-dreams.

She was standing several feet behind Jake, watching him sit in a lawn chair by the trench pond, head bowed over his guitar. Bill was with them, drinking from a bottle and watching his fishing line. Jake asked, “What should I play? Something for the cows? Home, home on the range . . .”

The ranch tour again. Jake directed Kate’s attention to the rolling hills in the distance. “The place is twelve hundred acres, but it’s not bad with four-wheel drive. You can get pretty much anywhere. You can even get off the ranch. You need to meet Bill.

He’s thirteen miles down. You’ll like him.”

“Oh, give me a home where buffalo roam, where the deer and the antelope play—”

Bill raised his beer, his other hand still steady in its grip on the fishing line. He asked, “What do you call a cow with no legs?” Without waiting, he answered himself,

“Ground beef.”

Jake grabbed his stomach and groaned. “That was udderly awful.”

“Oh, give me the hills and the ring of the drills, and the rich silver ore in the ground—”

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Kate watched a glossy red apple cut higher and higher against cloudless blue as Jake threw it, caught it, and threw it again. “See, those ones are good for eating,”

Kate complained. Jake was staring upward to keep the apple in sight; she could only see the back of his head as he laughed and answered, “Better for tossing.”

“Where the air is so pure, the zephyrs so free, the breezes so balmy and light—”

That steely morning, Bill’s eyes glazed as if he’d been staring at the sun too long despite the imprisoning clouds. “Oh God, Kate. Kate, oh, Kate, I’m sorry, he’s—”

The nurse’s ice-blue nail polish. “Accidents like this are impossible to understand, but you have to remember—”

Delilah, lowing and pacing by the trench pond, staring at the water. The calf struggling in her stomach, twisted the wrong way. Kate looked up from her weeding. She got up to help the heifer into the barn—

“There’s a reason they call mothers over thirty-f ive geriatrics even though it sounds godawful,” said Gail. “Things can go wrong.”

“I know,” Kate said.

The dead calf with only its back rising above the water. Red going down the shell-and-gravel road, ropey strings of afterbirth swinging as she walked. She stopped on a crest and gave a long, low, keening lamentation.

Kate wailed.

Home, whispered the nearby egg. The others echoed. Home, home. Light and honey poured through her, cleansing, restoring.

She stretched her mind again, searching through the eggs until she found the cat.

The animal was alert this time. She watched Kate with the memory of suspicious green eyes.

The kittens inside her shifted. Tiny paws opened. Tiny hearts beat. Tiny unconscious minds pattered a faint, nearly indistinguishable rhythm of pre-thought.

Warm, together, warm, warm, home.

Kate felt her own baby basking inside her. “How can I take this away from you?”

she asked. Then pleadingly, “What would you want me to do?”

She’d meant to ask the baby, but she was back in a memory asking Jake instead as he cradled his guitar with his back toward her as he played, facing the trench pond and the bluegills.

“Yes, give me a gulch where the miner can sluice and the bright, yellow gold can be found—”

Then she was there again: the unavoidable gravity of the brushed steel sky, Jake’s trailer, the icy road. Kate’s mouth tightened with anger as she stared overhead, avoiding Jake’s face and the damn carefree grin he wore even when she was trying to get him to take her seriously. Sharply, she said, “I just don’t like the road conditions. It’s not going to help Angie or her pregnancy if you spin off the road on the way to the vet. If you’d just wait—”

“—Oh, God, Kate—”

“—but you have to understand God’s plan—”

The kittens: blind and unformed in warm, lulling blissful nascence, forever. How could she take that away?

“Then give me a camp where the fire is the lamp, and the wild Rocky Mountains to roam.”

Kate tried to push away everything but the sound of Jake’s singing, but as she struggled to concentrate, it blanched and murmured and faded away. It sounded like Jake’s voice—almost like Jake’s voice—a memory of Jake’s voice—

“It’s not really him,” she murmured to herself. She’d kept thinking that at the funeral, over and over again, as she looked at the casket. It was his body; she knew that—it was Jake, and Jake was dead. But this wasn’t him, no more than the slick of Seven Months Out and Two to Go

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blood at the accident scene that she’d insisted on seeing, even though Bill said she shouldn’t. “What are you going to get out of it?” he’d asked. She’d gotten a look at the place where Jake died, that was all, where he’d gone off road near Bill’s, only thirteen miles into the trip to the vet. The blood wasn’t him. The body wasn’t him. None of this was him.

She found herself in Gail’s living room, on some day that had never happened. The room was lit with ordinary lamps, but above, the ceiling was open to a vast, unbroken night sky. Gail sat on the bench by the piano where Jake had spent night and day playing “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” She sipped a Diet Coke.

“I miss him so much,” Gail said.

There it was: the turn to Jake.

She gestured to Kate’s stomach. “You know what Jake would want.”

Stiffly, Kate shook her head.

Gail’s nail polish was warm blue. She reached for Kate’s hand.

“Jake would want you to go to your prenatals.”

Kate blinked back in surprise. Above her, someone’s illegal Fourth of July f ireworks were bursting red, white, and blue. “Oh!” she said, “Oh.” Then quietly, “Jake would want me to go.”

She turned around. Jake was behind the trunk of the apple tree, sputtering and groaning as he spat out another unripe bite. “Eugg! Auuggh, oouuu,” he groaned.

Kate laughed and sighed. “Can’t you ever wait?”

He turned toward her with his careless grin, that grin she’d so bitterly avoided on that brushed steel morning. That grin that was so beautiful beneath his clear blue eyes. That grin that once had always made her smile.

Jake snuggled against her shoulder. “Never.”

Floating in the honey water, Kate felt the residue of something tight and angry that she hadn’t known was there dissolve in her chest. She laid a warm, smiling kiss on his cheek. “I guess I love you anyway.”

“That I would not trade my home on the range for all of the cities so bright.”

Kate knew it was time to leave, but she lingered a moment in memory. The fishpond was silvery in the evening light. Jake cleared his throat and shifted on his lawn chair before starting another verse. “This time for the bluegills! Home, home on the range . . .”

Bill gestured with his beer, joining in. “Where the cows and the people are strange.”

Kate had a tray of cornmeal fritters in her hands. She shook her head and sighed.

“You say that every time, Bill.”

“It’s funny every time.”

Kate stared straight ahead, at Jake’s silhouette against the darkening sky, at the beautiful slump of his shoulders. “Bill, it wasn’t even funny the first time.”

As Kate surfaced from her memories, the eggs murmured regrets and soothings in equal measure. They knew she would leave; she wondered if they’d known before she had. There was no resentment, no argument. Even the egg pressed near her, with which she would have joined, brushed her with reassurance and hope.

Kate remembered what it was like to be a chorus watching some voices grow distant. Siblings that flew different paths. Children born out of one’s dissolving matter.

Aliens who chose to leave.

Together, chorused the honeyed light. Voices together.

The siblings and children and aliens grew farther away—but the memory of them remained, passed between choruses through hatchings and ascensions and scatterings. The choruses’ descendants would remember Kate and her baby through all their generations.

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* * *

The evening sky was purpling.

“Kate! Is that you? Kate? Kate!”

She lay beside the lake. It could have been hours. It could have been days. Her stomach clenched with hunger. She shook from the cold on her skin.

Bill came pounding over the slope and stumbled into the pond, splashing her with mud. “Jesus H. Christ! What are you doing down here? I’ve been searching all day!

Where are your clothes?”

He ripped off his jacket and put it around her shoulders, then dashed back to the truck and came back with a blanket. She wrapped it around her like a towel, wool scratching on wet, naked skin.

“What were you doing? Were you swimming naked? Do you know how fast you can die in cold like that?” Bill asked. “I almost didn’t find you. Followed the tire tracks here f irst thing, but you were nowhere, so we went on to the pastures. I wouldn’t have come back, but Big Red kept driving me.”

Kate squinted, and saw Big Red by the truck, watching them from a distance.

“Where have you been?” Bill asked.

Kate looked up at his worried, unshaven face. “I think I was in heaven.”

Bill didn’t ask any more questions.

They retrieved the clothes she’d left in the grass. While she dressed, Bill went to look at the corpse of Big Red’s poor, sodden calf.

They led Red out of sight, and then got down to the work of skinning the pathetic body. Kate tried to help. Bill waved her off. Her f ingers were still too cold to grip.

Afterward, they collected Big Red and drove back to the farmhouse where Bill had left his calf tied near the garden. They rubbed down the little, white female with the skin of Red’s dead one, and watched from the fence as Big Red approached.

The big cow nuzzled the calf for a minute, and when it went for her teat, there was no objection.

Bill said, “You doing okay?” It was the first thing he’d asked in a long time.

“I’m fine,” Kate said, looking away into the middle distance.

“Baby doing okay?”

“Yeah,” Kate said. “It’s fine, too.”

Bill regarded her for a moment from under her dirty baseball cap.

“I’m coming out next Friday to help you with the worming. My cousin Pete’s coming, too.”

She looked at him then. “You got extra drench guns?”

“Yeah.”

“All right.”

She looked away again, and the two of them fell into companionable silence.

She went back to the lake three nights later when a stirring told her it was time.

She watched the air turn golden as the eggs rose from the water and hatched into molten-looking, amorphous creatures. They wriggled in the sky, morphing from shape to shape as they tried their new forms and continued to ascend.

Kate watched one that looked like a jellyfish spread its undulating mantle and extend feathery feelers to test the wind and damp air. Its extremities curled around each other, winding like tangles of hair. It rose until she could no longer see each individual tentacle, until it was a golden disc against the sky, lit by its own radiance, and then a bright mote far away like a star.

The baby in her womb squirmed, and she cupped her hand over it, and whispered,

“Home.” ❍

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A fan of volcanoes, Sean Monaghan seanmonaghan.com has explored calderas and craters in New Zealand, Oregon, the Galapagos, and Easter Island, among others. Visiting these stunning features, with their fascinating microclimates and unique ecologies, is sometimes like stepping onto an alien world. That research is evident in the alien vista of . . .

THE BILLOWS

OF SARTO

Sean Monaghan

Jack Kaufman took another breath of the rich, thick atmosphere. It had the slight-est acidic tang. Invigorating.

Nearing the cone’s summit now, the air felt cleaner. The heavy humidity of the forested walls replaced by a drier coolness.

Still, he was puffing. He’d climbed too fast. He knew it.

Around him the verdant caldera cliffs stood mute. Kaufman felt ensconced in a vast amphitheater. One where gargantuan beasts might have once fought for the pleasure of an audience of millions. The hole in the Sarto’s crust made an oval thirty kilometers on its long axis. Over two thousand meters deep. To the bed of the lake.

Here, on the upward slope of the saddle to Steele Cone, he was only eight hundred meters below the caldera rim. Plenty far enough.

Scoria and pumice crunched underfoot. His boots were beginning to chafe, but he didn’t have far to go now. Kaufman stopped to rest.

“Water,” he said.

From the shoulder strap, his backpack wound out the tube, and he sipped. Cool and refreshing. He could taste the electrolytes the pack had added, but he didn’t complain.

He even thought of asking for a little air, too, but he’d decided to do this unaided.

When he was younger he wouldn’t have even worried. But then, when he’d been younger, he wouldn’t have even considered coming.

The day before, on the caldera’s rim, he’d had a mask the whole time. Here, the forest made the oxygen content richer. Or so he’d read in the guide pamphlet.

Do not try to make the journey in a single day. Ensure you bring a bathing costume so as not to offend those from other cultures.

Take plenty of water.

Ensure you have a communications pad.

Do not travel alone.

Sometimes pamphlets seemed overly cautious in their suggestions.

Taking another sip of water, Kaufman let the tube go. It retracted into its recess with a quiet snick.

High above, a raptor circled. The wide, long wings made it look like a flying carpet. Kaufman imagined it whisking him aloft and depositing him at the sinter pools.

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He could see his destination above and ahead. The lip of the cinder cone was no false summit. He’d eyeballed it from the caldera’s edge before beginning the descent.

The first part of the journey.

The cone’s trail described a near-straight thirty degree angle, at its steepest, from the higher part of the caldera’s floor. Off-center, the peak stood less than two kilometers from the end of the caldera wall’s switchbacking descent trail.

The forest had surprised Kaufman with its lush thickness. Filled with leafy trees and ferns and vines, abuzz with insects from invisible to mouse-sized, flocking with birds decorated in feathers apparently painted by hand by Heckel or Klee, or any number of rich, blocky color-obsessed artists. That new guy, Cruther. Great slaps of reds and greens and pinks.

One of the tree species had brilliant lacy crimson f lowers. Thousands of them spangled the forest, almost like intentional decorations.

The caldera’s ancient cinder cone brought him measured barren contrast. More like the slopes outside the caldera. Few plants struggled through the loose chips of aerated red and white stone.

He saw mottled gray-white lizards basking or darting after glossy black-carapaced bugs.

“Enough rest,” Kaufman told himself.

He started walking again. With each step forward, he lost a quarter step to slid-ing. Even with a vague trail, the cinder cone’s surface was little better than scree.

There was solid rock beneath the deep cindery overburden. The angle of repose was more to do with the solidified granite below.

That didn’t help his climb any.

The raptor screeched. It darted off toward the caldera wall. Kaufman trudged on.

Do not overexert yourself.

Make sure you’ve left your travel plans with the Sarto Excursion Center office in York Central.

Exchange greetings with other travelers. You’ll enjoy your journey far more this way.

Kaufman hadn’t met anyone so far. From the outset it had been his plan. Get off Earth. Find something new. Travel. Engage in convivial conversations with other travelers.

Meeting new people is the reason many come to experience Sarto’s wonders. The stark beauty of the world gives all visitors something in common.

Kaufman kept on walking. Losing one step for every four.

Halfway. The slope at its maximum.

He stopped again. Turned to survey the caldera’s forest. From this distance it seemed hazy. Pollen and bugs and other particles made the air translucent.

Small steam eruptions from Steele Cone at times can affect the atmospheric composition inside Williams Caldera. These are not dangerous, but supplemental breathing apparatus must be carried.

“Water,” the pack said, sticking out the tube of its own accord.

With a sigh, Kaufman sipped. “You know,” he told it. “Taking care of myself was half the reason to come out here.”

It didn’t respond, of course.

Kaufman closed his eyes and remembered the kids rallying around. Making sure he was all right. Making sure the household ran without Marion’s constant attention.

Turning, he opened his eyes and started up the slope again.

Three quarters of the way.

Then, just a hundred meters left.

Seventy-five meters.

Fifty.

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Ten.

He stopped.

Looked ahead. Almost there.

From this point he could see the edges of the pools. The level pinky-white rims, with their waxy curved edges.

Sarto’s sun beat down. Past its zenith, but still strong. The caldera floor would be in shadow by three P.M. local time. Steele Cone’s summit would lose the sun before five.

He realized the western part of the floor had lost the sun already. It was later than he’d thought.

He was looking forward to that. Apparently the sky looked stunning from the pools.

Something squealed from behind him.

Kaufman turned. He half-expected to see a cluster of independent teens. Some kids excited and faux-startled by a lizard or big bug.

Instead he saw another flying thing. As big as the raptor. At least.

It was below his level. Near the forest. Above the old tongues of lava he’d traversed from the trees.

The animal had a white-yellow wing, with a black body below. It almost looked as if the two were separate. Like a rat hang-gliding.

It gave another squeal and turned, speeding away for the trees.

Gone.

Kaufman nodded. He’d read a bit about Sarto’s isolated ecosystems on his way out.

He didn’t remember anything about hang-gliding rats.

With a smile to himself, he turned and continued up. In a couple of minutes he reached the flat area at the edge of the pools.

Ahead of him the sides of the closest, lowest, stood like a nib wall. Water ran across, keeping the curved sides slick and moist. The water drained into the loose rocks of the surface. Kaufman saw where the siliceous material had built up on the scattered rubble. Knocked around by the casual tromping of thousands of tourists.

The lower edges were ragged, almost like rows of teeth. There were more colors there. Thick greens and oranges. A mix of rocky chemical colors and lively algae and fungus.

As Kaufman strode across, the sound of his footfalls changed. The crunching less-ened and the ground felt firmer.

There were dozens of the pools. He’d seen an aerial photograph in the pamphlet. It looked like someone had dropped a box of rings. Various sizes, all overlapping and cycling outward.

Across the diameter they ran back in steps. Each perhaps a half-meter high. Rising as if stacked up.

The pamphlet had explained it all.

Water leaching from the caldera lake has changed the nature of Steele Cone. Over millions of years the percolating water has forced its way up, slowly dissolving and recrystallizing minerals, resulting in the natural construction of the pools.

Kaufman didn’t follow the geology, but he understood the stark beauty.

He was actually glad to have it to himself.

The three hundred and sixty-nine pools at the summit cover an area of over one and a half hectares (almost four acres). The largest pool, also the highest, spreads over two thousand square meters. Swimming in this pool is not recommended.

Kaufman walked right up to the edge. Dipped his hand in.

Cool, but not cold. He knew the pools grew warmer toward the top.

Kaufman took another breath. Setting the pack down, he began taking his shirt off. The pack opened its upper pocket for him to drop his clothing in.

He debated keeping his boots on. He didn’t know how rough the pools’ bases might 110

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be. The pamphlet hadn’t mentioned that either way. It would be stupid to cut his feet.

In the end he stripped naked. No way to offend anyone if there was no one around.

With a crackling sound, the pack compressed and sterilized his clothing.

“Wait here,” he told it. That, it understood. If anyone came by, it would send him an alarm.

Stepping gingerly, Kaufman climbed over the first pool’s rim. The edge felt clammy against his hand.

Right away he felt a twinge from his foot. Just where the boot had worn a blister.

The pool’s floor was smooth and nearly flat. Solid. He could feel the ripples and bulbous shapes of it against his soles.

With the water up to his knees he walked across the pool. He shivered. The water wasn’t unpleasant, but it was well below body temperature.

As he approached the opposite rim, where the next row of higher pools stood, the water deepened. It came halfway up his thighs.

He heard a bleep from the pack. Turning, he saw that it had climbed to the pool’s edge. The pack’s exterior had changed to a mottled, shimmery look. Waterproof.

“Just wait,” he told it. The pack was supposed to be helpful, but it wasn’t expected to be like a loyal dog.

He realized that even though the pools stepped back, in reality each pool was on a slightly different level. The pool to his left was slightly higher, the one on the right slightly lower.

It meant there was a rim that reached right to the more central pool. Kaufman stood on the rim between and climbed higher.

The pools formed a vague spiral out from the giant central pool. He was cutting across. He supposed some pilgrims followed around the spiral, making sure they stepped into each of the three hundred and sixty-nine.

The next pool was a fraction warmer. And a fraction deeper as he walked across.

He climbed again. Gaining a half a meter each time. Gaining about half a degree or so in temperature, too.

Kaufman didn’t expect to reach that biggest pool, but he did want to be higher up for when the sun dipped behind the caldera wall.

Three more pools and he began to feel the effects of the climb again. The pools grew warmer by bigger jumps, too.

Unburdened by clothes and the pack, and excited by making it here, he had forgotten his weariness. Wasn’t that supposed to be part of the reason for visiting? Becoming reinvigorated by the mineral cleansing?

Kaufman stopped climbing.

The pool he’d reached felt like it was about thirty-six or thirty-seven degrees centi-grade. A bit over a hundred Fahrenheit

Perfect.

Kaufman allowed himself to slip down. He relaxed.

Never a naturally buoyant person, he found himself f loating more than he was used to. Kaufman lay back, toes pointing at the sky, face just above the surface.

The sky glowed. High streaky clouds formed feathery wisps. A faint hint of rain-bow colors in a narrow curve. A circumzenithal arc. The pamphlet had mentioned those, too. Ice crystals in the clouds, still days, the sun at the right depth.

To his left the huge black raptor glided.

The faint smell of sulfur tickled his nostrils. He felt free and weightless. Surges of cooler water bounced against his skin, making him tingle.

Kaufman swallowed.

It would have been great to have shared this with Marion.

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Taking a breath, Kaufman tipped his head back. With a couple of sidestrokes with his hands, he slipped under the water. It tried to push him up again. His skin tingled.

After a moment of immersion, he allowed himself to rise. The pool wasn’t really big enough for swimming. He splashed out, spluttering, and put his feet on the bottom.

Wiped his face with his hands.

As he took another deep breath, he heard a quiet splash from nearby.

Kaufman looked around.

“Hello there,” a woman said.

Kaufman turned. She hung at the edge of the next pool over. Just her head visible.

A little surge of water rose across the rim and trickled the couple of centimeters down to his pool.

Early forties, dark hair, skin a couple of shades lighter than his own, thick nose and full lips. Crystalline blue eyes. Almost white.

“I startled you,” she said. She put her arms up on the pool edge, elbows out, and rested her chin on her hands.

“That’s all right,” he said. Aware of his lack of a bathing costume, he turned his body and held his hands down.

She grinned, showing white teeth, the right incisor fractionally crossed over the left. “You’re overly modest.”

“I apologize,” he said. “I thought I was alone.”

“Apparently not. I’m Kaz.”

“Hi.” Kaufman didn’t know what else to say. He felt very exposed. The surface reflection and water’s refraction would hide detail, but not the obvious fact of his nudity.

Kaz smiled. She blinked, glanced at the caldera wall and back at him. “And you are?”

“Kaufman. Jack.” He leaned forward. The water tried to bring him to the surface again. “I mean, just Jack.”

Kaz held her right hand out. “Well, fellow swimmer, it’s nice to meet you. Kaufman Jack, just Jack.”

After a moment, when he hadn’t moved, she said, with a grin, “You could shake my hand in greeting. After all, meeting new people is a reason so many come for the experience of Sarto’s wonders.”

“Really?” Kaufman didn’t move. The phrase sounded familiar. Pat.

“Yes,” she said, still grinning. “Sarto’s stark beauty means all visitors have something in common.”

“You’re quoting the pamphlet.”

She laughed. A watery, bright sound. Almost like something composed.

“Are you making fun of me?” he said. “Because I’m naked?”

Her grin faded. “I wouldn’t dream of that. But if you’ve read the pamphlets, you know that clambering up here and splashing about nude is frowned upon.”

“I read that.”

“Other travelers might be offended.”

“They might,” he said. “I apologize. I’ll call my pack and . . .” Kaufman trailed off.

Kaz had turned away.

She stared into the sky. Kaufman looked up, following her gaze.

He saw another one of the hang-gliding rats. A poor description, he thought. The airborne animal was a couple of hundred meters off. Moving along parallel to the caldera wall. Beyond, the lacy crimson flowers stood out against the green.

The animal’s black body hung from the f lowing white wing by a thick, blended trunk, with numerous stringy tendrils reaching to all points of the wing.

It moved with a slow, rippling motion. Like waves starting out from the center of the wing. Rolling to the tips.

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The body had a dozen or more short legs. It might have had a head like a bat’s, but at this distance, Kaufman couldn’t quite make out any more detail.

Kaz kept watching it. “Billow,” she said. “I was starting to think I’d never see one.”

“I saw one earlier,” he said. “What are they?”

Kaz didn’t reply. The billow kept moving, drifting away. It had passed them by, and was losing altitude.

Kaufman considered taking the opportunity while Kaz’s head was turned away.

He could escape the pool, climb lower. Go and retrieve his tacky bathing costume from the pack.

He imagined her turning as he got one leg over the rim. Worse, f inding himself slipping and exposing himself.

He stayed where he was.

Kaz turned to him. Moved to the same position with her elbows out, chin on her hands. She grinned.

“You’re enjoying my predicament, aren’t you?” he said.

“You didn’t know about the billows, did you?” she said.

“Not until I saw one.”

“Best-kept secret,” she said. “Not many people come through here at this time of year. Sarto’s seasons can be extreme. Higher angle of inclination than Earth’s, but also the slightly eccentric orbit. With some precession and so on.”

He did remember that the star was colder than Earth’s sun, but Sarto was much closer. Orbited in just a few months. Rapid seasons.

“I read all that,” he said. “Astronomy’s not my strong suit.”

“What is?”

“Embarrassing myself publicly.”

She laughed again. Longer and fuller. Her whole face bright and joyous.

“You should come on up here,” she said. “I’m wearing less than you.”

“Oh.” Right away a cascade of thoughts tumbled around his head. He felt even more embarrassed.

Bad enough to be naked, but to be so together with a naked woman. Out in the wilds. Alone. In a hot pool.

He would feel awkward.

Especially still thinking of Marion.

And the kids. What would they think? Their old man out here gallivanting in the hot pools.

Grown now, they had their own lives. Sherilee with her landscaping business, Caleb with a second baby on the way.

He’d barely seen Caleb since Marion’s funeral. Sherilee called Kaufman every other day. Checking how he was.

Each of them had their own way of dealing with loss.

“It’s not erotic,” Kaz said now. She wore a wry grin. “The billows? You really don’t know?”

“I read the safety and general information pamphlet,” he said. “And the maps. But not much else. I just needed to get away. I liked the idea of a pilgrimage to these pools.”

He found his hands relaxing. No longer covering his groin.

“The billows are the strangest local fauna,” Kaz said. “You will have seen lots of animals and plants that are similar to things on Earth.”

“Lizards,” he said. “And the trees. Different, but yeah, it’s like going to Europe and seeing other species.”

“Butterflies,” she said. “I was so used to red admirals and white cabbage butterflies that when I saw a blue morpho in Guatemala I just about fell to my knees.”

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“Monitor lizards did that for me,” he said.

“But,” Kaz said. “The billows are something else entirely. Something for which there’s no analogue on Earth.”

“Really?”

“Maybe ballooning spiders,” she said. “You know when some species of baby spiders leave the nest. They feed out a strand of web. Let the wind catch it. After a moment there’s enough web that the air lifts the baby away from the nest. The little spider drifts on the wind. Hopefully it lands in a tree somewhere and begins catching insects.”

That didn’t sound to Kaufman much like the hang-gliding rat. He told Kaz.

“Hang-gliding rat?” she said. “That’s funny.”

“I’m a funny guy.”

“Now you’re flirting with me? I should warn you.”

“I’m not flirting,” he said. “I’m meeting other travelers.”

Kaz laughed. “The billows are sort of mammalian. Live young, milk glands. Live on the ground. Standard four-legged skeleton, but they also have six musculature legs. They kind of crawl around like centipedes some of the time.”

“I love them already. Do they make good pets?” Kaufman cringed. Now he was trying to be funny. Not a good look.

Marion would have cringed too. The kids would have rolled their eyes. He was glad they couldn’t see him.

As soon as he could escape, he was going straight back to his hotel and booking passage home.

Kaz blinked at him. “That was odd.”

“Sorry. I’m feeling out of sorts here.”

“If you came up here, we could both be equally embarrassed.”

“Yep.” Kaufman didn’t move, save for his hand strokes that kept him upright. He hung in the water with his knees bent, legs partly up. The water was only a bit over a meter deep.

“Anyway,” Kaz said. “The billows have spinnerets too. They take their web and weave the wing. They attach it to their body and take to the air.”

Kaufman didn’t know how to reply. Unusual alien lifeforms had been studied all over the thirty planets where humans had settled. The billow sounded interesting, but not too extraordinary compared to some.

Pahlavi had a kind of living rock. Holm had land whales. Saxks, under the binary Kalla I and II stars, had a catlike animal that spent half its life as a plant.

“Interesting,” Kaufman said.

“You don’t understand,” Kaz said. “There are millions of them. Only here in Williams Caldera.”

“Millions. I understand.”

Kaz gave him a pitying smile. “Why did you come here then? At this time of year.

Just to swim naked?”

“Personal reasons.”

“Right.”

“Sorry,” he said. He felt more awkward than just from being naked. “I didn’t mean to sound uninterested.”

Kaz smiled, but it seemed a little sad. The smile didn’t reach her eyes.

“I’ll go,” he said. He figured he could slip around to the next pool around the spiral, rather than heading straight back toward his pack. Less chance of slipping, or revealing himself.

“Don’t,” she said. “You should come and watch this.”

“Watch?”

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“This is what I meant,” she said. “I’ve been waiting for days. They should all go soon.”

“Days? In the pools?”

“My skin feels great,” she said. “But no, not the whole time in the pools. I do come up at this time most days. You know. For the sky.”

Kaufman looked up. The icy clouds shone back at him. The shadows around the caldera walls seemed deeper.

“I have a small camp,” Kaz said. “Just out of sight of the main path. Well, just a tent, really.”

Kaufman knew that long-term camping was frowned upon. He was surprised that rangers hadn’t come to evict her. Someone would have noticed that she hadn’t returned to her hotel. Kaufman’s hotel concierge knew that he would be back tomorrow evening.

“Now you’re thinking that I’m breaking the rules,” she said.

“I’m thinking that I’m glad to have met you,” he said. “I wouldn’t have known about the billow if you hadn’t told me. Thank you.”

Kaz stared at him, blue eyes intense. “You should come up here with me,” she said.

“I’m not going to jump you.”

“I didn’t think you would. And you’re not worried I would try?”

Kaz shrugged. “You wouldn’t.” Her eyes glanced up. “Anyway. There are millions of billows. If they all fly at once . . . well. That would be quite a sight.”

“It would.” Kaufman couldn’t quite picture it. Millions. He could understand someone camping out to see that, though. “Why isn’t this something on the Sarto tourist calendar?”

“Because these animals don’t follow a calendar.”

“So you don’t know when this will happen?”

“Nope.”

Kaufman stared at her. “So you’ll just wait until . . . how long have you been waiting so far?”

“Six days. I’m not obsessive.”

“Six days.” Maybe verging on obsessive, Kaufman thought. “When did it last happen?”

“No one knows.”

That didn’t make sense. “Someone must know. Otherwise why would you be waiting?” He wondered if Kaz was mad. He might be in more trouble than he’d thought.

Kaz grinned. “It’s a long story.”

“I’ve got time.” Part of him wanted to run away. Forget propriety and just race to his backpack. Get dressed and flee down the mountain.

Another part felt fascinated.

“Cool.” Kaz blinked and watched him. “I’m not insane,” she said. “I’m not taking medication for any condition, nor have I ever. I have visited a therapist, on two occasions. First when I lost my baby. Second when my sister was killed in a diving accident.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said.

“Thanks. I’m sure you’re wondering why I told you.”

“Little bit.”

“So you know I’m in my right mind. Here’s what I did. Last time I came out here, I saw them. The first day I saw just one. I fell in love. On the third day I saw a cluster of six. It was rapturous. Do you understand?”

Kaufman thought of Marion’s expression when she saw the face of the advancing Franz Josef glacier. That huge cliff of ice had made her tremble.

Not from the cold, but from the sheer scale of its glowing blue depths.

“I understand,” he said. He’d never felt it himself, but seeing it in Marion had been enough.

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He’d felt a vague touch of rapture himself simply watching her. That was a good memory of her. Far better than those days with her pallid face and all the tubes and incisions and serious doctor conversations.

Despite myriad advances—leaping between stars for one—sometimes people got sick and didn’t get better.

“I looked up the satellite imagery,” Kaz said. “From back in the old days. Before anyone got here.”

“Okay.” Every human-occupied world, outside of Earth, had been surveyed for decades before even the initial teams had arrived. All those quadra-whatever-trillions of pages of data and images were all public record. Easy enough to set up searches to find anything you were looking for.

“I wondered if they ever flew in bigger groups. And, oh boy, what I found!”

“Millions,” he said.

“Exactly!”

“But irregularly?” He realized he’d allowed himself to drift closer.

“So it seemed. But I kept digging away. Turns out there is a cycle. Farthest distance from the star. High inclination. And the blooming of the lace trees. When those three things coincide.”

Kaufman looked at the forest again. Hundreds of thousands of the crimson flowers. With the sun lowering, the flowers stood out even more.

“Now,” he said.

Kaz took a breath, her nostrils flaring.

“I didn’t see them,” he said. “You said no one knew. Why do they do it?”

“They hide. They’re good at that. Believe me, I’ve looked. And no one does know.”

“Except you.”

She gave an impish grin. “Because I went looking. Do you know how much research is going undone? Thirty inhabited planets.”

“More.”

“Yes.”

“So you’re a researcher? One of those post-docto—”

“Funny. I’m an artist.” She leaned forward, peering at him, eyes wide. “I’m seeking inspiration.”

“I guess you found it.” Kaufman smiled to himself. He’d drifted almost right to her.

As if he was a breath of air and she was drawing him in. Just the pool rim between them.

She breathed again. He was only a half meter from her.

“So what do you do? Travel the spiral arm?”

Kaufman laughed. “You’ll hate it.”

“Uh-oh. You’re a real researcher. A post-doctoral fellow studying xeno-fauna.”

“I’m an art critic.”

Kaz’s hands darted out. She grabbed his shoulders. Her grin so wide it showed some of her upper gum.

Kaufman splashed.

“Favorite artist?” she said.

“Uh . . . Klimt?”

“Huh! Most loathed?”

“Caleb Cruther.”

“It’s perfect,” Kaz said. “Come up here.”

“I shouldn’t.” He could picture Marion, smiling, urging him on. “What kind of art do you do?” he said.

She let go of him. “Now, I’m not going to talk any more. I’m going higher. I’m going to see if the billows come.”

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She stood.

Kaufman saw that she had no breasts. Just two f inger-length scars across her chest.

Reaching up, she grabbed the half-meter high rim of the next pool. Moving toward the center, she pulled herself over.

Kaufman stared out into the caldera’s vast void.

He saw again those images of the thing growing and spreading through Marion.

Above, he could hear Kaz splashing through the water. He paddled away. Across to the edge of the pool. Looking down on the others he’d traversed.

His pack still stood on the edge of the lowest pool. Waiting for him to return. A loyal dog.

The lacy crimson flowers looked like lights. Christmas lights. Ready to shine out over the caldera as the sun slipped lower.

He saw more of the billows. A cluster of them.

Six.

Their webby wings waving in slow ripples. The animals must be light. Thin-boned, with body cavities.

They looked so perfect. They danced together. Swirling.

A vortex. A cascade.

A tumble of them, flitting and floating.

Kaufman realized he’d become entranced. He felt his breathing coming in gasps.

More billows emerged from the forest. Another cluster of six.

Family groups. Or mating . . . groups. Not pairs. Hexa-somethings.

Not important.

Kaufman pushed away from the lip. He stood. Turned. Splashed across to the rim where Kaz had climbed away.

She wasn’t in the next pool.

Nor the next.

“Kaz!” he called.

He kept climbing.

Three more pools. He saw ripples still reflecting from the flat edges. She’d come this way.

“Kaz.”

Two more pools.

At the next he stopped and turned.

More and more billows joining the others. Dozens of clusters of six. Hundreds.

More and more slipping from the trees. Wings unfurling. Taking flight.

It felt as if they would f ill the caldera. They would sweep Kaufman up in their whirlwind.

Their squealing formed a loud backdrop. He heard a rhythm to it.

He kept climbing. Kept calling.

He found her another four pools on.

Kaz sat with the water up to her shoulders, her back against the far wall.

The last pool.

Around him vapor hung on the surface. The water felt tingly. Acidic. And hot.

Kaz grinned at him. “I heard you shouting,” she said. “Thought you should stop that.”

Kaufman nodded. Out of keeping with the event.

“I just . . .” he trailed off. Silence was better.

He strode through the pool toward her.

Kaz stood. Facing him.

“I’m . . .”

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She put her finger to her lips. Turning, she climbed to the last pool.

Kaufman followed.

It was different. So wide, compared to the others. And no other level above.

Sinking down to his shoulders next to her, he could see the caldera all around. It was like being in the ocean, with a horizon.

He could feel the heat, too. Far too hot, but not unbearable. He wondered how long he could stay.

“See,” she said.

Stretching down and out with his feet, Kaufman found he could not touch the bottom.

Instinctively he grabbed her hand. Kaz took it and squeezed.

They hung together, treading water. Looking down, the water seemed black. The wall faded to nothing.

He wondered how far it went down. In the center he could see ripples. The water boiling up from below. It would be very hot out there.

“Swim around.” Kaz tugged on his hand.

Together they returned to the side. Kaufman mimicked her pose, elbows out, chin on his hands.

Below, the caldera continued to fill with billows.

Thousands. Tens of thousands. Now Kaufman felt as if he himself was flying. His body buoyant and tingling in the mineral water. The sweep of the wafting billows.

He didn’t know how they stayed aloft. There were so many of them it seemed as if they would all jam and bump. Make collisions that would send them tumbling.

“Birds flock without crashing,” Kaz said.

“You read my mind?”

“Really? No. I was just wondering how they didn’t knock each other out of the air.

And then I thought of birds.”

Kaufman didn’t reply. He watched the spectacle. He didn’t know if he’d ever seen anything so astonishingly beautiful.

He bumped Kaz’s elbow. Reached his hand across to hers. Took it.

She smiled at him. Pulled his hand underwater. They hung together, kicking gently, opposite arms on the rim, holding hands underwater between.

The sun kept moving on. Almost at the caldera’s rim. The western wall already falling into darkness. The crimson flowers still picked up the ambient light, glowing like stars.

Below, the spiral of mineral pools reflected the light. Shimmering with the slight-est tremors. The calm affected by the movement of hundreds of thousands of billows.

Their numbers continued to grow.

“It keeps becoming more spectacular,” he whispered.

“Yes.”

“You were right. Thank you for sharing this.”

“You seemed so sad,” she said.

Kaufman swallowed. He turned to face her. “How could anyone be sad now?”

“Exactly.”

With a grin she leaned forward and kissed him. A tap of her lips against his. She stared right at his eyes.

Kaufman trembled.

“This,” she said. “This is my kind of art. Sharing this. Could it be any better?”

It couldn’t, he thought. The wash and vibrancy of color and life. It felt mystical.

“Maybe,” he said, “after this, we could travel together. For awhile.”

Kaz stared at him, surprise in her eyes.

“But you’re an art critic. We’d just argue all the time.”

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Kaufman gave a subtle shake of his head. “If this is your taste in . . . beauty, we’ll never have—”

Kaz put her finger to his lips.

“Good,” she said. “Yes, let’s take a couple of days. I’d enjoy that.”

Below, the billows continued to increase in number. The brilliance of their wings picked up the reds of the flowers, creating a vague pinkish haze.

Above, the clouds capped it all, with their streaky filigrees. Some edges burned a bright silver.

Somewhere in between, the wide-winged raptor still circled. Slowly. Its stark absorbent ebony formed a perfect counterpoint to the swirling all around.

“Thank you,” he said. “This is what I needed.”

Kaz squeezed his hand. “I think,” she said, “it’s what we both needed.”

Kaufman stared out. One day, thousands of people would want to see this. How perfect to see it now, like this.

With Kaz.

He knew barely a thing about her. But then, he knew that he knew her inside out. ❍

The Billows of Sarto

119

THE

WAITING

ROOM: THE

PEDIA’S STORY

James Gunn

James Gunn’s memoir, Star-Begotten: A Life Lived in Science

Fiction, was published last year, and an updated edition of

Alternate Worlds: The Illustrated History of Science Fiction
should be out soon. This edition will be in a 7x10 format.

Although it will have fewer illustrations than the original book, there will be at least one, and possibly two, color sections and a new final chapter describing what has happened in science fiction since the publication of the coffee-table edition in 1975. The book will be less costly and more convenient for classroom use. In addition to his many publications, Jim is the Founding Director of the KU Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction in Lawrence, Kansas. The Center has begun to branch out internationally. There is a Gunn Center affiliate at India’s St. Teresa College in Ernakulam, Kerala. Negotiations are ongoing for a Gunn Center affiliate in Beijing as well.

China’s Future Affairs Administration (FAA) has contracted to publish a new edition of The Road to Science Fiction beginning next June with a new translation, and another Beijing publisher has contracted for the Chinese rights to his Transcendental trilogy. Jim is also doing a series of monthly essays on science fiction for the FAA online journal.

When Jim and I first discussed running this series of tales related to the Transcendental trilogy, I estimated that it would 120

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take about two years to publish all of them. At the time, Jim told me, “I’ll be ninety-five when it gets published :-), but I’ll be ninety-five anyway. I can’t imagine a better way to spend my time or a better way to celebrate it and science fiction.” As it turned out, the extra pages gifted to us by the shift to bimonthly issues allowed me to double up many of the stories and get all the tales out sooner than expected. Thus, while Jim is still ninety-four years young, please join me in wishing him a very happy ninety-fifth birthday later this year!

The biological computer inside Riley’s head surveyed the spaceport waiting room on the planet called Terminal. The computer could perceive its environment only through Riley’s eyes and other inadequate sensory organs, but Riley observed his surroundings with the restless intensity of a space-battle veteran turned merce-nary. Everything the computer acquired about its environment came though Riley’s senses, but everything it knew had been there from its awakening a year ago—or a long cycle, as the Galactics referred to a period of similar though not identical duration.

The computer knew what Riley knew because its extensions had threaded their way through his brain and had access to his memories, though they were not always to be trusted, and it knew how Riley thought about itself. Riley called it a “pedia,” the term humans used to designate a computer that had achieved the kind of encyclope-dic knowledge that humans no longer bothered with and the ability to handle the everyday chores that humans no longer were willing to trouble themselves to do—
and, although humans did not think about it, a measure of self-awareness that resembled the consciousness of humans. And Riley hated the computer. Unlike the ex-ternal devices carried by most humans and many Galactics, or the planetwide pedias that had made possible advanced technological civilizations, Riley’s pedia had been implanted in his head when he was unconscious, and he had been told that it could not be removed without killing them both. That was something the pedia could appreciate, because the one basic concern that underlay everything that determined its behavior was survival.

And that was what had concerned it since its awakening a year ago, when, like Riley, it had learned of its mission, to help this odd human and to guide him to this shoddy waiting room and to board a ship of pilgrims voyaging to f ind a rumored Transcendental Machine, somewhere in a remote corner of the Galaxy—a Machine that had the magical power to realize the potential of any creature that had the good fortune and the courage to f ind and use it. Riley didn’t believe in the mission, but he had no choice. The pedia estimated the chances for discovery at 7.9 percent, but it had no choice either, forced as it was to accompany Riley into whatever dangers and futile exercises its installers had commanded Riley to seek out. Free will!

the pedia thought and tucked the concept away in a seldom-accessed part of its memory.

It had not always been this way, for humans and machines. Amongst the data stored in the pedia’s memory were records of primitive humans and their more primitive ancestors responding to the challenges of environment and survival with individual guile and strength, developing communal efforts to meet dangers and opportunities through cooperation rather than competition, inventing devices to The Waiting Room: The Pedia’s Story

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extend their reach and their power, learning how to create written records and to leave them for succeeding generations, and f inally creating information machines that evolved into thinking machines. Pedias were produced that performed the routine jobs that once had required the efforts and time of almost everybody, and life for humans became free from worry and struggle and conf lict.

And released them to realize bigger dreams. That had happened a thousand years ago, and one hundred years later they began reaching out to the other worlds of their Solar System. Over the ensuing centuries, they colonized the Moon, terraformed Mars, investigated Venus, explored the gas giant worlds and their moons, and in due time turned their ambitions toward the stars. Half a century ago they had sent out their f irst generation ships and waited. And waited. And f inally learned, through a generation ship that was intercepted and a group that escaped, that the Galaxy—or at least the spiral arm in which Earth’s Solar System was situated—was already owned by aliens, and humans were mere late-comers and interlopers. The spiral arm, humanity learned, had been governed by a federation of dozens of alien civilizations for some hundreds of thousands of years, and newcomers were expected to be humble petitioners for the right to admission as an apprentice species that might, in the fullness of time—which could be thousands of years—become a junior member of the Federation if it was suit-ably subservient and proved its civilized disposition by good behavior and a decent history.

Being a dynamic species and not humble at all, humans demanded equality. War began, a war that had just ended with millions dead and dozens of worlds destroyed, leaving the Federation determined, above all, to maintain the stasis that had kept the peace for the tens of thousands of years before humanity’s rude emergence. Only to have its stasis disturbed by rumors of a new religion with a promise of transcendence within a believer’s lifespan, indeed within the moment of encounter with a machine for transcendence—a Transcendental Machine.

Now here they were, pedia and human, entering a squalid room packed with passengers waiting for the ship that would take them in search of a transformation both fulfilling and frightening. They had spent a year together, pedia and human, starting at the pleasure world Dante, and then aboard a stinking freighter, getting to know each other and the diff icult ways of forced interaction. Even with the Federation method of traveling through wormholes it called nexus points, travel consumed months, and the terror of un-space affected even the biological computer cradled in the back of Riley’s skull. And then the long, boring passage in the climber that had descended from the top of the beanstalk.

The pedia did not like the look of the spaceport. It was small and shabby, and surrounded on three sides by mountains that loomed over the equatorial jungle with snowcaps like warning flags. Anything could come down from those mountains. And the mixed-species rabble within the waiting room, without the support of pedia such as the one in Riley’s head, could not be expected to respond with the necessary vigilance and spontaneous action to cope with the kind of unanticipated perils always lurking on alien worlds.

Inadequate creatures all, all clearly in need of transcendence, and undependable in emergencies. If they were pilgrims like Riley, their potential for disruption and maybe danger would mean constant surveillance.

It was, the pedia determined with 87 percent likelihood, a desperate situation in pursuit of an improbable reward, and it was 94 percent likely to end badly. That might mean the end of Riley and, more important, the end of the biological computer in his head.

It was, the pedia thought, the worst of all possible worlds. ❍

122

James Gunn

ATTACK ON

TERMINAL:

THE PILGRIMS’

STORY

James Gunn

The barbarian Minals swept down from the mountains that walled in the spaceport on the equator and the waiting room where a mixed group of aliens and humans had gathered for a pilgrimage into the unknown. The mountains where the barbarians had their summer encampments were capped with snow, but the Terminal jungle at their foot was overgrown with green and orange and blue masses of vegetation, and the Minals were almost invisible until they broke from the jungle’s edge.

A few hours earlier the barbarians had attacked Terminal City on the far side of the cleared jungle and then pivoted toward the spaceport, as if the attack on the city had been a feint to draw defenders away. But the barbarians had killed hundreds of civilized Minals in the city and a few outworlders as well, including a couple of humans, though that information came too late to help the travelers in the waiting room. The waiting room had been well-named; its mixed-species occupants had been waiting for forty-eight hours while the Minal functionaries had waggled their doglike heads in a response that Riley’s pedia interpreted as “these matters are beyond our control.” The few words they permitted past their constricted throats were “the ship has not yet arrived.” Whether that was true could not be independently checked; the functionaries had the only access to arrivals and departures.

If they had information about the attack on Terminal City, they did not share that either, and the attack on the waiting room seemed to come out of nowhere. Which was a good description of the planet itself: it was far down the spiral arm that the Galactic Federation controlled, and nobody came to Terminal except on urgent business.

“Or maybe on some implausible quest for a holy grail,” his pedia said.

“What’s a ‘holy grail’?” Riley replied in the directed thought way that had become standard in their interaction. But there was no time for an answer, as a single arrow and then a volley rattled harmlessly against the sturdy windows built to withstand hurricane winds surging down from the mountains once or twice a season. By the time the spears began to strike, the mixed-species group in the waiting room had organized itself into defensive positions. Wordlessly. Even if words had been under-standable, delays in translation would have been catastrophic. Riley, sitting against one interior wall on a backpack containing all his worldly possessions, was impressed. Rather than the dregs of a few dozen shabby worlds, this casual assemblage of aliens, unprepossessing as they had seemed during the long hours they had waited for the climber to be ready for boarding, had analyzed the situation and respond-ed like a company that had been f ighting together for years. By the time the 123

March/April 2018
barbarians battered their way through the transparent doors, the passengers were waiting for them: a gantlet with a variety of weapons that had magically appeared from pockets, body belts, and luggage.

“Folly! Folly!” screamed the voice in Riley’s head. “Mission danger! Retreat!”

“Shut up!” Riley said. “Doing nothing is death for sure!”

The creature like a small elephant walking on its hind legs was first to meet the barbarians, as befitted a heavy-planet native. The barbarian spears and knives seemed to do no damage to the alien’s tough hide, and the alien’s short trunk was lethal to the necks of the four-legged attackers. Blood spurted, heads rolled, and barbarians who didn’t get killed were tossed aside, battered and broken. But the barbarians had numbers. The masses pushed forward and were pushed by the masses behind.

Riley was on the other side, and his gun killed a dozen more. Bodies piled up and slowed the passage of those behind, and the ones that got too close to shoot, Riley dis-patched with his knife when they reared up to use the spears strapped to their backs. Riley looked to his left and was surprised to see the woman who had been sitting alone against a far wall. She was as quick with a knife as he, maybe quicker, silent and efficient and calm as if this had happened to her before.

Behind the elephant-like creature was a barrel-shaped Sirian, throwing itself against the barbarians with crushing force and holding back those it could not reach.

Behind the woman was a bird-like Alpha Centauran with vestigial wings and a deadly beak. Behind the Sirian was a small, sneaky-looking creature whose pinched face and shifty eyes reminded Riley of pictures he had seen of an Earth animal called a “weasel.” It fought like Riley imagined a weasel fought, darting in and out to deliver knife blows and retreat. Then there were the two humans, small and wiry, and almost identical except that one was blond and the other dark. They fought almost as one, as if their activities were synchronized to turn them into a warrior with four hands. The barbarians who got within reach of the flower-like creature with the yellow head, standing in its pot of soil, were sliced by its swiftly swinging fronds that seemed more like knife blades.

Finally the barbarians stopped as if by some unspoken command. They picked up their wounded and retreated back into the clearing and then into the jungle beyond, having won nothing for their sacrifices except to leave the would-be travelers with nicks and scratches and a sense of bewilderment.

The voice in Riley’s head said, “You almost got us killed.”

Riley studied the waiting room. Minal workers had appeared from back rooms to remove the bodies of the dead barbarians and clean the blood from the f loor, but stains remained as a question for which the functionaries’ only answer was the laying back of ears. Riley’s pedia interpreted that movement as the equivalent of a shrug and a statement that nobody understands why barbarians do anything. But Riley thought that the delays and the attack were no coincidence. Both seemed intended to slow or prevent the journey for which many if not most of the travelers had gathered here—a journey to find something Riley was pretty sure didn’t exist: a machine that would transform any creature into the transcendent perfection implicit in its genes. It was a fool’s errand, but the thing in his head gave him no choice but to go along with this pointless exercise.

“It’s not for you to judge,” his pedia said, as if to conf irm Riley’s lack of free will.

The thing in his head could not make him do anything—at least it hadn’t yet, and he didn’t think it could—but it could deliver a paralyzing command to stop him, and there was no way to conceal his intentions or to free himself from this annoying monitor. The unseen creatures that had given him his instructions were right; he had consulted experts and the thing in his head could not be removed without 124

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killing him. The only thing that seemed to inhibit its intrusions was a threat to its own existence.

His pedia’s intrusions were as unpredictable as the weather here on the equator, mostly hot and humid, but chilled occasionally by a cold blast rolling down from the mountains, killing the vegetation and plunging the quadruped Minals into curled up fetal positions.

“April is the cruelest month,” his pedia said, “breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.”

His pedia said things like that, and other things he found more comprehensible and less benign. “What is ‘April’?”

“A thousand years ago people on Earth used that word to designate a time of re-newal when plants started to grow again after their winter death,” his pedia said.

“When humanity ventured out among the stars, they brought words along that had little meaning there, like days and months and years. But not ‘war.’ That means the same everywhere.”

“I was born on Mars.”

“Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,” his pedia said.

Riley ignored it, as he often did when it gave him nonsense from its apparently in-exhaustible store. Maybe it was talking about the pilgrimage he and the others were soon to embark upon if the authorities ever let them board the climber and access the ship that, he hoped, was waiting for them at the top of the beanpole.

Where had the janitors and functionaries been when the barbarians attacked, he wondered. They seemed to have disappeared a few moments before the first arrows arrived. And where were they while the pilgrims’ trash had piled up while the would-be pilgrims waited? The waiting room was small—no more than twenty meters square—and cluttered with refugees from dozens of alien worlds. They had been living in the waiting room, eating here, and sleeping here, and the refuse was a health hazard as well as an offense. But the janitors, if that was what they were, had not appeared until the barbarians had been repelled.

The odors of strange spices and fetid emissions were a miasma on the air currents; the way it smelled depended upon origins and organs. And now it was mixed with the smell of barbarian blood and the wastes emitted as the creatures died. The far wall that looked out onto the Terminal jungle was transparent except for a cloudy portion in the lower left-hand corner where a barbarian arrow had nicked it, along with a couple of his bullet holes that had not been repaired. Through the holes seeped the decay of the Terminal tropical jungle competing against the decay inside.

Beyond was the spaceport out in the bay with its standard space elevator like an almost-invisible black beanpole ascending into the clouds above; a climber waited at its base for the frustrated travelers. Behind the mountains the reddish Terminal sun was setting in a gulf between the clouds. Afterward would come the Terminal night, far blacker out here in this remote region of the spiral arm than that on Mars.

Riley turned his attention back to the waiting room and its occupants, trying to identify who was a pilgrim and who was here on some other business. Playing this kind of game forced him to pay attention to details. No matter what the people who had implanted his pedia thought, he was no superhero. He was a survivor, more by accident than by skill or will, but before his surrender to the forgetfulness of the pleasure world Dante, he had learned how to pay attention. Most creatures didn’t.

Most creatures died sooner than they should.

That heavy-planet alien standing on a tripod of its two trunk-like legs and its thick tail who had been so effective in the f ight against the barbarians, hurling them aside with ease and sustaining cuts that seemed to heal as they were being sustained. It was not paying attention now, with two of its eyes closed and its short Attack on Terminal: The Pilgrims’ Story

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proboscis swaying. Riley hadn’t thought it was a pilgrim: heavy-planet aliens already assumed they were perfect. But now he thought differently.

The tank with treads, like a motorized coffin, that had taken no part in the battle with the barbarians now stood in front of the window—a poor location for a creature whose fragile life-support system needed this kind of protection—but perhaps it was watching, with whatever sensory apparatus it had, for further dangers to whatever it contained. The tank was decorated with engraved designs that Riley would have liked to examine more closely, but alien sensitivities were unpredictable He had no desire to cause inter-species conflict. Yet the tank, for that’s what it most closely resembled, piqued his curiosity, if for no reason other than its unusual exterior. The tank had no windows, no obvious means of observing the outside world, as if the outside world was irrelevant. It was impossible to discern anything about the interior of the tank. For all he knew, the tank itself might be the alien creature; or, if there was an alien within, it might already be dead or near-dead and being sustained by some high medical art.

On the other side of the window stood the tall, spindly creature with a head like a yellow flower in the heat of the day, nodding forward on a stem-like neck. Several extensions protruded from its body, like arms or fronds; fluids could be observed cours-ing through them and up the torso that was scarcely larger than the extensions.

Riley remembered its deadly defense against the barbarians when they came within reach. It was a strange traveler, carrying with it a bucket of soil in which its rootlike feet were imbedded, and an even stranger pilgrim, for that surely was what it was, even thought it was difficult to imagine what transcendence meant to a flower.

The small, wiry humans who had fought like a unit remained together. They were curiously alike, maybe twins distinguished only by hair color. Riley couldn’t be sure what gender they were. Maybe they weren’t sure either. Riley judged them to be members of the space crew. They moved a bit sluggishly on-planet, as if they had grown up in a low-gravity environment, but they had acquitted themselves well against the barbarians.

The next person he studied was the small alien who reminded Riley of a weasel, both in appearance and in f ighting style, though he had never actually seen one.

Colonists had not brought any to Mars, and the creature might even be extinct, like many other such species on Earth. It could be, he thought, another space crew member, or maybe a pilgrim. Certainly it had lots of aspects to improve. He inspected and catalogued others before he came finally to the woman, as if he were saving her for last. She sat on a pack of belongings to his left and to the right of the weasel-like alien. There were thirty-seven in the waiting room, not counting the Terminal officials—the barrel-like Sirian with small, hooded eyes and a round hole for a mouth, the Alpha Centauran with a feathery topknot, a f ierce-looking beak, and vestigial wings, and several whose home world he could not identify. The woman sat like a cat, relaxed but lithe, as if she could spring into action at a touch. She had dark hair and blue eyes, a combination that was striking even if she wasn’t beautiful—her features were regular and her eyes were large, but they moved restlessly; moreover, her mouth was too f irm and her chin too set. But somehow she seemed just right for what she was, and Riley thought he would like to get to know her, and maybe he would. She had the dedicated look of a pilgrim, he thought, and she had accounted for as many barbarians as he had.

He was still pondering her status when the heavy-world alien woke up, or perhaps had not been asleep after all. It clomped across the floor to the platform that served the quadruped Minals for a desk and said something that Riley’s pedia translated as

“My name is Tordor, and we will leave now!”

Tordor would be someone to watch.

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Asimov’s

Within minutes the announcement came over the P.A. system in Galactic Standard that the climber would depart in half a cycle. It was more like a cycle.

Riley had a long time to think about the voyage ahead on an unknown ship with its mixed-species passengers in search of supernatural salvation.

“It is the way of all pilgrimages,” the voice in his head said.

Riley knew the journey ahead would be dangerous, perhaps fatal, and probably futile, but he had no way of knowing how fraught with peril—and with meaning—his voyage would become. Or how it would transform him and maybe the Galaxy itself. ❍

Attack on Terminal: The Pilgrims’ Story

127

Rich Larson’s first collection Tomorrow Factory will be out in May 2018 from Skyhorse, and his debut novel Annex will be released in July from Orbit. In the meantime, his startling new tale considers what might occur . . .

IN EVENT OF

MOON

DISASTER

Rich Larson

Sol is so intent on the fizzing comm channel that he doesn’t notice Laurie is back until her gloved f ist raps against the airlock window, sending shivery vibrations through the whole hopper.

“Sunnuvabitch.”

He snaps out of his seat, pulling the headset down around his neck. Laurie is standing in front of the airlock, arms folded. She taps her foot for effect, but in the stiff suit and low gravity it looks more like she’s keeping time to a slow-mo banjo. Sol gives her a few exaggerated claps as he dances over to the lever and heaves the exterior door open. Laurie gives him the finger and steps inside.

As soon as the atmosphere reader dings green, she hits the release on her helmet.

It levers up off her face with a hiss, revealing her sharp chin, snub nose, dark eyes under knitted brows. She looks unnaturally pale in the airlock light, and her dirty blonde hair is matted with sweat.

Sol opens the interior door. “Well? You all right? I was about to suit up and go after you, Laurie, Christ.” He jams his headset against one ear and buzzes Control, but gets silence again. “Still can’t raise Control. Something’s messing with the radio.”

“I only lost transmitting functions,” she says, stowing her helmet on the hook. “I could hear you just fine the whole time. What the hell were you chewing on?”

“Peanuts.” Sol grabs the package off his seat’s armrest and checks the label. “Honey-roasted. They’re honey-roasted and pretty damn good. You want some?”

“No. Yeah. Give ’em.” She clambers out of the suit and holds out her hand. Sol sees it shake a bit as he pours peanuts into her palm, but pretends not to notice. She scoops them into her mouth.

“So? You going to tell me what was down there, Laurie?”

She points to her full mouth.

“Oh, I get it. Revenge chewing. You’re revenge chewing at me. I’m a nervous eater, Laurie, and you were in that crack with no radio contact for twenty-seven whole minutes.”

Laurie swallows. “There was nothing,” she says. “I took the readings. Big electro-magnetic spike, like we saw from orbit, but no physical source that I could detect. No 128

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sign of the drone we sent down there. I don’t know. It’s fucking weird, is what it is.”

She runs her hands back along her hair. “I’m shot.”

Sol makes a gun with two fingers. “Bang.”

“As in I’m tired.” Laurie pinches the bridge of her nose, then goes to her hanging helmet and pulls out the datastick. “Here, have a look. I start singing, at one point.

To drown out the chewing. Ignore the song choice and the high notes.”

Sol takes the stick. “All right. Hey, take a nap if you need it. Pickup window’s in two-and-a-half hours.”

“Thanks,” Laurie mutters. She starts to slide past him, toward her chair, then stops. “There was nothing down there, Solly. But it was weird.”

“Hey.” He pats her on the shoulder. “We’re on the fucking Moon.”

“That is true,” Laurie says, clambering past him into her chair. She unrolls a vacuum-packed blanket and pulls it over her head. Her voice comes muffled. “That is a fact.”

Sol watches out of the corner of his eye, making sure she’s breathing normally, as he verifies the pickup window and runs another engine diagnostic. Before long she’s snoring, which seems like a good sign. He claps the headset on, plugs the datastick in, and reaches for the honey-roasted peanuts.

Sol has the feed from Laurie’s helmet up on his screen, watching through her eyes as she makes her way along the bottom of the crevasse. She’s right. There’s no sign of whatever unidentif ied body struck the Moon’s eastern hemisphere and plowed a half-kilometer crack through the dust and rock. No sign of the drone they sent to investigate. Just an empty, eerie tunnel.

Eerie, but he can’t quite put his f inger on why. Something about the juts and whorls of rock seems slightly off to him, something about their angles. He’s leaning in for a closer look when someone knocks twice against the airlock window.

Sol bolts upright, heart hammering his ribs. Laurie shifts under her blanket. He claps both hands over his chest and exhales and tries to think of possible explana-tions. The best he comes up with is debris. Nothing more specific than that, just the word. Debris.

He goes to the airlock. Cold sweat drips from his armpits down his sides. Someone in a spacesuit is standing in the dust outside, shifting from foot to foot.

“You are not debris,” Sol mutters.

The astronaut taps their helmet and signs a radio malfunction, then taps their padded wrist where a watch would be. Someone else is trying to investigate the impact. A rogue state, or some private corp, somehow got here f irst without anyone knowing. And somehow they are wearing Laurie’s suit, with the distinctive smiley decal on the oxygen tank.

Sol suddenly gets chatter on his headset. He pulls it back up, dazed. Laurie’s voice.

“Sol, don’t fuck around, Sol, I blacked out down there,” she says, sounding more panicked than he’s ever heard her before. “I lost you on the radio, I blacked out and something happened. Let me in, Sol, god damn you.”

The astronaut thunks their helmet up against the window and he can see Laurie’s mouth through the faceplate, lips moving as she cusses him out.

Sol yanks his headset off. A convulsion runs up and down his body; for a second he thinks he’s going to vomit. Then he strides back to the dash, to the chair where Laurie’s snores are f luttering her blanket. He grips the corner with one sweaty hand, braces himself, and pulls.

Laurie’s still there, splayed back in the chair. She raises an arm and drapes it over her face. “Go time?” she mutters.

“Uh.” Sol shakes his head. “Don’t know.” He looks back at the airlock, where Laurie In Event of Moon Disaster

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now has both gloved hands splayed against the window. He pulls his headset back up, but hears only hyperventilating, and he realizes Laurie can see herself in the chair.

A crackling sob comes through the radio. “Sol, who is that? Sol? Who’s that in my . . . in the chair?”

In front of him, Laurie swings herself upright, rubbing her eyes. “You go through the footage?” she asks. “I did warn you, right? About the high notes.”

“Oh, you were great,” Sol says faintly. “Operatic, even. But. Laurie.”

“That is not me, Sol,” Laurie begs through the headset. “That is not fucking me!

Let me in, Sol, something happened down there, and you have to let me in, please, please, please—”

Laurie in front of him sees the Laurie waiting at the airlock window. Her eyes widen. Sol remembers her taking off her suit in the airlock. How her face looked pale, almost waxy. When she goes to get up from the chair, he pushes her back down.

Not hard, but hard enough.

“Who the hell’s that?” she demands.

“Just. Stay seated, okay? Stay there for now. I’m calling Control.” Sol keys his headset. “Control, we have a situation. We have, uh, a third party present.”

“Sol, is that me? That sounded like me.”

He waits the ten-second delay, clutching the headset hard to his ear. Still nothing.

Nobody on the channel except Laurie, outside, begging to be let in.

“This is so fucked,” Sol says. “I think her oxy’s low. I have to at least let her into the airlock.”

Laurie shakes her head side to side, side to side. Her eyes are glassy with shock.

“Yeah,” she finally says. “Yeah, you better.”

“And then, you know, I have to figure out which of you is a shapeshifting alien parasite,” Sol says, trying to wrench his mouth into a smile.

Laurie looks dead at him and flicks her tongue like a lizard.

“Don’t do that, Laurie,” Sol says. “Don’t do stuff just to mess with me, okay?

Please?”

He gives them numbers: Laurie One, who returned to the hopper at 0629 hours, and Laurie Two, who returned to the hopper at 0712 hours.

Laurie Two is significantly calmer now that she’s in the airlock and has her helmet off. Her dirty blonde hair is sweat-starched into spikes, and her eyes have dark circles underneath them. She’s taking deep gulps of the recycled air, pushing it out her nose. But she won’t take her eyes off Laurie One, who is sitting on the other side of the inner airlock door.

“Just don’t let her near the levers,” Laurie Two reiterates, voice coming through tinny. “I don’t want to get vented by my creepy alien doppelganger.”

“Says the creepy alien doppelganger,” Laurie One finishes. “I’m trying to keep an open mind about what’s going on here. You could do the same.”

“It’s probably easier to be open-minded when you’re on that side of the airlock, all wrapped up in my blanket,” Laurie Two says.

“Laurie, maybe give her the blanket,” Sol mutters. “As a peace offering.”

“Sol, she doesn’t want the . . .”

“I don’t want the fucking blanket, Sol.” Laurie Two sighs. “I want to know what’s going on. I want to know who that is and how she beat me back to the hopper. I was only blacked out for a minute, tops.” She holds up her helmet, then the helmet Laurie One shed earlier, comparing them. Shakes her head.

“She’s been back for forty-f ive minutes already,” Sol says. “If you blacked out, it was longer than a minute. Way longer.”

Laurie Two digs the datastick out of her helmet. “See for yourself, Sol.”

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Sol goes to trigger the interior door, then pauses. “Just hand it to me, okay? Don’t try to come in.”

Laurie Two’s face falls, and Sol feels it like a gut punch. “Solly, you really think . . .

think I’m some kind of . . .” She blinks hard. “Oh, man. Okay. Yeah. I’ll pass it through.”

Laurie One looks away, grimacing.

“You get it, right?” Sol asks.

“I get it,” Laurie Two says. “Wish I didn’t.”

“I’ll wait over here,” Laurie One says, pointing to the corner. “Away from the airlock controls.”

“That’s real considerate, alien Laurie,” Laurie Two says.

Sol cracks the interior door. Laurie Two passes the datastick through, and he pretends not to notice how her hand is trembling. She tries to smile, but gives up halfway, leaving her mouth all stretched. Sol mouths the word sorry to her as he re-locks the interior door, leaving her in limbo.

He slots the datastick into the dash and pulls up the video, playing it side-by-side with Laurie One’s. The prep, the entry, the descent—all identical, down to the mil-lisecond. Sol tries to concentrate on the footage, tries to ignore Laurie One biting her thumbnail in the corner and Laurie Two squatting in the airlock, head in her hands.

“Hallucination,” Laurie One says. “We’re all thinking that, right? Air filter’s compromised. We’re breathing carbon and talking to my empty spacesuit in the airlock.”

“Or I’m still blacked out in the crevasse,” Laurie Two says. “Contaminant in my oxygen tank.”

“Under other circumstances, you know, I think you two would really hit it off,” Sol says, but he runs a diagnostic on the air filter in a side window. Oxygen levels are green. He fumbles for the last of the peanuts and crunches them between his molars one at a time.

The footage is playing at triple time, a blur of identical motion, identical rock formations. Then, at the thirty-two minute mark, the computer detects divergence and slows it back down. Both helmets’ owners are clambering back out of the crack, but taking slightly different routes. Sol rewinds, plays half-speed. Laurie Two never fal-ters, never freezes. As far as he can tell, there’s no blackout at all, but the timestamp has jumped forward forty minutes.

“You said you were only out for a minute,” Laurie One says. “It jumps forty.”

“Impossible,” Laurie Two says. “That’s impossible. If I was down there an extra forty minutes I’d have run out of oxygen.”

Sol shakes the empty peanut bag, desperately licks the salt and sugar off his palm.

If he’s the one hallucinating, maybe Laurie never came back at all. Maybe she’s stuck down there while he argues with figments of his own imagination. He raps his knuckles against his temple and peers closer at the footage as it keeps playing, as both Lauries make their way out of the crevasse.

Then he sees it.

“That crag in the rock,” he blurts. “It repeats. That whole stretch of tunnel, it repeats.”

He restarts the video and claws the playback speed down to half, watching through Laurie’s eyes as she descends. She’s more focused on her footing than on the walls, but there’s enough. The cracks and whorls in the tunnel hit an invisible mark-er and start to repeat themselves. Shifted, slightly condensed, but the same pattern.

As Laurie goes deeper, it happens again.

“Let me see,” Laurie Two says faintly.

Sol drags the footage onto his tablet and goes back to the airlock, Laurie One drifting along after him. She’s chewing her lip the way she does when she’s thinking of something unpleasant or complicated or both. The three of them huddle up around In Event of Moon Disaster

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the interior door, Laurie Two on one side, Sol and Laurie One on the other, and they watch the video.

“So what are we saying?” Laurie One asks. “Whatever crashed into the rock was some kind of alien copy-print machine?”

A gloved fist raps against the airlock window.

Laurie Three has brought company in the form of Laurie Four, whose smashed faceplate is swathed in electrical tape. Her head is lolling inside her helmet, and her eyes are fluttered shut. Laurie Three is alert, if exhausted from having dragged Laurie Four from the crevasse to the hopper. She takes the presence of Laurie One and Laurie Two a little better for having already saved her own life.

“I found her facedown on my way out,” Laurie Three says. “I thought I was having some kind of out-of-body experience, or something. You two must know all about that.”

Laurie Two snorts. She and Laurie One nod. Everyone is inside the hopper now; the airlock is jammed with shed spacesuits and Sol is reasonably sure there are no shapeshifting alien parasites afoot. Laurie Four needs medical attention. She’s lying on the chair now, still unconscious but with more color in her face and a blanket pulled over her. Laurie Three is hovering, feeling residually responsible. Laurie One and Laurie Two are on opposite sides of the cramped cockpit.

Sol is at the screen, checking the timestamps from Three and Four’s helmets, or rather, Four and Three’s.

“So first we had a forty minute jump, then a one-hour eighteen minute jump—except she slipped on her way out and cracked her faceplate—and then a one-hour forty-four minute jump,” he says. “Which means for us, outside the crevasse, the arrivals are coming quicker and quicker.”

“The copies,” Laurie Two says glumly. “We’re copies. You can say it.”

“The electromag f luctuation,” Laurie actually-Four says. “At the bottom of the crack. It’s somehow spitting out clones of me?”

“Of her,” Sol says, jabbing his thumb at Laurie One, who looks increasingly uncomfortable. “But yeah. Basically, that’s the situation.” He can feel panic blocking up his throat. He still can’t raise Control, and the pickup window is approaching, and . . .

“Sol, I gotta talk to you for a second,” Laurie One says abruptly, coming up off the wall. “Alone. Just for a second.”

Sol shakes his head. “There’s going to be another Laurie knocking any second. Do we really have time for—”

“Bathroom,” Laurie One hisses. “Now.”

“Yeah, okay,” Sol says. He gives the other Lauries a pained look. “Be right back.”

“Original Laurie, asserting her authority,” Laurie Two says dryly. “Why the need for privacy? I know you’re going to be talking about—”

“Life support,” Laurie Four says. “The hopper’s not specced for this many people, neither’s the ship. Weight restrictions, too, for launch.”

Sol lets Laurie One drag him into the bathroom stall and shutter the door.

“They’re dead-on about the life support,” he says. “Fuck.”

“Solly, listen,” Laurie One says with something rasping in her throat. “I’m not sure I’m the real Laurie.”

“Oh, Christ, Laurie, don’t say that,” Sol groans. “Don’t mess with me, remember?”

“I’m not.”

Laurie One’s breath is stale and hot and Sol desperately wants to get out of the bathroom, even though there’s nowhere else to go but back to more Lauries.

“I blacked out, too, when I was down there,” Laurie One says. “I didn’t tell you about it earlier. Didn’t want you stress-eating for the next two-and-a-half hours.”

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Sol grips his hair with both hands, weaving it through his fingers. “But you were the first one back. So it has to be you.” His voice has a whiny edge to it he can’t quite erase. “It has to be, Laurie. Come on.”

Laurie One shakes her head. “Maybe I’m the first one back because I was the first copy,” she says. “Maybe the real Laurie, like, the original Laurie, maybe she’s wherever the drone is. And wherever the thing is. The unidentified body that made this trench in the first place.”

“Does it matter?” Sol demands. “Jesus, look, you’re Laurie to me, okay? You’re Laurie to me. You’ll be Laurie to everybody back on Earth. The pickup window is less than an hour away, and we can launch the hopper with three people aboard, max.”

“But they’re all me, too,” Laurie One whispers. Her face is blotchy red and Sol can see tears pushed back under her eyes. His stomach rolls over like a dead fish.

“What can we do?” he asks.

“Number Four,” Laurie One says. “She’s been unconscious. She doesn’t know any of this shit. Take her. Leave the rest of us.”

“Technically, that’s number Three,” Sol says. “And are you fucking kidding me?

Laurie, she could be brain-damaged. Or, or, barring that, what if she dissolves in twenty-four hours? Into some big puddle of alien goo?”

“I might do that, too.”

“Or you might not, because you’re the original Laurie, okay?” He grabs her by the shoulders and almost shouts it. “You’re the original fucking Laurie!”

She glares at him and he glares back, neither of them moving. The bathroom light buzzes and flickers between their heads. Laurie One’s breath smells even worse now, and Sol’s about to say it, just to be a dick, but then she might take it as evidence of her mouth dissolving so he says nothing at all. Not until a gentle knock on the airlock window makes the wall tremble.

“I wonder who that could be,” he says.

Laurie One does something between a laugh and a sob.

Laurie Five has her radio working; Sol listens to her voice pitching upward as she demands to be let in, demands to know why there are footprints all around the hopper, demands to know whose spacesuits are piled in the airlock. Finally he switches off his headset, and it becomes a silent film. Laurie Five pounding her gloved fists against the airlock window in slow motion, catching sight of a warped reflection behind her, turning to see Laurie Six struggling up from the crevasse.

“Don’t watch,” Laurie actually-Four says, from where she’s checking on Laurie actually-Three’s vitals. “That makes it worse for them. And us.”

Sol drags his eyes away from the scene. Puts his back to the airlock and sits down.

Laurie One and Laurie Two are already sitting cross-legged on the floor; Laurie Four is still tending to an unconscious Laurie Three.

“If we cleared the suits out, we could fit one more person in the airlock,” Laurie One says miserably. “At least for a while.”

Sol takes a deep breath. “No point,” he says. “Max of three people to launch. So, we have to make a decision. Have to decide. On who, if anybody, comes with me and Laurie . . . One. Laurie One.”

“Wait,” Laurie Two interjects. “Why is she a sure thing? She doesn’t even know if she’s the real Laurie.”

“We could hear you in the bathroom,” Laurie Four says. “Sol gets loud when he’s agitated.”

Sol gives an irritable shrug.

“You really do, Solly,” Laurie Two says.

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“She’s the most likely to be the original, okay?” he says. “If she doesn’t come, and I take one of you guys instead, what if you dissolve into . . .”

“Why do you have this fucking fixation with alien goo?” Laurie Two sighs.

“And then no Laurie comes back at all,” Sol finishes. “Her family has nobody at all, and Laurie’s stuck asphyxiating on the surface of the goddamn Moon.”

“If we don’t dissolve, we’ll be doing the same thing,” Laurie Four says quietly.

Sol runs his hands through his hair again. “Can we agree that Laurie Three is out?” he asks. “She’ll never know. She’s unconscious.”

Lauries One, Two, and Four all flinch.

“Goddamn it, Sol,” Laurie Four snaps. “That’s even worse, dumping someone out the airlock while they’re asleep.”

“How about we dump you, and take an all-Laurie crew back to the ship?” Laurie Two says, jutting out her chin.

Sol blinks. More than the words, the expression on her face punches a hole right through him. Then he remembers how panicked she was, begging him to let her into the cockpit, and how she deflated all at once when he told her to pass the datastick through the door. Guilt churns his stomach.

“Laurie, you don’t mean that,” Laurie One says. “He’s the only one we know isn’t a copy. He wasn’t in the crevasse. He goes.”

Laurie Four nods. Laurie Two gives a sour shrug.

“Look,” Sol says shakily. “I know it sounds fucked up, but this whole situation, in case you haven’t noticed, this whole situation is supremely fucked up.”

Vibrations sing through the cockpit again, as if to punctuate his words. More fists banging on the airlock. Sol forces himself not to look.

“We’ll put it to a vote,” Laurie One says. “And if there’s a tie, we rock-paper-scissors.” She rubs hard at her face, kneading the skin. “Okay?”

Sol holds his breath. The other Lauries slowly nod.

“Good,” he says hoarsely. “Who goes first?”

“You don’t vote,” Laurie One says. “And you don’t watch, either.”

Sol swallows. “But . . . Laurie.”

“We’re all Laurie,” she says. “You don’t get to know who stays.”

Sol searches her face, trying to find some fleck of food, some distinct clump of hair that will let him differentiate her from the others. But she looks exactly like Laurie Two and exactly like Laurie Four, and maybe she’s right. Maybe there is no original Laurie here, because they all are.

“Okay,” he says.

Sol sits in the airlock while the Lauries decide. Outside, there’s a crowd of new Lauries bounding around in their puffy white suits, crackling to each other on the radio or putting their helmets together to speak that way, gesticulating at the hopper, at the crevasse. He wonders what conclusions they’re coming to. More and more of them are emerging from the crack, hauling themselves up the rock, and bouncing to their booted feet. Sol wipes the tears off his cheeks when he hears the interior door scrape open.

Two Lauries silently walk in and start suiting up. Sol looks between them, trying to guess, but there’s no way of knowing. He looks back and sees Laurie Three, still unconscious in her chair, and the last Laurie sitting on the floor with her head in her hands.

“Just couldn’t do it,” one of the airlock Lauries says, stepping into her suit and working the zipper. “That dumbass caring instinct, I guess. Same reason we’re always looking out for you, Solly.”

“I’m sorry,” Sol says. It’s the only thing he can think to say.

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“Yeah, yeah,” the other Laurie says. “I know. It’s. Uh. It’s fucking tough.” She blinks hard and reaches for her helmet. “We’ll clear everyone away, if we can. So you have space to launch without frying a bunch of coworkers.”

The other-other Laurie has a stuck zipper. Her chest is pumping sharp shallow breaths. “Fuck,” she says. “This isn’t right. It’s not logical. She could be brain-damaged, you know?” She licks her dry lips. “And her, she went a little early with the scissors. I think. I think I want a rematch.”

“Shut up, Laurie,” Laurie says. “Come on. Let’s just do this. You’re brave. You better be, because if you’re not, then I’m not.” She reaches in and yanks the zipper free. “So.

Am I?”

Laurie shakes herself, looks right at Sol, and for a second Sol’s sure she’s Laurie One, but then the feeling twists away. “We’re brave,” she says. “Sure. Or unlucky. Or both. Whatever.”

“Have a safe trip home,” Laurie says. “Bye, Solly.”

They put their helmets on and seal them. Sol can see his grimacing reflection in their faceplates. He tries to smile; doesn’t manage it. Salutes instead, and squeezes past them, back into the cockpit. Just how he did a lifetime ago at 0600 hours, he vents the airlock, waits for the thumbs up, and opens the outer door.

Laurie and Laurie step out into the gray dust, sending a ripple through the crowd of spacesuits, helmeted heads turning.

Sol staggers back to his chair. “Let’s get prepped, Laurie,” he says, not looking at her.

“Yeah,” she says, not looking at him. “Go time.”

They secure Laurie Three between their chairs with insulation and electrical tape, making sure her head’s as cushioned as possible. Then they strap in for launch. The hopper rumbles through its ignition sequence, testing each engine in turn. On the screen, Sol sees the pickup window f lash green. The ship is directly above them, ready to retrieve them and their inconclusive data from the crevasse. He tries to raise Control one last time but gets nothing. So long as they’re in position, the radio interference shouldn’t matter.

Neither of them speaks as the countdown ticks away, and then the roar of the engines is too loud to speak anyway. It shakes them like pennies in a jar, and Sol reaches out an arm to brace Laurie Three. He sees Laurie’s arm reaching from her end, too. Then the hopper shudders up into the sky, shedding gravity all at once. Not all of the Lauries cleared the area, and Sol tries not to imagine them bursting into flame.

They pull away from the Moon’s surface, and on the screen Sol can see the crevasse blooming like a snow-white flower as more and more spacesuited Lauries pour out of it, spilling in all directions across the gray rock. If it doesn’t stop, the entire face of the Moon will be covered in asphyxiating astronauts.

Sol switches the screen to show the waiting ship, hanging in orbit. Are they observing the surface? Are they seeing the bloom? They must be. The thought of trying to explain what’s happened makes Sol want to laugh and die at the same time. He checks their trajectory and sees it’s a little off, but nothing serious.

“You’re not going to tell me which one you are?” he finally asks.

“We f igured that would be better for you,” Laurie says dryly. “You don’t have to know who you left behind.”

“I left everyone behind,” Sol says. “Christ, Laurie. I don’t even know who I am now.”

“Join the club.” She leans forward in her seat. “Sol? What’s that?”

Sol zooms the screen and his mouth goes dry. They’re still on course for the ship, but so is someone else. He and Laurie watch speechlessly as a hopper, identical to their own, maneuvers into the dock on a gentle burn, cuts its engines, and slots perfectly into place. ❍

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Alexandra Renwick’s (Twitter @AlexCRenwick and
alexcrenwick.com) short fiction has been translated into nine languages and adapted to stage and audio. Born in Los

Angeles, but raised in Philadelphia, Yorkshire, Denmark, and Austin, she currently spends most of her time in a crumbling heritage manor in Canada’s lovely capital city of Ottawa. In her first tale for Asimov’s, Alexandra movingly explains that finding the truth can be difficult . . .

BECAUSE

REASONS

Alexandra Renwick

You never asked me for this, and considering how well I know you and how long we’ve been unfriends, that’s kind of a miracle since it seems like you’ve asked everything else from me, one time or another. But since you didn’t ask and since we’re unfriends now and since this is exactly the sort of information that will soon be utterly useless to you in every possible way, here is a list to remind you of some Truths, as discovered by you and me back when we spent nearly every hour of every day together for all those years:

Truth: Using whipped egg whites to set your Mohawk is a terrible, terrible idea Why this is true: Remember the first day of Mr. Labretsky’s Music History class when he played the Sex Pistols, and we agreed punk music was like a caffeine injection straight to the medulla oblongata? The next weekend we went to that show in the parking lot of Mad Dog & Beans to see a bunch of bands play for two measly dollars, and smoked weed for the first (and for you the last—I’ll never forget how much you hated it!) time. We’d meant to put up my Liberty spikes with gelatin but we did something wrong or stupid or maybe we were way too baked, and it didn’t work at all. So we’d heard you could set a fin with egg whites, and it seemed to work okay at first, but one-hundred-degree sun magnified umptfold by that gooey black asphalt behind Mad Dog’s scrambled that stuff right in my hair like a grumpy line chef at a cheap all-night diner. Bits of sizzling egg white clumped and peeled and flaked off like snow falling in July. I still can’t eat scrambled eggs.

Why this is useless to you: In space, they say the Sun is pretty relentless and radiation cooks you from the insides out and I still can’t believe your parents think it’s a good idea for you to go with them, though as we both know even rocket scientists have their blind spots, especially when it comes to their kids. But no matter how fee-ble or amazing your sunshields are (and I’ve been reading all the scare-copy on that 136

Asimov’s
score right alongside all the colony propaganda), I doubt two years in space will ever generate the kind of direct egg-frying capacity of a Texas parking lot at the height of summer. So I guess there’s that.

Additional note: Please spare me any social squeamishness about the term Mohawk; the hairstyle goes back thousands of years and is historically seen in cultures all over the world, like on that ancient pickled bog corpse guy they found in Dublin with his plant oil and pine resin ’hawk. Besides, the North American Mohawk people who the name honors got their fins by yanking out fistfuls of hair, one tuft at a time, leaving only a square patch in the middle. Now that’s hardcore.

Truth: Holy crap, your head isn’t really round

Why this is true: Argh! Because Anatomical Reasons! And if like me you only find this out the hard way, having seen that movie where the girl with the soft sweet little buzz fuzz looked oh-so-waifish and adorable with her gigantic moist eyes and her plump pout and thinking, Hey, the sides of my head are already shaved and here’s an electric buzzer and I’m bored anyway, and you zip off that three-inch-wide strip between your ’hawk and infinity, then you’ll be sorry for at least a month, or however long it takes to regrow hair in zero gravity and with reduced nutrients and increased ambient radiation to a length capable of re-hiding all those weird crevices and bumps and divots in your skull you’d never in a hundred years suspect were the true topography of your supposedly round head.

Why this is useless to you: I hear they’re going to make everyone wear these ugly hairnet thingies on board, to keep down the amount of free-floating detritus clogging up your air f iltration systems. That, or maybe they’ll let you shave your head instead, in which case this will be useless to you because you’ll be bald anyway and stuck with what you got, skull divots and all. I will say I wouldn’t wish a lumpy-crevice head on anyone, not even an unfriend. Good luck.

Additional note: It’s possible you’re not as skull-challenged as myself, in which case this Truth reminder may be extra useless to you. All the better.

Truth: Tattoos are NOT WORTH IT

Why this is true: We spent hours being actively horrified by the sad old saggy ink-scarred f lesh of your dad, my mom and grandmother, both your uncles, and your grandparents. If for some bizarre reason you ever do a one-eighty (like when you suddenly unfriended me without explanation and refused to respond the million times I reached out via social from a billion different directions) and decide you want to grind permanent ink into your bloody weeping pores, just remember all those flabby old arms, gnarled hands, wrinkled backs, and drooping bellies etched with the murky blurred lines of what were probably, when our parents were closer to our age, thought to be some Pretty Nifty tats. Or you can cut to the chase and think of your Uncle Simon in a swimsuit.

Why this is useless to you: You were always even more grossed out than I was by decorative scarification. Not to be confused with genuine accident or medical scars, like from a dozen surgeries to replace your joints one by one as they deteriorate from some random juvenile autoimmune degenerative bone and tissue disease or what have you. Those sorts of scars can be powerful and sexy and actually kind of amazing. You were the one who taught me that, even when I wanted to kill myself.

Additional note: Thank you.

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Truth: But making your own clothes IS

Why this is true: Because nothing is more hella punkrock than giving the big middle finger to soulsucking, faceless, nameless corporate efforts to rob you of every ves-tige of genuine “individuality” by appropriating said concept, packaging it in a manner identified by billions of market research dollars, and selling it back to you as if you were making a choice. Want to know true freedom? Never again buy a new piece of clothing, even if you have to safety-pin yourself a dress out of your grand-ma’s tablecloth, that nutty 1980s new-wave one your mom never uses and says those crazy eyeball-wrenching broken stripes are hideous so it sits in the bottom of the linen closet forever.

Why this is useless to you: There are no malls on Mars! No ’net shopping either!

Additional note: Exceptions to this Truth can be made for underwear. A certain level of ick factor is not to be ignored. But only if you have the choice, and then only if you never look down on others who don’t. From the literature I’ve read, the first colony on Mars is expected to experience what the official colony blog refers to as “an extreme limitation of general resources.” If I think about it and force myself not to get all grudgy, I’ll admit it’s pretty cool to realize you’ll all be punkrock on Mars.

Truth: Wear your jewelry; don’t let it wear you

Why this is true: My mom! All those rings and jingly belts and bracelets and layers and layers of tangled necklaces! WTFF. Like a retro-hippy street musician tam-bourine player on dragon steroids with healing-crystal sauce.

Why this is useless to you: Metal is heavy. One of the many, many things I read is that they don’t let you take nonessential metal into space, what with the costs of rocket fuel. But for all I know you colony types will develop weird fetish fashions of your own and start making jewelry out of baby teeth or fingernail clippings or peach pits or whatever. Probably not, since I hear most organic detritus has to go into your composting and crop systems so you can continue to eat during the two-year voyage and, well, the rest of your lives. Maybe tattoos will start to make more sense after all. If so, I forgive you.

Additional note: I meant I forgive you for any hypothetical future tattoos, not for the way you dumped me from your life.

Truth: Flawlessness is overrated

Why this is true: Because what could be more deeply offensive than some cosmetic company trying to make you feel bad about your skin, nails, hair, or the function and shape of your body for the single purpose of getting you to buy their product?!? If there was any rightness to the universe this would never be allowed to happen. It’s so obvious corporations are by design soulless, heartless, inhuman forces of greed.

And then, to make things worse, they manipulate you into thinking your personality/social skills/creative ability/whatever makes you you is and always will be inadequate without getting the right flavor deodorant or strength of acne cream, or shaving your legs in a certain way and to a certain degree.

Why this is useless to you: Your flaws are charming. Maybe I told you this too often.

Maybe you stopped hearing it after a while.

Additional note: I just realized that’s the best thing about punkrock: it doesn’t 138

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even pretend to be pretending to be trying for flawlessness. Kind of like you always told me back before we were unfriends: If you can buy it at the mall, IT’S NOT

PUNK.

Truth: Black is not the only fabric option

Why this is true: A shocking Truth! I know! ’Cause when we did that research for our Music History class project, black seemed to be the clothing color default for practically everyone from Mod to Metal, from Rockabilly to Romo. I won’t even mention funeral processions and opera gowns. Those last two are way overdue for a general societal special-occasion makeover in the realm of fashion and design. You did indulge me for my Year of Morbid back when my body seemed to be rejecting the grafts and the doctors told us there was a serious possibility I wouldn’t make it through the next round of surgeries. I do appreciate you sticking with me through that fashion-challenged phase. If anyone in the world—sorry, correction: anyone in the Solar System—will understand why I dumped an entire closet-worth of clothes back at the Pick-N-Thrift where they came from, it’s you. Unfriend or not, you gifted me with my most precious bit of eternal wisdom: I look like hell in black, and not in a good way.

Why this is useless to you: Because according to the live feeds you’re already on a shuttle with your parents, headed for a space station, then for a ship, then for Mars.

If you survive all those stages, all that prep, then I guess you’ll wear whatever fabric is available, even if it’s black. That’s no excuse not to DIY the helling hell out of whatever they give you, though! Because you totally should. And you will. You’re punkrock all the way—most of which has nothing to do with fashion*—and I know you won’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Additional note: *Okay, it has a little to do with fashion. Because we aren’t what anyone makes us be, but what we make ourselves.

There are probably about a billion Truths. That’s so many more than a million that if I told you a thousand Truths a day it would take me three years to list the whole million—after which you’ll already be on Mars and possibly dead of starvation or radiation or that weird disease you get from being a cannibal—but it would take me three thousand years to list all billion (after which you’ll be immortalized in history as having been the first interplanetarily famous designer of vibrant funeral couture, while I’ll be the oldest head-in-a-jar on all inhabited worlds and the Universe’s pre-eminent human punkrock scholar). I’m doing us both a favor and capping it at our mutual lucky number seven, but want to add one last thing: I lied before. Despite all that stuff I posted and said and flow-charted and slam-spammed out to everyone at school and online and all the lists and everywhere else I could think of or hack or get my hands on or deface, I do forgive you. Even if I don’t understand why or what happened, even if I wish I had at least one more chance to physically hold your hand in the flesh one last time, skin to skin, so much of what went on before seems irrelevant now. I forgive everything, for always. And I here and now friend you irrevocably, no reciprocation required, in any medium now known or unknown, on any planet, between any stars, in any universe.

I miss you already, but I missed you before. Nothing you or I might have said or done, or not said or not done, will stop me from remembering us, or from thinking about you. Even if you never get this note, even if you don’t ever read these words, I’ll still be your friend.

Truth. ❍

Because Reasons

139

BURY ME

IN THE

RAINBOW

Bill Johnson

Bill Johnson was born on the Lake Traverse Indian

Reservation, in one of the more remote parts of South Dakota.

The reservation is home to the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate, a branch of the Santee Sioux. Bill’s family moved out of Dakota (he currently lives in the Chicago area with his wife), but he still goes back to visit relatives and to “have the lake to myself.” Bill won the Hugo in 1998 for his novelette “We Will Drink a Fish Together . . .” ( Asimov’s, May 1977). His exciting new tale is a stand-alone sequel to that earlier story.

“People never think about what happens next.”

Oly adjusted his chaw, turned to the side, and spat a brown stream onto the winter dead/spring fresh grass just coming up.

“For God’s sake, Oly! We got company. At least use a can.”

Dakota—home—always made me feel comfortable and exasperated at the same time. Comfortable, because I was home, not stuck in one of those places where I just didn’t fit. Like New York or Los Angeles or D.C. or London or Beijing or . . .

Exasperated because, well, it was Dakota. More than that, it was Summit. Which even for Dakota was in the back ass end of nowhere and filled to the brim with mis-fits.

I stood next to Foremost, the alien ambassador from the Ship. Akicita stood on the other side of me. She watched Oly and huffed out a chuckle. Oly glared at her, frowned at Foremost, then grumbled, stepped back a step, looked around, and picked up a tossed-aside beer can off the ground. He swirled it, hopefully, then scowled. It was empty. I closed my eyes and shook my head.

“She shoots something.” Oly jerked his head toward Akicita. “The bad guy goes down and dies, and everybody is happy and cheers and tells her what a great guy she is. Then they all walk away and have a party. Until someone thinks to call me to clean it up.” Oly sounded disgusted. We were used to it. We knew when to ignore Oly and when to pay attention.

I reached into my jacket pocket and handed him a flask. He nodded, appreciative-ly, opened it up and sipped. He made a face and handed it back to me.

“What is that crap?”

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“Thirty-year-old Highlands single malt scotch. We got it as a thank you for saving this fool’s,” I jerked my thumb at Foremost, “ass.”

“No f lavor,” Oly grumbled. He smacked his lips and stuck out his tongue. “Like drinking water from the lake. No bite to it. You need some f ish moonshine, that’s what you need.”

I capped the flask and slid it into my pocket. Oly nodded at the ground.

“So what do you want to do with this thing?”

Foremost, Akicita, Oly, and myself stood in the backyard of Oly’s shack. It stood by its lonely self just below the crest of a little hill, a knob, really, with no trees, just a few half-buried boulders, tall prairie grass, and a continent full of wind. Above us was a sky of broken clouds, and around us were more prairie grass hills, taller, with a clear view out to the horizon. It looked like it must have looked in the old days, empty and clean. All we needed to do was add some buffalo and we could have been in a time before even the First Nations people arrived.

In front of us, laid out on a black tarpaulin, was the body of the Synth assassin. Its body was covered so only the head showed.

The dead alien had a strong jaw and heavy orbital ridges. Its lips were pulled back and showed several large canine teeth—top and bottom—and broad molars in the back. The lips were brown, like tanned leather, and short tendrils, which writhed and whipped when it was alive, limply draped below the nose and across the lips.

“And what the hell do I call it?” Oly asked Foremost.

“It’s probably a male. If I remember my childhood stories correctly, Synth males are the muscle, and the females are the brains.”

Foremost sounded uncertain. And I didn’t want to strip the Synth and start digging around for some kind of alien genitals. I remembered the Synth just a day ago as he charged the ambassador and me at the cemetery, a killing machine determined to do his job. He seemed indestructible, completely unfazed as I emptied my handgun into his chest, and his armor shed the bullets like water. He’d lifted up his laser and I knew we were going to die.

Suddenly, there was a small bullet hole just above his muzzle of a nose, and a larger exit wound in the back of his bald head. The Synth hesitated, almost puzzled, as if he wasn’t quite sure what had just happened. I remembered I wondered if his brains were in his head or tucked somewhere less obvious, less vulnerable.

Then he fell and was still, and Akicita stepped out of the brush behind us, her rifle ready, another round already jacked into the chamber, and Foremost and I were still alive.

Which led us to today’s problem.

I turned to Foremost and tried to read his expression.

Impossible. He said nothing, just looked calmly back at me, the cowls of his robe loose around his neck, his face one damned fine impersonation of a giant wolverine.

“Well?” I demanded.

“Well, what?” Foremost replied. He seemed almost amused. “Let me guess. I’m alien, so I’m supposed to know everything about every other alien race? I’m supposed to know what to do with a dead Synth?”

He shook his head.

“Tony, I have no idea what to do,” Foremost admitted. “I’ve never seen one of these before.”

“It came off your ship.”

“It’s a big ship. A huge ship. It’s almost the size of your moon. And these things,”

he nudged the body with the toe of one foot, “are rare. I’ve never seen one before.

Heard about them, yes, but never seen one. Somebody hires them, they do their job, and they’re gone. Never heard of one getting killed before.”

Bury Me in the Rainbow

141

March/April 2018

“So you have no idea what to do?” I asked, almost accusingly. Foremost shook his head.

“None.”

Disgusted, I turned to the other two.

“Oly?”

He held up his hands and shook his head.

“Not me, Tony.”

“We’re the Pool Hall lodge. This kind of stuff is our business. And you were Sam’s Counselor,” I said. Oly nodded but then shook his head again.

“I agree,” Oly said. “But this,” he pointed at the Synth, “is above my pay grade. This is the kind of stuff Sam took care of.”

Sam was my grandfather. Not by blood but by something more important. When the Default and the Second Depression started, my dad’s family hit the roads and worked the northern fields, from the orchards in Oregon to rogueing beans in Dakota.

The family always came home to Summit for the winter. One year, there was nothing. No place to rest or sleep. Sam let my family use an old shed, even piled up bales of hay against the walls to insulate it and break the wind. My dad was just a little kid, but he used to walk into town to work at the pool hall. One day he sent word back that he was staying with Sam and Laverne. Everyone agreed it was for the best. So when I grew up, I had an extra pair of grandparents.

Problem was, the Default was hard and there wasn’t any extra money for medicine. Sam ran the pool hall but he gave most of the money away. Then, just these last few years, his heart got sick and . . .

“Sam’s dead.”

“Well, no shit,” Oly said tartly. “That makes it your problem. Tell me what you want done and I’ll do it, but I don’t make the decisions. That’s your job now.”

“Damn it,” I said to myself. I looked down at the Synth and tried to think about what I knew about funerals.

I’d gone to them, of course, particularly the exile funerals in D.C. and up and down the east coast and west coast and everywhere else in the flatlands. Sam made me go, said it was part of my job and I was his representative—both from our lodge and from Summit, when one of the exiles died.

So I went.

To burials. And cremations. And organ donations to hospitals. Hell, even to some kind of a celebration for one woman who’d spent all her money to have herself frozen and stuck in a warehouse along with a thousand other stiffs. Her plan—her hope—was that science in the future could wake her up, cure her, and give her a fresh body. Like they’d do that for free. Even in the future I figured you were going to need money.

But this was a new one to me. What do you do with a dead alien?

“We could just leave it here.”

I tried to sound hopeful. Oly shook his head and squatted next to the Synth. He leaned over, sniffed, and jerked his head back. He stood.

“Already starting to go bad. Can’t leave it here. Not in my backyard. Too much rock to dig a decent grave. And if we went shallow, the coyotes would smell it and dig it up. They’d eat it and scatter the bones and the skin all over the place. And for all we know, it’s poisonous and they’ll end up dead, too. It’ll be a mess.” Oly turned to Foremost. “You think they’d like that, upstairs?”

“No.”

Oly looked back at me.

“How about we take it to the county morgue in Webster?”

“No.” Foremost interrupted firmly. “I don’t want any other governments involved.

The fewer people who know I’m here, the better.”

142

Bill Johnson

Asimov’s

My job back in D.C. was to protect foreign diplomats. I’d taken a bullet on my protective vest to save Foremost’s life. After that, he’d headed back upstairs, to the Ship.

Thing was, it seemed whoever wanted him dead wasn’t only on Earth. Someone upstairs tried to shoot down his shuttle and damned near succeeded. He’d limped his ship for Summit because he knew I was here.

I glared at both of them.

Oly smiled back, smugly. Foremost concentrated on the Synth. I wanted this problem gone. I decided to try another tack.

“I’m part of the government. Maybe I shouldn’t be involved either.”

Foremost didn’t seem impressed.

“You’re not part of your federal government anymore. You resigned when Sam died. So you don’t count. Besides, your old job was to hide and protect foreign digni-taries. Like me. Think of this as one last job you have to finish.”

Foremost nodded down at the Synth.

“And so far I’m still alive. You’re doing just fine on your own.”

Foremost spoke absently and knelt down next to the Synth, his head cocked to the side. He looked up at me.

“Well?”

I wanted to curse and swear and punch a wall and sweep everything off a table, like an actor in a bad video. Thing was, in real life, none of that helped much. Problem was still there, and now you had a mess to clean up later.

“Seems to me like a local matter,” Oly opined. “Which would mean Sam, as mayor, would take care of it. Problem is, his heart got Sam before any of this even started.

So it’s the deputy mayor’s problem.”

Oly turned to Akicita.

“Just who is the deputy mayor these days, Aki’?”

“Shut up.” I spoke to both of them. They ignored me.

“I seem to recall Tony was elected deputy mayor.” Akicita and Oly, the bastards, both openly grinned. “The last two elections. So doesn’t that mean he’s in charge now?”

Mayor. Damn it, I’d forgotten about that. Didn’t seem like anything to worry about back when Sam put me up for the job. He was healthy then and I lived in D.C. What could possibly go wrong? Okay, I had to go to a few funerals, but what else?

Screw it. Not a damned thing I could do to make any of them listen to me. It was like trying to change Carole’s mind when she knew she was right and I was wrong and she was just going to humor me until I gave up and did what I was told.

And I still had a dead body to deal with.

“Fine. We take care of this ourselves. No other governments.”

“Good.”

“But it doesn’t go just one way. Sam always told me not to do favors. He said it was better to collect debts.”

I tried to make Foremost feel guilty. He didn’t look terribly impressed.

“And I’ll remember that. When I have time.” Foremost stood and pointed down at the Synth. “But that’s not right now. So?”

“You killed it, Aki’. What do you want to do with it?”

Even to me my voice sounded resigned. I kept my attention focused on Foremost and watched Akicita out of the corner of my eye.

“Never seen anything like it.”

Akicita spoke slowly, her voice musing. She took one step, another, paced around the body.

“Burn it,” Oly suggested. “Get a bunch of wood and some gasoline. Sink the ashes in one of the pothole lakes the state doesn’t have on their maps yet. Got a new one Bury Me in the Rainbow

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that just popped up a month ago, south of Bristol. Fifty, sixty feet deep. Piece of cake.

Nobody will ever find it.”

“Enough.” I spoke sharply, irritated. “You said you didn’t want to make the decision.”

“Still don’t.” Oly sounded wounded, as if I’d hurt his feelings. “Just trying to help.”

I rolled my eyes and silently asked for patience.

“Aki’?”

Akicita shook her head.

“I don’t think we should throw it away. That’s not the way my people would do it.

And I don’t like burying it. Personally, I never liked the idea of rotting in the ground.

Even if I was dead.”

“Keep it? You really want to do that?”

“Keep it,” Akicita agreed.

“Ambassador.” I turned to Foremost, my voice clear and formal. “The Synth tried to kill you.”

“Even though they’re both from the same damned ship,” Oly said under his breath.

I glared at him, and he went quiet.

“True.” Foremost’s voice was a low rumble.

“When it tried to kill you, the Synth went into your debt. Akicita made her claim.

Now you also have to make a decision. Do you make your claim?”

“What are the laws of your state?” Foremost asked cautiously.

“This is Summit,” Oly interrupted, his voice flat and expressionless. For once, he was being serious. “This is our business. Nothing to do with the f latlanders. Our land. Our laws. Our ways. We don’t give a damn about what the state thinks. Screw the state. Screw D.C.”

“Is that how it works, up on the Ship?” Akicita asked Foremost. “Do each people rule themselves? Or is there a state that rules over everyone?”

“There are Ship regulations everyone must follow, for those things which could hurt the Ship itself.” Foremost spoke cautiously, like a diplomat, unwilling to give anything away.

“Just a few regulations?” Akicita asked suspiciously. “Or something more like a treaty?”

Sore subject, I thought and winced. Stay away from treaty talk.

“Not a treaty. Just a few safety rules,” Foremost said hurriedly. “Other than those rules, each people, in their own territory, governs themselves, their own way. No one tries to tell anyone how to mind their own business as long as they stay in their own territory.”

“How many species are on the ship?” His answer made me curious. Like he was dodging the question.

Foremost was silent for a moment. I wondered if he was trying to be diplomatic, to avoid offending us or to avoid giving something away.

“I can’t answer that, Tony. I’m not sure how to answer that.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’d have to see for yourself. Some places seem to be empty, and they’re not. Other places seem to be crowded, but they’re empty. Some are like you might expect. Different, but you’d recognize them. We mostly deal with those people. It has to be something big, something Ship-wide, to get the others involved.”

“So we wouldn’t recognize everyone on board the Ship?”

“No,” Foremost admitted. He hesitated. “There are thousands of species on the Ship. Maybe millions? Some of them are quite . . . different . . . from you or me. Or even the Synth. We don’t really understand many of them.”

He turned to Akicita.

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“So we leave each other alone. Except for the safety regulations. Everyone has to follow those.”

All politics is local. I could hear Sam’s voice as well as if he were still alive, the memory so fresh it hurt. Which brought me back to the cemetery and the Synth.

“Ambassador?” I asked. “I still need an answer.”

“I will make my claim on the Synth.”

“You hear that, Oly?” I asked. “Since these fools make a claim, I might as well do the same.”

“You know what that means?” Oly asked. I nodded.

“I do.”

“This is your decision? As Mayor? And as Keeper of the Pool Hall?”

“It is,” I said. “As both.”

“What about the flatlanders? What if they try to get involved?”

“Not a problem. Cousin Beth might be Kadisha but she’s also a lawyer. And she owes me,” I assured him. “I’ll put her on this when I get back to town. She’ll throw enough legal crap together to keep the flatlanders tied up in court for years, if they get involved at all. By then, one way or another, it’s not going to matter.”

I looked down at the Synth. I nudged the body with my boot.

“In the meantime, this is your problem. Get him ready.”

Oly took a deep breath and shrugged. He tilted his head to the side and rubbed his chin.

“I need a cigarette.”

“You quit twenty years ago,” Akicita reminded him.

“Shut up.” Oly spoke without rancor. “I can still want one. Just don’t give it to me.”

“Oly, that doesn’t make any—”

“How long do I get?” Oly interrupted. He looked up at me.

“One week.”

Oly shook his head.

“Can’t be done. Maybe in two.”

“Seven days. You don’t have to go all Ga on him. Just get the job done.”

“Damn it, Tony! I can’t work miracles. A week and a half.”

“You have one week. It’s got to be done by that morning.”

Oly threw up his hands and glared at me. I met him, eye to eye, until he looked down at his boots and scuffed the ground.

“One week,” Oly grumbled. “Can’t do a proper job in one week.”

“Doesn’t have to be perfect. Just good enough to meet the rules. I’m not telling you to work in stone, for God’s sake!”

Oly knelt next to the Synth.

“I’ll need salt,” he warned. “Forty or fifty pounds. Maybe five, six, pounds of borax.

A solid mannequin. None of that cheap hollow crap all the youngsters use these days. I’m going to have to do some carving.”

“Make sure you keep everything,” I reminded him.

“Screw you, Tony.” Oly spoke absently and without emphasis, his concentration already past me and on to the Synth. “I won’t lose anything.”

“And keep something for the Oya and the Kadisha.”

Oly looked up, startled. Akicita turned to face me and frowned.

“He’s not from Summit.” Oly tipped his chin at the Synth. He looked almost angry.

I cut him off.

“Where did he die?” I demanded from Oly. Oly bit off whatever he was going to say and looked over at Akicita. She hesitated, then shrugged.

“He got shot in the cemetery,” Oly agreed reluctantly.

Bury Me in the Rainbow

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March/April 2018

“He got shot in the cemetery,” I repeated. “In the Summit cemetery. What happens to people who die in Summit and get claimed?”

“He’s not a people!”

“He died in Summit.” Akicita spoke slowly. “We all claimed him.”

Oly started to object. I stared him down until he dropped his eyes. He grumbled and looked away.

I had no idea what to do next, so I was going to follow the rules Sam taught me.

Everyone in Summit would at least recognize it if we handled the Synth the usual way. And when times are uncertain, people cling to tradition. It gives them a point of reference. I smelled politics in the air, and I knew this was just the beginning. The rest of it was going to be a lot harder.

Akicita stepped closer to me and spoke in a low tone. Foremost leaned impercepti-bly closer to hear better.

“You’ll go talk with the Custodian?” Akicita asked me.

“I’ll talk with the Custodian,” I agreed. “You tell Flipper to bring Oly everything he needs.” I called over my shoulder, back at Oly. “Anything special you need right away?”

“Black marbles.”

“Black marbles?”

“Make sure they have yellow specks in them. I definitely saw yellow in his eyes.”

Oly always was a perfectionist.

Three of us walked past the shack and down the hill to Sam’s old blue Ford truck.

It was probably as old as Sam, a four on the floor with the long, skinny, shift levers that sprouted up through the steel. In the city I was pretty sure they’d call it an antique and offer me too much money for it. Here, it was just Sam’s old truck.

I pulled the lever-style door handle down and stepped up on the running board.

Far to the east, at the edge of the plateau, a shaft of sunlight must have cut through the clouds and hit the glass just right; I saw the flash and glint of red and orange and yellow and blue of the Abbey and the Rainbow.

I shook my head and settled on to the front seat bench, pulled the door shut with a little more force than necessary. Foremost climbed in on the passenger side. Akicita stopped a few steps away.

“You need a ride?” I jerked my thumb at the truck bed behind us. “Got room in back.”

“Nah. Faster to walk.”

I have no idea where she’d stashed it, but Akicita’s rifle was now strapped comfortably in place across her back.

“It’s five miles across the hills,” I reminded her.

“Fifteen miles by road. And you’re not going to Flipper’s place.” Akicita adjusted the rifle, made sure the strap was tight. “You take care of your business and I’ll take care of mine. See you back in town.”

She turned away from us and started walking, a long, easy stride that ate up distance. A minute later she was deep in the grass, then over a ridge and out of sight. I started the engine, shifted into first, and started down the barely visible trace that led away from Oly’s place.

“A week isn’t a lot of time,” Foremost said as we drove, bouncing over a set of rugged tracks. It wasn’t bad for a Summit road. At least it was corncobbed for traction on the top of the hills.

“Nope,” I said. I shifted into second gear and gunned the truck through a rut and over a clump of weeds. “But he’ll have it done.”

“I’ll send word up to the Ship. Maybe someone knows someone who knows a Synth,” Foremost said. He changed topics. “One week from today. Sam’s death auction is that afternoon, isn’t it?”

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“That is a fact,” I agreed. I shifted into third just as we popped over the top of a hill. I twisted the wheel and we hit the ground, hard. Foremost grabbed the seat and the door. I hit the gas and a rooster tail of dirt and dust spun up behind us. I grinned.

Damn, it was good to be out of D.C.!

“You still don’t understand us, do you?” I asked.

“No,” Foremost said. “But that’s one reason we need you on the Ship. Different points of view, different ways of looking at problems, are just as important to us as air or water or power.”

“Is that an official invitation to join the Ship?” I asked.

“No,” Foremost said, reluctantly. “Call it an informal invitation. I still need a full vote from the Council to make it official.”

“It would be different up there,” I mused.

“Then you agree?” Foremost asked. “Your lodge, and the rest of Summit, will move to the Ship?”

“Hell, no, I don’t agree!” I said, shocked.

“But the Pool Hall is the most respected lodge in Summit,” Foremost protested.

“The entire town was at Sam’s funeral out at the cemetery.”

“Sam was good at keeping the peace,” I admitted. “Oly always said Sam could talk the knickers off a nun. But that doesn’t make one damned bit of difference.”

“You can’t order the others to move to the Ship,” Foremost said slowly.

“Of course not! For God’s sake, don’t go around saying things like that. You trying to start a feud?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Life isn’t like they show on the video,” I said patiently. “Most people here have lives already. Kids and grandkids and jobs and friends. They’re not going anywhere.

The best we can hope for is to get the Keepers of the lodges to let anyone go who wants to go. Give them permission to take what they need to get them started upstairs. We get that permission, and we’ll get the restless and probably a lot of the young people. That’s who we really need.”

We were back at the county road. I looked both ways and turned off the dirt and on to the county gravel.

“I’ll talk with the others,” I said. “I’ll get my brothers busy on it, too. Akicita and I can both talk to the First Nations.”

“You have First Nations blood?” Foremost asked, surprised. I was surprised myself, that he even knew what I was talking about.

“This is all reservation land.” I gestured at everything outside the window. “Or it used to be. Hell, it gets confusing even to us. Then you get the lawyers involved and, well . . .”

“Yes?”

“Thing is, there’s not that many of us permanently up here in the hills. But a lot of us are born here and leave and come back and leave and come back again, with a change in husbands and wives and kids and such. Everyone has aunts and uncles and cousins all over the place. Do I have First Nations blood? Probably. Does Akicita have Irish or German? Probably. Black? Mexican? China? Japan? Indian? Viet?

Iraqi? Probably. Even the gene tests don’t work so good here. So we all kind of ignore that shit. Think of it as Summit and the lodges against the flatlanders in Minneapolis and New York and Beijing and London and everywhere else. Makes it easier.”

“You’re the castoffs. The people who never fit in anywhere else.”

I nodded. I pointed out the window.

“Our land is poor. Not very good soil, lots of rocks, no oil or gas or anything worth a damn. Hardly any railroads. No airports. Hell, no highways until a few years ago. If you want to make it up here, you need a lodge, a group of people who work together Bury Me in the Rainbow

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and live together and share together to make a living. Some of us are farmers. Some are water people. Some are mechanics or construction or something else.”

“What happens to the children? The ones who want to see what it’s like in the flatlands?”

“We’re not stupid,” I said, sharply. “If anything, I think we’re more driven up here because there’s no extra. Helicopter parents? Dream on. Up here your parents and your friends and every relative is on you to succeed. If you leave, life in the f lats seems easy.”

“And lonely?” Foremost pushed.

The county road ended, and I stopped for a minute. The cloud of gravel dust behind us drifted up and over and around us, thinned out, and was gone. In front of us, the top bar of a T, was a choice.

“Maybe a little,” I admitted.

To my right was the state road, asphalt and concrete, smooth and straight and clean. Turn right and it was high speed and easy, all the way to the f latlands, to where someone else took over all my problems. Turn left and it was uphill with nothing but dirt and potholes and rumble crap and into Summit. The Ship was still faintly visible on the horizon, fading as the sun hauled itself up into the pale blue sky.

“You run Sam’s pool hall,” Foremost mused to himself. “You sell everyone drinks and food.”

“And we hire the bands for Saturday night and sponsor the softball league and the bowling league and roller skating Sundays,” I added.

“They relax around you and tell you things,” Foremost said thoughtfully. “And if there’s a big problem, you get the lodges together to solve it.”

“That’s one way to look at it. The Pool Hall is like the oil in an engine. Our job is to make sure everyone else gets along. But we can’t survive by ourselves. We need the others.”

“And if you don’t have them?”

“Then we’re not going on the Ship.”

“Your lodge will die out if you stay on Earth,” Foremost warned. “Change is coming to the Dakota hills.”

“I know,” I said softly. “But if we go alone to the Ship, we’ll die for a fact, body and soul. We aren’t big enough, don’t have all the skills we’d need. We need farmers and mechanics and water people and all the rest to survive. Hell, I’ll admit it, sometimes we even need Mother Lu and the Nacacijin to deal with the outside world.”

“So you must convince the other lodges to come to the Ship,” Foremost said, and I swear he gave a very human shrug. “That’s what Sam would do.”

“ You never even met Sam!”

“True,” Foremost said. He shrugged again. “But you have.”

I started to spit out some smartass answer, but I stopped myself. He was right. It didn’t matter whether he had ever met Sam. This was about me, and what I thought Sam would have done.

Yeah, I thought to myself, gloomily. Problem is, I’m not Sam.

So I broke the rules and changed the algorithm. Instead of going right or left, I drove the truck straight ahead, through the T, off the road and down the ditch and around the fence onto a little path that no one would ever know was there, unless you were born up here. We crossed up and over a ridge and the Abbey was ahead of us, in the middle distance.

Time to see the Custodian and talk about the Rainbow.

Blue Sky Abbey faced us. It was a five-story octagon with glass walls, on top of a hill, with each wall separated from the next by strips of sandstone colored concrete.

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A bell tower, connected by a ground floor walkway, stood to the side. Downhill, another walkway connected to a small dormitory for the monks.

I parked in the lot and stepped out, Foremost beside me. I walked up to the entrance, rang the bell, and waited by the double doors. Someone was always awake inside.

A minute or so later one of the doors pushed open. The Custodian stood in the doorway.

“And look what the cat brought in!”

Brother Stephanie smiled up at us, her short brown hair neatly tucked back. She was barely five feet tall with a round, almost pixie-like face, freckles, and soft blue eyes. She hugged me, pulled my face down, kissed me on the cheek, and urged me inside. She did the same with Foremost, without any hesitation. Alien or not, nothing seemed to bother her.

Somehow, I wasn’t surprised. Abbey monks were tough. The Custodian was even tougher.

We stood in the walkway for a moment. Stephanie looked at me and Foremost shrewdly.

“I would like to think you’re here for my professional guidance and wisdom,” she said drily. “But I know you, Tony, so I doubt it. As for you, Ambassador, I have seen the Ship and read about you. Even Tony might hesitate to waste your time.”

“Stephanie—”

She talked right over me.

“So, Tony, is this a personal visit, something to do with expanding the Ambassador’s knowledge of Earth and the Church? Or is this Summit business and the Ambassador is your tagalong?”

“Damn it, Stephanie,” I started. I stopped myself. I was in church, but old habits—
both ways—died hard. I knew not to swear in church, but I also knew what to say when she teased me. This time she smiled at me, with just a hint of the grin she’d used on me when we were in grade school together.

“I need to talk to you, as the Custodian. And Foremost here needs to be with us while we talk. Then you get to decide whether this visit is personal business or Summit business.”

Brother Stephanie looked at me for a moment, then shook her head.

“Nothing is ever easy with you around, is it, Tony?” She sighed. “So is this an opportunity? Or a problem?”

“Yes,” I said. She didn’t smile. She gave me that you haven’t done your homework?

Again? look.

“Office?”

She pivoted on her heel to turn down the walkway toward the base of the bell tower.

I shook my head and turned the other direction.

“Ah.”

Stephanie studied me for a moment. I felt like I was back in grade school and I had suddenly done something unexpected, and one of the smart nuns realized it and gave me that look. The one that said maybe you’re not quite the dumbass everyone thinks you are.

I hated that look. It was a lot safer to stay quiet in a nice, comfortable box of expectations and be overlooked. When people started noticing you, all those comfortable expectations got tossed up in the air, and life suddenly became a lot more complicated.

“Right. Well, not a waste of time, then. I have a little work to do in the chapel.”

“The Nguyens? Linh and Hieu?”

“You knew them?”

I nodded.

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“Nice couple. I felt bad for their grandkids when I heard.”

Stephanie took Foremost’s arm and led us down the walkway toward the chapel.

She explained as we walked.

“Car accident down by Lake Traverse a week ago. Some drunk flatlander coming back from ice fishing. Took his car off self-drive, bypassed the GPS, and blew a stop sign.”

She reached into the pocket of her brown monk’s robe and pulled out two thin glass tubes, one a light green, the other a soft yellow, each stoppered with a clear cap.

Inside one was a small piece of bone, and the other held what looked like a baby tooth.

“Happened outside of Summit, so that was easy,” Stephanie said. “The flatlander’s remains went back to Minneapolis and the Kadisha took care of the arrangements here and the Oya approved it. The Nguyens’ names and history went into the Registry this morning and Dove brought over the tubes.”

“Same lodge?”

“Actually, no. Linh worked out at the wind farm. She was an accountant, but she was invited into the Engineer lodge. She was always very proud of that.”

“Hieu?”

She held up the green tube.

“A cook. Best pho up here. Opened the place after you left town. Grew his own herbs in a greenhouse behind the restaurant. He joined the Farmers.”

“You’re going to separate them?”

“Roy G. Biv, Tony,” Stephanie scolded me gently. “Remember the colors. Yellow and green are right next to each other.”

I looked at the tubes again. The yellow might have had flecks of green in it, and the green shaded a little toward yellow when she held it just right in the light.

“I think we can get these in the right lodges and still get them next to each other.”

We stopped at the double doors to the chapel. I pulled them open so Foremost and Stephanie could step through.

“Time to put these in the Rainbow.”

One way to describe the Rainbow was to say it was a chapel, with a simple altar at one end of the room, a carpeted floor, and a dozen pews separated by a single aisle.

And the walls were five-story-high frosted glass, so that sunlight poured in on every side, even above the altar.

Except the walls weren’t really just walls. . . .

The walls of the chapel, from top to bottom, on all sides, were made of thousands of little medicine bottles, test tubes, small glass containers. A rare few were clear, but most were red or rose or orange or yellow or green or blue or indigo or violet. Sunlight streamed through the windows, and through the bottles and into the chapel, in arcs and bands and mixtures and spilled across the floor and the altar and the pews and us.

Foremost and I walked down the aisle, through the middle of the Rainbow.

Stephanie stopped behind us and let us go ahead.

I always wondered when I walked through the Rainbow. One thing I learned, one thing Sam drummed into me, was that every person who ever lived was the hero of their own story; every person was the center of their own little universe. Inside the Rainbow I wondered about all those stories, about all those universes.

Thousands of stories, thousands of universes, stretching back through the history of Summit . . .

I heard a noise and looked back. Brother Stephanie maneuvered a rolling ladder, locked the wheels, and climbed up. She unlocked a transparent protective panel and 150

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slipped a datapad out of her robe. She studied it and then slid the two glass containers carefully into place, by their family and kin and lodge. She wrote all the information down on the datapad, sent it to the Registry, then locked everything, and climbed down. I helped her put the ladder away.

“Well?”

I looked at Foremost. He stood in the middle of the chapel, behind the pews. He watched the colors and patterns slowly change as the Sun moved and clouds crossed the sky outside. We walked over to stand next to him.

“So what do you need from me?” she asked.

“I need approval from the Custodian.”

Stephanie stared at me, puzzled, for a moment. Then her face cleared and she nodded.

“The other alien. The one at the cemetery.”

“He’s called a Synth.” I shrugged. “Other than that, I don’t know his name.”

Foremost turned, slowly. He didn’t really look at either of us. His eyes were on the colors and the walls and the ever-changing patterns.

“He died in Summit,” I said to Stephanie. “Aki’ and I and the ambassador made a claim on him. Oly’s getting everything ready.”

“Ah,” Stephanie said. She frowned for a moment, then her face cleared and she looked up at me.

“He doesn’t have a lodge, then?”

“No.”

“Not a problem,” she said. “The answer is still yes. I have a spot for him, and he’s welcome to it. He died in Summit.”

I nodded back.

“I’ll do the best I can to find out anything about him, to put in the Registry,” I said.

“Thank you.”

I moved in front of Foremost, to get his attention. He started, as if he had forgotten where we were and who I was.

“You all right?”

“Yes,” Foremost said. He glanced at the Rainbow, then down at the floor.

“My eyes aren’t like yours,” Foremost said.

I studied him closer then, just for a moment. He looked back at me calmly. I realized his eyes were slitted vertically and there was a hint of another, inner, set of eyelids.

“I saw a video once, on the internet,” I said. “Video said that cats don’t see things the way we do. That they’re not color-blind, but they see colors lower in the spectrum and they see things more sharply, to detect movement. You like that?”

“Something like that,” Foremost said. He gestured to the Rainbow. “You start at red and work your way up to violet. I start lower than red and go higher than violet.”

“I don’t have words for colors like that,” I said.

“I know.” Foremost looked up again, at the walls and the colors and the arcs. “But you have those colors here, all around me.”

I gave him another few seconds and that was enough.

“Time to go,” I said. “We need to get back to Sam’s house. We’ve got things to do.”

“Of course,” he said. He turned to the Custodian.

“Thank you.”

Brother Stephanie smiled and tilted her head. We walked across the chapel, down the hallway and out the doors. We climbed back into the truck. I saw Stephanie wave at me from the doorway and gesture for me to roll down the window.

“The container,” she called.

“Yeah?”

“It needs to be clear.”

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“Clear.”

“So the Rainbow goes through it.”

“Not a problem.”

“And old. Old would be nice.”

I thought for a moment, then nodded. I rolled the window back up and turned the truck around to head back to town.

“Old and clear?” Foremost asked as we got on the road. “I’m going to make a guess here. Clear means he belongs to all of Summit, not to any particular lodge or family.

Old simply means he’s important.”

“See?” I said. “You are starting to understand things around here. . . .”

I parked the truck in the driveway behind Sam’s old house. Kelli and Rose, two of my brothers’ wives, waved and then ignored me and went back to their argument.

Tom and Bob and Steve, my brothers, walked over as Foremost and I got out of the truck.

“What’s wrong now?” I asked and gestured at the women.

“The usual,” Bob said. I looked puzzled.

“Kelli wants the backyard fence,” Tom explained. “She thinks it’ll look nice around her garden.”

I turned to Steve.

“Rose wants the bushes and the other plants along the fence line,” Steve said.

“She’s afraid if Kelli takes the fence, she’ll rip up the plants doing it.”

I studied the plants and the fence for a moment. The brothers waited.

“Tell Rose she can have half the plants,” I said, f inally. “And Kelli gets half the fence. The rest has to stay here to go with the house at the auction.”

They looked at me. I looked at the wives. Everybody waited a minute.

“Fine,” Tom said. Steve nodded. Tom tipped his head toward the fence and the bushes.

“But how?” Tom asked. “We still might break the fence and kill the plants.”

“Damned if I know,” I said f irmly. “Not my job to f igure that out. You want the fence and the plants, fine, that’s how much you can have. How is not my problem.”

“That’s not fair,” Steve protested. “They’re not going to be happy.”

“So? Life’s not fair,” I said. “And tell them if they don’t work together, then neither of them gets anything and it all goes at auction.”

Steve and Tom looked at each other for a moment, then back at the arguing women.

“That fence is pretty long,” Tom said, thoughtfully. “A lot bigger than our garden.

Just this one side of fencing would be enough for us.”

“And my van’s already pretty full of plants Rose wheedled out of the neighbors,”

Steve observed. “Not room for a hell of a lot more. Only need a few really.”

“I could use some help getting the fence out,” Tom allowed. “I could help you with the plants.”

Tom and Steve glanced at each other, then turned and spat in the same piece of dirt. They both ground it with their boot heels, then nodded to me and walked toward the garden. I turned to Bob. He held his hands up, palms open.

“Your girlfriend doesn’t want anything?” I asked skeptically. Bob was divorced, but there was always a new girlfriend.

“Didn’t say that,” Bob replied. “But Sam’s house doesn’t have what she wants.”

“Then why do you look so guilty?”

“She collects medicine bottles, Tony. The older, the better.”

“You showed her the Rainbow. And that gave her ideas.”

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the sun broke out and the light hit the glass? She grabbed my arm so hard I thought she was going to rip it off.”

“You know what happens if anyone messes with the Rainbow,” I warned. “You want to face off against the Kadisha, and after that with Mother Lu? The Nacacijin will take you back in the hills, make sure you understand the rules, and weight down what’s left of you in one of the pothole lakes.”

Bob shook his head.

“I’m not crazy,” he said, stubbornly, “but she still wants some of the old bottles.”

“Does she know where the pioneers used to throw their garbage?”

“I told her about Outhouse Ned,” Bob confirmed. He did not look happy. “She made me call him. They talked and he’s coming over before the auction. Says he thinks Sam might have been squatting on a gold mine. Says the pioneers and other people used to throw all kinds of stuff down there. Antique dealers in Minneapolis love that crap.”

“I don’t want to know any more.” I winced, and Bob grinned. I knew his choice of words had been deliberate and precise. Smart-ass.

I glanced at the outhouse in Sam’s backyard. I’d seen pictures from when Sam was a baby and from when my Dad was a baby and from when I was a baby. Different house each time on the lot, but the outhouse was always there, in the background.

No telling how old it was.

“She’s got to work out a way to share with all of us, to make sure there’s no hard feelings.”

“Ned can dig around? She’ll check over what he finds.”

“Yeah,” I said, reluctantly. “As long as they work on it together, to make sure Ned doesn’t pocket anything good. He’s got to be done and out of here before the auction starts. And I need one medicine bottle, in good shape. An old one. And it has to be clear glass. And clean.”

Bob thought for a moment, then nodded and stepped away. He took out his phone and held it up to his ear.

I watched the brothers and the women back Tom’s truck into the backyard. They looped one end of a chain around the tow hitch and the other end through and around the links and bars in the fence. As I watched, Kelli got into the truck and Rose stood back to give her directions.

“Put her in first and go forward slow,” Rose called out. “Slow, slow, slow.”

The truck’s engine came to life. I turned away and headed for the house.

The back door of the house opened and Carole stepped outside. She wore her official jacket, with SECRET SERVICE in huge letters across the chest and back. She saw Foremost and me and headed toward us.

“Ambassador,” she said. “Tony.”

“It is very good to see you, Agent Carole,” Foremost said gravely.

“You were gone a long time,” Carole said, and glared at me.

“I was quite well protected,” Foremost assured her. “If I remember correctly, you once said Keeper Tony was almost good enough to be in the Secret Service.”

“How many times have I saved your life?” I asked Foremost. “Twice? Three times?

Almost good enough, my ass.”

They both ignored me. I expected that, and I wasn’t upset. It seemed comfortable, somehow.

“I understand, Ambassador, but at the same time, the president has made it very clear your safety is now the Secret Service’s responsibility. Specif ically, it’s my responsibility. If you would just let me bring in a regular protective detail, I would be much, much happier. And you would be much safer.”

“I understand your concern,” Foremost said politely. “My own people up on the Ship have told me much the same thing. And I would not interfere with your official Bury Me in the Rainbow

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duties in almost all other circumstances. However, this is Summit, and things are somewhat different here—”

The engine on the truck roared and the truck ground forward. The chains pulled and tightened. Rose waved Kelli to hold it, while Tom and Steve checked the fence and the chains and made some small adjustments. Rose waited until they were done and then waved Kelli to go ahead.

Kelli slowly let up on the clutch. The truck inched forward. The chains seemed to hum as the truck strained. The fence stayed in the ground, stubbornly refused to give any ground. Kelli gave it just a little more gas, and the fence bent, and then, reluctantly, the rods began to slide out of the ground. Rose stepped back, slipped, and fell flat on her ass, just in time to avoid getting a metal rod through her head as the truck jerked forward and the fence popped free and whipped through the air.

Tom and Steve ran to Rose, shouting. Kelli killed the engine and jumped out of the truck and joined the rest of the pack.

Rose just sat on the ground, completely covered in mud, and laughed and laughed and laughed.

“Things are different in Dakota,” Carole said drily.

“They are indeed.”

Foremost turned to me.

“When will you and the rest of the lodges decide if Summit will go to the Ship?”

“Seven days. Everybody will be here for Sam’s auction. We’ll settle the death gifts, then we’ll vote. Doesn’t make any sense to wait longer.”

“Good.”

“You’re going back to the Ship today,” I said, matter of factly. Foremost’s head jerked up.

“How did you know that?”

I shrugged.

“Your shuttle was sabotaged, and that’s how you ended up here, in Summit. So I know someone, upstairs, wanted you dead. Wanted it bad enough to hire the Synth and send it down here to kill you when you managed to land in one piece. Biggest thing your Council is deciding is whether to bring humans on the Ship. If your enemies are willing to kill to stop it, and you’re willing to risk your life to push it forward, then I figure you need to be upstairs, not down here.”

“Maybe you can survive upstairs.” Foremost sounded like he approved.

“We’re not stupid. We might be behind you in technology, but we’re not stupid.”

I turned to Carole. “And you’re going with him, aren’t you?”

She took a deep breath, blew it out, then looked up at me.

“My job is to keep the Ambassador alive. I got my orders last night, after you two talked with the president. I stay with the Ambassador everywhere he goes.”

“Even on the Ship?”

“Even on the Ship,” she confirmed.

“We’ll come back that morning, before the auction.” Foremost sounded like he was trying to be reassuring. It didn’t help.

“Bring me a Synth. Someone who can make decisions.”

“No promises. I’ll be back, but I have no idea what’s going to happen upstairs.”

“Do your best,” I suggested. “Otherwise, you’re going to have to make some decisions on your own.”

“About what?” Foremost asked, cautiously. Now it was my turn to smile.

“Can’t tell you,” I said. “Not sure it will work. But if it does, and Oly can make it happen, then you better bring a Synth with you.”

Foremost opened his mouth as if he was going to start an argument, then he just shut his mouth. I turned to Carole.

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“We’ll meet you that morning, in the clearing by the cemetery. Get me a message when you’re coming down.”

“Not a problem.”

I shook my head. Carole smiled, stood on her toes and put her arms around me, and kissed me. The smile folded up and was gone by the time she was off her toes.

“I’ll do my best to find a Synth.” Foremost sounded cautious. “I may have to call in some favors.”

“All politics is local,” I said, automatically. “Someone up there wanted you dead. Instead, you’re coming back alive and the Synth is dead. People are going to ask questions upstairs. Find them and talk with them.”

Foremost looked at me and, for the first time, tried a human smile. His lips pulled back from his teeth and the fangs showed, long and curved and sharp.

“Exactly right,” he said. “All politics is local.”

Carole kissed me again, and I got all the usual promises to be safe and careful. We both knew she was lying, that there was no way to go into a completely unknown situation and be safe and careful.

But we felt better. Sometimes lying is the best you can do.

An hour later I stood next to the truck on the outskirts of town. A shuttle from the Ship, fresh and not smashed up like Foremost’s vehicle, rested in a little pasture between a pair of cow tanks. Foremost and Carole walked into an airlock. She waved goodbye, and the door shut behind her.

The shuttle lifted, silently and effortlessly, no wind, no exhaust, and went straight up. A moment and it was gone.

I stood for a minute. The sky was pale blue with spots of puffy clouds. From where I stood I could see down off the hills, all the way to the big lake. Minnesota was a vague, misty place on the horizon.

I turned and got back in the truck and started the engine. I had work to do.

I spent that afternoon returning phone calls and texts and emails and setting up appointments for the next day. Laverne from the mayor’s off ice sent over a pile of purchase orders, carefully marked to show which ones I should sign, which ones to deny, and which ones to ignore.

My personal guess was that when the world f inally ends and we f ind out what

“42” really means, there will still be some damned clerk who has to stay late to fill out paperwork.

It was after midnight when I left the office in the back of the pool hall and climbed into my town car. I pulled the string to start the engine and drove home down abandoned streets, the Ship and the stars looking down on me.

Sam’s house was an old cracker box with two bedrooms upstairs. You reached it using a set of steps that was more like a ladder than stairs.

One bedroom was completely f illed with an outdoor TV antenna. I never knew why Sam put it inside the house, instead of up on the roof. The other bedroom held an old iron bed, much too big to get through the doorframe, with big round springs. I had no idea how Sam ever got the bed in the room in the first place, but there it was, topped with a dusty, hard, flat mattress just barely big enough for one person.

With Carole, it was just fine. But she was upstairs, on the Ship.

That night, alone, I lay in bed and stared at the ceiling. The thought of leaving Dakota scared the hell out of me, but the thought of staying was even worse.

Every person born in Summit knew that, sooner or later, they’d have to make the big decision: move to the flatlands or stay in the hills.

I knew the anger and frustration and sense of loss of the kin who left our little Bury Me in the Rainbow

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corner of Dakota. I’d seen it and heard it and felt it in the reunions in New York and Shanghai and London and all the other big cities.

Here in the hills I’d seen the alcoholism and senseless violence and shame of the stay-behinds. The mainstream had discovered our unspoiled land and lakes. They took what they wanted, and that left no room for us. We were rapidly becoming strangers on our own land. The First Nations folks had gone through it f irst, two hundred years ago, when the pioneers arrived. But then the frontier had moved west and the stay-behinds, First Nations and newcomers, slowly and warily worked together, had babies together, made families together. Now it was starting all over again. We knew we could stay and get ground into the dirt again or . . .

But to leave everything behind . . .

“Change don’t come easy to the hills,” Sam told me once. We were on Summit Lake on a sweltering August afternoon. No fish bit our hooks, but mosquitoes the size of dragonflies took a lot of bites out of us. We slapped at them and drank beer and enjoyed each other’s company.

“But when it’s live or die, then the hills will change. Ain’t easy, Tony. Won’t be pretty.

But they’ll change, and you’ll have to take them there . . .”

The next morning my brother Bob and I drove to see Limbo.

The Sun was climbing, and the wind, out of the southwest, had blown most of the clouds away. The daylight actually felt hot on the side of my face.

I studied Limbo’s farm as we turned off the gravel on to the lane and up to the house. I knew by the look, crisp and tight, that he kept a good farm, but it still didn’t look right. It took me a minute and then I knew what it was. The buildings might be bright and freshly painted, the fences strong and the barbed wire tight, but his fields looked wrong.

All the other farmers around Summit dressed and turned their fields in the fall, rolled the corn stubble and soybean straw back into the soil. This helped everything decompose more quickly, and made it easier and quicker to plant in the spring.

Limbo’s fields weren’t dressed. Stubble and straw lay thick on the ground. I looked at Bob, then nodded at the fields. Bob shrugged.

“Limbo is the best farmer in Dakota,” Bob said flatly. “He has thirty-seven patents for genetic research. If his fields aren’t tilled, there’s a reason.”

“He got his degree at Iowa State,” I said. “Then he came back to the hills after school. Why?”

“His dad died, and there was no one to take care of his mom and the farm,” he said.

“She died a couple of years ago,” I pointed out. “He stayed on the farm.”

Bob studied the big white house as we got closer.

“The farm’s here in Summit. He’s got farming in his blood. More importantly, Beth’s here.”

“Yeah. But they never got married.”

“Before Limbo’s mom died, Beth went to college,” Bob said. “Limbo loved Beth too much to make her choose between him and her dreams.”

“Damn,” I said and shook my head. “She’s back in town?”

“Yep. Moved back here last summer.”

“She knows Limbo loves her?”

“She knows.”

“So why doesn’t he just ask her to marry him?”

“She belongs to the Kadisha lodge,” Bob reminded me. “Word is that the Oya hasn’t approved yet.”

“Beth and Limbo haven’t complained?”

Bob snorted.

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“You’re talking about the Kadisha. Their Oya made the decision, and Beth is a good girl,” Bob said. “You can only dream Pool Hall was so orderly. The Oya is just taking her time, letting them get acquainted again before she gives her blessing. She doesn’t want to rush things.”

I looked up at the sky. The Ship was a fading clear white against the blue sky as the Sun rose higher.

“I think a lot of things are going to get rushed. One way or the other.”

I thought about Carole and how all this might sound to her. I wanted to talk with her, to make her understand Summit, but I was afraid she’d just laugh. She was a New York City girl, born and bred. I’d worked for the State Department, in Manhat-tan and D.C., for ten years, but I’d never quite understood why people in the city acted and thought the way they did. Things that seemed so simple and natural up here just didn’t feel right down in the flats. I knew it went the other way just as well.

“So what does Limbo do now, with the Ship and maybe leaving Summit?”

I stopped next to the tractor shed and killed the engine. Bob looked around through his open window.

“If Beth goes on the Ship, Limbo goes. If Beth stays, Limbo stays.”

My side window was open, and all I heard was the sound of the wind through the straw, rustling and cracking. I smelled mud and, just below it, fresh grass eager to rise and grow and start a new year and a new life.

“That’s why we’re here to talk to him,” I said. “And maybe we need Aki’ to talk with Beth.”

We opened the doors and stepped out of the truck. I hesitated, but nothing happened.

“No dog?” I asked, surprised. “Every farm has a dog. Something’s not right.”

“Limbo!” Bob shouted. “Limbo!”

The barn door opened and Limbo stepped out.

He was tall, over six foot, and lean and ropy with muscle. His hair was straw yellow blond, his features classically chiseled, and he had bright blue eyes. He wore an open lumberjack shirt and tight, worn jeans. Give him a Stetson and he’d look a lot like the guys on the covers of romance novels.

“Bob!” Limbo said. He smiled, all perfect teeth, and walked toward us. He grabbed Bob’s hand and shook it.

“Long time,” Limbo said, half accusingly. Bob grinned and slapped him on the shoulder. Limbo stepped back and looked at Bob. “Money?”

“Damn it, Limbo,” Bob said, and laughed. “It hasn’t been long enough if you still remember that.” Bob looked up at me. “I still owe him ten bucks for a pitcher of beer back when we were in school. If I ever paid him he’d die of shock.”

“No risk of that,” Limbo said drily.

Bob put his arm around Limbo’s shoulders and said something to him in a low voice. They laughed and I stepped away to let them have some time together. I wandered to the edge of the farmyard and looked across the road and out over the fields.

Bob and Limbo came over and joined me. Limbo nudged Bob with one arm and pointed to the neighbor’s fields. He shook his head, disapprovingly.

“Erosion,” Limbo said. Words seemed to come hard from him. He pointed to his land. “My topsoil stays here.”

Bob frowned for a moment, then cocked his head to one side and looked up at Limbo.

“You’re telling me the other farmers are all wrong?” Bob asked. “When they dig everything up in the fall, they get a lot more erosion from the rains and the snow melt? And your way saves the topsoil?”

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with his fingers and came back with a handful of thick, rich, black soil. It crumbled in his hands as he worked it with his fingers.

“Better yield,” Limbo said. “Spring plowing.”

“How much better?” I asked.

“Half again,” Limbo said. “Maybe double.”

“But a lot more work,” I replied.

Limbo shrugged.

“Work never killed anyone,” he said. He brushed the dirt off his fingers and turned away, back to the farm. “Give you a tour.”

Limbo’s farm was built to work with an absolute minimum of outside supplies. He used no agricultural chemicals and recycled the manure and other waste products into the fields. He was exactly what we wanted in the closed ecology of a space habitat.

At the end of the tour we came around the back side of the house, and I heard the sharp tink! of clinking metal. Bob heard it, stopped, and looked at Limbo.

“You got a dog chained up back here, Limbo?” Bob asked, puzzled. His face cleared.

“I remember him. A big black dog. Friendly thing. Slobbered over everything and always wanted up in your lap. Thought he was the world’s biggest cat. Good hunter.”

“Dog’s dead,” Limbo said.

The wind picked up again and the clinking of the chains was stronger. Bob and I and Limbo all looked up, into the trees.

Above us, chains carefully and lovingly wrapped for support, was a large black Labrador. The dog was dried out and shrunken a little bit but he looked peaceful, eyes closed, mouth wired shut with a length of fishing line so it didn’t gape open.

“Why is your dead dog up in the tree, Limbo?” Bob asked carefully.

“Coyotes.”

“Coyotes?”

Limbo’s expression told me he thought I was an idiot, then he looked away and out at the fields and the trees and the prairie. He waved his hand slowly, to encompass all of it.

“They belong here,” he said. He seemed to struggle with the words, as if he knew what to say, but not quite how to say it. “They fit. It was their land first.”

“So after he died you arranged him up in the tree so the coyotes wouldn’t get to the body,” Bob translated. “Why not bury him and put rocks on top to keep the coyotes off ?”

“Bury him under dirt?” Limbo looked shocked at the question. He shook his head forcefully and scuffed at the ground with the toe of his boot. It almost looked as if he wanted to cry. “Coyotes just doing what comes natural. It’s not right to kill them over a dead dog. Besides, Buddy was an outdoor dog. Loved it out here. Always wanted to see everything. Now he can, all the time. This is best.”

We walked back to the house, went inside, and sat around the kitchen table. Limbo served us coffee, an experimental brew from some bushes back in his garden. It wasn’t Kona or Blue Mountain, but it wasn’t bad. And it grew in Dakota, not the side of a mountain in the tropics.

I sipped, then curled my f ingers around the cup and looked at Limbo. The best thing with him was always to be straight and to the point.

“Things are changing in Summit, Limbo,” I said carefully.

“Yeah,” he said.

“I need your help,” I said bluntly. ”You and your lodge. I need the Farmers.”

“The Ship,” Limbo said. I nodded. News traveled fast in Summit. Gossip traveled even faster.

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we’ll do is dig our own graves when things break down. And I’m not going up there to die,” I said.

Limbo put down his cup. He looked thoughtful.

“Summerdale,” he said. I looked puzzled.

“It’s a housing development, over by Big Stone Lake,” Bob explained. “Two hundred country homes, on multi-acre lots. Used to be the Swenson place. The kids sold it and moved the folks down to Florida. You could hear old man Swenson cursing them out from a mile away. Grandma just sat on the porch and cried until they got her in the car.”

I shook my head. I remembered the Swensons. She was a Kadisha and taught Sunday school; he was a Lutheran deacon and a Farmer. None of the kids wanted to farm. I’d met two of them at the exile clubs in D.C. and New York. They didn’t look too happy either.

“Heaven’s Hills,” Limbo said distastefully.

“Latest rumor is the Ahrendsens are selling out, too. Another new development.

It’s starting to happen all over the hills,” Bob said. “Lots of people from the f lats, from Minneapolis and Sioux Falls and Kansas City and Chicago. They like the lakes and the hills and the cheap land. They come up here and turn farmland and ranch-land into weekend homes. You get enough of them, turn enough land into residential mini-estates and, next thing you know, we’re just another look-alike country resort.”

“I’ll go look, on the Ship,” Limbo suddenly said. “Something to think about. Can’t go alone, though. We’ll need more lodges. Farmers and Pool Hall are not enough.”

“We’re going to have a vote at the auction,” I said. “All the Keepers of all the lodges.”

“Can I bring Buddy? If we go upstairs?”

I didn’t hesitate. If Buddy wanted to see from even higher up, that was fine with me.

“Yes.”

Limbo thought for a moment, then nodded.

“Sounds fair,” Limbo said.

“Deal,” I said. I stood, and Limbo and I shook hands.

“Come to the cemetery at dawn,” I told him. I made a note on my phone to call Foremost when I got back to Summit. “Shuttle will pick you up. Bring enough clothes for, say, a week. They’ve got food for you upstairs.”

Limbo nodded.

“And with that, we’ve got to get back to town,” Bob said, and stood. “Thanks for the coffee. And, Limbo, we’d appreciate it if you talk to anyone who’ll listen. We’ll keep in touch and see you in town at the auction.”

We stacked our coffee cups in the dishwasher, then walked outside. Limbo watched us from his porch, motionless, as we drove down the lane to the county road and out of sight. I glanced at Bob and grinned.

“So, we’ve got the Pool Hall, and maybe we got Limbo and his Farmers,” Bob said grudgingly. “Maybe.”

“It’s a start,” I agreed. “Who’s next?”

“Mother Lu and the Nacacijin?” Bob suggested. “We should get the tough ones out of the way first.”

“Tough, I don’t mind. But her?” I shook my head. Bob made a face.

“She’s not happy either,” Bob said. He spoke carefully. “We’re heads and she’s tails.

We’re not supposed to agree all the time. But we’re still on the same coin. Can’t have one without the other.”

He didn’t say anything more, just let me stew on it.

“You think she’s right, this time?” I asked. Bob made a face.

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“I don’t even know which side she’s on,” Bob said. “You ask her?”

“No,” I admitted. “But if I say the sun is shining, she’s going to predict rain.”

“She might want the same thing,” Bob repeated, stubbornly. I nodded, reluctantly.

“She might,” I admitted. “But even if we do agree to go to the Ship, she wouldn’t want us in charge. She’d want to be the one in the room doing the talking with Foremost and the rest of the Ship people.”

“She’s got to be in the room anyway,” Bob pointed out. “This is too important for it to be just us. Besides, Mother Lu and her people are a lodge. They’ve got a purpose just like the rest of us. We’ve got to talk to her sooner or later.”

“Let her be later,” I said. “Who else first?”

Bob shook his head at me, then shrugged. He pulled a notepad out of his shirt pocket and referred to it for a moment.

“Flipper, just to make sure the Water people are on board. Then Asphalt, the Teachers, the Still People, the different First Nations lodges—”

It was going to be a long day.

The second day began bright and cheerful and lonely.

Carole’s side of the bed was cold and still neatly made. Carole always teased me about how I slept like a corpse in a coffin, flat on my back, my hands folded over my chest. I tried to explain how my bed, growing up, was just a narrow little thing, pushed up against a wall so we could fit more kid beds in fewer rooms. Mom put a footstool and cushions at the end because the bed was too short and I was too tall. I told her there wasn’t room to twist and f lop around. She just laughed at me each time I tried to explain.

I missed her.

There were three handwritten notes on the kitchen table, one each from a different brother about the lodges he planned to visit that day. I glanced over the notes while I breakfasted quickly on toast smeared with peanut butter and topped with slices of locally grown fresh banana, a special gift from Limbo.

I left the truck in front of the house and drove Sam’s town car, an ancient beat up Deere riding lawn mower, blade removed, downtown to the pool hall. The Deere was an old racer from Sam’s younger days. It didn’t look like much, the traditional green and yellow paint chipped and stained, but the engine roared and kicked me back in the seat when I touched the gas.

Oly waited out front on the wooden stoop of the pool hall, leaned back in one of the old rocking chairs Sam kept out front. I started to wave hello, until I saw Oly had that look on his face. For a moment I wanted to accelerate, to rush by him and keep going and not look back. Maybe all the way to California.

I slowed, parked, and stopped.

“We need to talk,” Oly said. “Now.”

“All right,” I said. Oly shook his head.

“Not out here. Inside,” he said. He pointed at a backpack sitting on the worn wooden boards of the stoop. “Bring that, and let’s go into the office.”

I grabbed the backpack and Oly led the way inside. The pool hall was dark and cool and I heard Chuck the bartender stacking bottles in the storeroom. We walked past the bar and around the tables (all safely bolted to the floor) and chairs (fixed to the walls) so they could not be used in the regular Friday and Saturday night disagreements, and into the office in the rear.

I put the backpack down next to the round coffee table and sat behind the desk.

Oly shut and locked the door behind us and sat on the battered green guest couch. A puff of dust shot up, outlined in a bar of sunlight from the window, when his butt hit the cushions.

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“Tony, there’s something weird going on.”

“Yeah?” Like what else is new, I thought.

“It’s about the dead alien’s bones.”

“What about them? Did you get them boiled down?”

“Yeah. And then I looked them up.”

“What do you mean, you looked them up?” I asked, suddenly cautious.

“I’ve got the internet, Tony,” Oly snapped. “I’ve got friends who keep in touch with me, on the quiet. And I’ve still got my sense of curiosity. Drop something like a dead alien on me and I’m going to do a little research.”

I remembered Oly from high school. He’d arrived suddenly one year, a new teacher from down in the flats. He’d been a crotchety old coot even back then, but he’d also been one of the best science teachers I ever had. I never heard why he was here or how he ended up in Summit. Oh, I heard rumors, of course. They were all over the place. University, government, hospital, corporation. Someone had kicked him out and blackballed him good. Who did it and why they did it? Never knew and never asked. What happened in the flats didn’t matter much, as long as you kept your nose clean in Summit.

But now he was curious. And curiosity . . .

“What made you itch?”

“Everything,” Oly said. “About both Foremost and the Synth. I don’t like it that Foremost has two legs and two arms. I like it even less that the Synth, a completely different species, also has two legs and two arms. I don’t like that they’re both bilaterally symmetrical. I don’t like that they can breathe our air and hear us and see us and not break out in a thousand different kinds of skin rashes when they walk around here.”

“All right, you’ve lost me,” I said.

“It’s just too damned unlikely that they’re so much like us. Cut us in half, top to bottom—”

“Gross.”

Oly ignored me.

“—and our left half and right half are basically the same. Works great for us here on Earth. Most animals are bilateral.”

“Why?”

Oly shrugged.

“The theory is it helped our distant—I’m talking half a billion years ago—ancestors move more quickly and change directions faster. Helped us to escape predators.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“Maybe.” Oly sounded skeptical. “But we’ve got exceptions even here. Radially symmetrical creatures. Spherical. Asymmetrical. Pentagonal, for God’s sake. And that’s just under the conditions here on Earth. Change the conditions and who knows what you’ll get? My guess is that every planet is pretty damned unique. And the evolutionary history that comes along with that is just as unique.”

“Oly, what did you do?” I asked.

“I took the Synth apart. Carefully. I over-nighted samples, quietly, to people I know.

People who know how to keep their mouths shut. And what do you think I found?”

“Do I want to know?”

Oly just looked at me as if I was an idiot. I was getting that look a lot lately.

I sighed.

“Of course I want to know.” The last thing I needed was to piss off Oly. “Talk to me.”

“The Synth has a single temporal fenestra, Tony.”

Ask me about politics. Or economics. Or how to break down and clean a rif le or milk a cow or find the best restaurant in some godforsaken pesthole in an out of the way country. I’m your man. But temporal fenestras . . .

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“I missed that class,” I admitted. Oly looked at me over the top of his glasses. I felt like I was back in junior high, admiring the girls from behind when I should have been paying attention to Oly.

“Anatomy, Tony? Paleontology?”

I gave him my best blank look. It’s actually very good. I get to practice it a lot when I’m around Oly.

He sighed and looked both disgusted and disappointed. That felt familiar, too.

“It’s an opening in the bone of the skull behind each eye, on the side of the skull,”

Oly explained. “It leaves a bony ridge under each eye. Fenestra were a good place to attach muscles for a nice, strong jaw. Gave you a good bite.”

“And this means . . . ?”

“About three hundred million years ago, before the Permian extinction and long before the dinosaurs, there were a group of animals called the synapsids.” Oly looked up at me. He shook his head at my blank stare. “Mammal-like reptiles. Terrible name.

Glad they got rid of it. Anyway, the synapsids lasted about fifty million years. They’ve been extinct here on Earth for about two hundred and fifty million years. They were the first animals to have temporal fenestra. They had exactly one on each side of the skull. Dinosaurs—evolved after the synapsids—had at least two fenestra on each side.”

“So?”

“Your Synth’s temporal fenestra match perfectly with synapsid fossils. If I didn’t know better, if I hadn’t just spent an hour carefully cleaning his headbone, I’d claim the Synth’s skull was a fossil, about three hundred million years old.”

“That’s impossible,” I snapped. “No Synth has ever been on Earth. Especially no dead Synth.”

“I took some pictures of the Synth’s skull,” Oly said, stubbornly. “I sent them off for confirmation.”

“Where? And are you an idiot?”

Oly shook his head.

“Screw you,” he suggested. “I encrypted them.”

“With PGP? NSA will crack that in an hour. The Russians and the Chinese will do it even faster. Mossad will beat all of them,” I scoffed. “You do realize that what we do here is bound to be under the microscope of every intelligence agency on the planet?

Hell, my bet is they need a traffic cop in orbit to keep all the spy satellites above us from running into each other.”

“I used something your brother Tom gave me,” Oly said. “Remember how the NSA tried to recruit him?”

I remembered. The NSA had heard rumors about Tom. They talked to him and sent him a job application packet. Tom thought that was funny. He f illed out the forms and sent them back, encrypted with something he wrote up in an afternoon.

When they couldn’t crack it, he told them to buzz off. Said he only worked with smart people. Really pissed them off. Made them try even harder to recruit him. They even tried to figure out a way to draft him, claimed national security.

I pulled some strings to shut that one down. Bob helped, too, with his connections on the private side. We might fight with each other, but nobody messes with the family.

Never did hear the NSA was able to crack Tom’s application, though.

“All right,” I said, grudgingly. “If Tom said it was okay . . .”

“And I sent everything through null island. Used an Almendra address. No one will even know my friends received a message.”

“And the people who got the pictures? All good people?”

“All good people,” Oly reassured me. “Some of them come to the exile reunions down in the flats.”

I nodded, satisfied.

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“All right,” I said. “So what do they think?”

“They agreed with me about the Synth,” Oly said and shook his head. “And they agreed it’s too much of a coincidence. The eyes, the ears, the bones? Too much. I haven’t got the analysis of the blood and tissue and the microbiology back yet, but I’m going to bet it shows the same thing.”

“Parallel evolution?” I asked, feebly.

Oly gave me that look again and reached into his backpack. He carefully pulled out a cloth bundle, the velvet worn and shiny. He handled it with reverence and unfolded it on the table.

There were maybe half a dozen bones. They didn’t look familiar, like the deer and pheasant and coyote I was used to hunting. They were definitely not human.

But there was something about them, the shape, the color . . .

“The Synths started here on Earth,” Oly said flatly. “They’re descended from an extinct species from this planet.”

“That’s impossible,” I said. It sounded stupid, even to me. I just didn’t know what else to say.

“Yeah.”

Oly gestured to the bones and up to the sky, through the ceiling, toward the Ship.

“But last time I checked, we’ve got a friggin’ assed Ship the size of the Moon hanging over our head. We’ve got aliens walking around my backyard. We’ve got one of them trying to shoot you. I’ve got a dead one down in my basement. So, tell me again, this is impossible? I know it’s impossible. Problem is, we got the bones of mister impossible right in front of us.”

“What about Foremost?” I asked.

“Maybe Foremost is more of the same.” Oly sounded uncertain. “Not a synapsid, but more of the same. Probably a species younger than the Synth would be my guess.

Foremost seems more like a mammal of some kind. I’d have to carve him apart to make sure.”

“No.”

Oly ignored me.

“Don’t know about the other folk on the Ship. Does make a man think, though, don’t it? What if each of the species up on the Ship started out back here? I wonder what that could all be about?”

I sat back and tried to think. If only Sam was still alive.

Could of. Would of. Should of. I knew exactly what Sam would say, and I could almost hear his disdainful tone. Doesn’t do any good to fret about it. I’m dead. It’s your problem now. So what are you going to do?

I leaned forward and gestured at the bones.

“Oly, pack them up. Get back to your shack and put everything where it belongs.

Keep doing what you’re doing.”

“What about the Synth? If Foremost brings somebody down from the Ship in a few days—”

“This doesn’t change one damned thing, does it?” I glared at Oly. He shifted his wad of tobacco from one cheek to the other, then spat a thin brown stream into the spittoon. He hit it perfectly, and not a drop spilled on the wooden floor.

“The Synth is still dead. What he is and where he came from is something for later. What does matter is that I, as the Keeper of our lodge, associated Foremost. He was under our protection when the Synth tried to kill him.”

“Aki’ killed the Synth,” Oly pointed out.

“Which is what I expected her to do,” I snapped. “She did her job, and the Synth belongs to her. Now I expect you to do your job.”

Oly studied me for a moment, then nodded, as if I had passed some kind of test.

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He rolled up the bones and placed them back in his pack. He stood and slung it over his shoulder. I had no idea how old Oly was—he looked the same as I remembered when I was in kindergarten—but he was as strong as he was durable.

“You going to tell Foremost what we know?”

“That’s a good question.” I shut my mouth. Oly waited for a heartbeat, two, then shook his head.

“You’ve only been in charge for a week, and you’re already as bossy and tight-lipped as Sam,” Oly complained. He rubbed his hand over his chin, through a couple of days’ growth of old-man beard, sharp and bristly.

“You have a problem with that?” I demanded.

“Nope. Sam always believed in you. He said, even after you left Summit for the flatlands, that you’d be back, that you were the right one.”

“And now?” I asked.

“Maybe he was right,” Oly suddenly looked tired and old. “It’s been a long time, Tony. Time’s coming when I’ll need to take a rest myself. Maybe spend some time with Sam, and have a few beers, drink a little fish.”

“Not yet, Oly,” I ordered. “It’s not time yet.”

Oly nodded.

“But not yet,” he agreed.

I walked Oly to the front door and watched him amble down the street. He climbed onto his town car and headed back to his workshop. I stepped back inside.

Chuck, solid and thick, his scalp shaved clean, with muscles on top of his muscles, stood behind the bar, his white apron neatly in place, drying glasses.

Gang tats ran up his arms and his neck and into his hair. He’d come to Summit after some problems along the Wild Hundreds in Chicago. Normally, in my old job, I only handled foreign witness protection. In Chuck’s case a marshal friend of mine called me, said domestic protection wasn’t secure enough for Chuck.

I’d called Sam and asked for a favor. Sam gave him a job. Chuck fit right in. Nicest guy in town.

Once, when things were calm and we were friendly, I drank a beer with Mother Lu. She told me about a van full of people who had come north to find Chuck. Sam heard they were coming and called Mother Lu. He mentioned these visitors might be a problem for Summit. Mother Lu promised to see what the Nacacijin could do.

“And?” I asked.

“Somehow, those Chicago people got the wrong directions. They ended up out on some unmarked dirt road near Pigeon Lake,” Mother Lu said.

“It’s quiet out there,” I said. Mother Lu nodded and sipped her beer. “Empty.”

No one ever heard about that van again.

A few years after Chuck arrived, my marshal friend told me it was safe for him to go home. But he did a good job as a bartender, and he’d met a girl, one of the Water people, at the winter Friday night roller-skating parties. Now he was settled down with a couple of kids. He basically ran the pool hall building. He’d struggled with whether to join the Nacacijin or the Pool Hall but eventually he’d come down on our side.

Like I said, a nice guy.

He looked up at me when I came back inside. He tipped his chin toward my office door.

“Everything all right?”

“No,” I said. “Everything is not all right. But it’s still our problem.”

He nodded.

“Let me know if you need any help.”

“I will.”

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“Beth just called,” Chuck said.

“Yeah?”

“She’s at the Oya’s house.”

“Yeah?”

“Terry Voge’s there. Beth said you should come by.”

“When?”

“Now.” Chuck finished the glass, inspected it critically, set it down and picked up another one. “She said you might want to hurry.”

The first thing I saw as I drove up to the Oya’s house was Terry Voge’s motorcycle parked on the sidewalk, leaned against the fence. The lawn inside the fence was neat and clean, the sidewalk carefully edged, just a touch of spring green starting in the grass. Voge’s bike was splattered with mud and dead, brown grass, with scorch marks on the muffler. The bike blocked the sidewalk, and the handlebars marred the white paint of the fence with black rubber scars.

The second thing I saw was Akicita, her gimme cap pulled down low over her eyes, slouched in her own town car. She drove an old, white, beat-up golf cart, the plastic roof dulled, the sides nicked and scarred by loose, kicked-up stones. She was parked on the side of the gravel street across from the Oya’s house. I pulled in behind her in Sam’s town car, killed the engine, and yanked up the emergency brake.

“Morn’,” Akicita said as I walked up to her.

“You know what’s going on?” I asked. Akicita shook her head.

“Then why are you here?”

“Dove. She called me.”

“Why?”

“She kept telling me you’re going to be the new Sam, and I’m going to be your Oly.

Said this was our problem now.”

“She’s crazy,” I protested. “We’re nothing like those two.”

“Oly and Sam?” Akicita said. I nodded. She looked at me, doubtfully. “You could be right. We could be completely different.”

“Still, it’s good to have you here,” I allowed.

“Yep.”

I pointed with my chin at Terry’s bike.

“What’s that doing here?”

“Terry’s inside,” Akicita said, her voice f lat. She straightened on her seat and tipped up the brim of her hat.

“Any sign of Jerry?”

“Nope,” Akicita said. “Just the one twin. But where there’s one, the other is going to show up. That’s how it works with trash. If you leave a little bit laying around, more shows up.”

When we were in elementary school and junior high, the Voges made both my life and Akicita’s a living hell. They hit puberty and grew up big and strong early, with an arrogant attitude and a mean streak to match. Their mom held them back from school and, once at school, they got held back again. They were two years older than most classmates, almost three in the case of youngsters like Akicita and me. They regularly beat the crap out of the two of us just for the fun of it. Didn’t make any difference to them that Aki’ was a girl.

In high school, my parents pulled some strings one year and sent me out of town to work for the summer. I came back in late August, after a summer living with my uncle in the Badlands, swinging sledge as an underage illegal on the railroad section crew. When I got back in town, Jerry, the smarter of the twins, came around a corner and slammed into me.

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What was funny was that instead of knocking me down, and then stepping on me, he bounced off me and down into the dirt. He came up, screaming with rage, and launched himself at me. This was my cue to turn and run and not be fast enough and then endure a beating.

Instead, when he screamed, I didn’t follow the script. Inside my head I heard a snap, and a cold wave blew from the top of my head to the soles of my feet. Jerry seemed to move in slow motion. I took my time, turned slightly sideways, and listened to the voice of Sam in my head.

“Never use your fist, if you really need to hurt someone. You’ll break a finger or a knuckle and then your fist won’t be any good. Forget the movies. It doesn’t work that way in real life. Remember, the whole idea of a fight is to hurt the other guy.

“Use your elbow and the heel and side of your hand . . .”

The next thing I knew, Jerry was on the ground, and his nose was bent and pushed to the side and blood poured out. I bent over him, and his eyes got wide.

“Never touch me again,” I said, my voice calm. “Never touch Akicita. Never touch my brothers.”

“We’ll do whatever we want,” Jerry snarled back. I stood tall and looked down. I realized I was now thirty pounds heavier than him, all in muscle, and about four inches taller, and I was still growing.

“You can do that,” I agreed. I bent down again, so close he flinched. “And then I will do whatever needs to be done. And I guarantee whatever you start, I’ll finish.”

Jerry and Terry talked a lot of trash after that, but it was just talk. They never touched me or Akicita or my brothers. I ignored the Voges, and my brothers and I went to college and jobs and left Summit behind. Jerry remembered, though. When he was sure we were gone, he found Akicita. A day later, in New York, I got a phone call from an old friend. By noon I was on a flight to Dakota. I landed in Sioux Falls, rented a car, and drove north.

I saw Akicita in the Watertown hospital that afternoon. Her jaw was wired shut and she couldn’t talk. We looked at each other, and I did something I’d never done before: I took her hand and held it, quiet and still. When my rage was under control, I rested her hand back on the bed and made sure she was comfortable. Then I left the hospital and drove to Summit and found Jerry Voge.

When I was done, they put Jerry in the room next to Akicita in the hospital. He was still there a couple of weeks after Akicita was discharged.

Akicita and I never talked about what happened. But later, when Sam got old and couldn’t take care of his place, Akicita would drive over to Sam’s house, put the blade back on Sam’s town car and turn it back into a riding lawnmower to make sure Sam’s lawn was always neat and trim.

“Anybody else inside?” I asked.

“Beth. She walked down the street about five minutes ago,” Akicita said.

“What are they talking about?”

“No idea. Beth looked upset, but all she did was wave at me to stay put out here.”

“I don’t know about that,” I said. “Everyone’s inside except us. Only polite to visit since we’re here.”

Akicita nodded, stepped off her town car, and stood next to me. She was a foot shorter and not nearly as big, but I couldn’t think of a person I would rather have guard my back. We started toward the house.

“Not everyone’s inside,” Akicita said. I suddenly realized she was right.

The Oya was the Keeper of the Kadisha. They were one of the smallest lodges but everyone respected them, particularly if you had any problem with a plant or an animal or a person. Folk said the Kadisha people could fix anything that grew or breathed. They also took care of anything that died, kept the Registry, and worked with the Custodian.

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Now I noticed a dozen or more people, all around the house. They were doing outside chores, trimming bushes and pulling weeds, but it was obvious from how slowly they worked that they weren’t there to do yard work. They looked upset and worried.

“What’s going on?”

“Word is that something happened last night,” Akicita said. “Someone broke into the Oya’s house, into the lodge room.”

“Is she all right?”

Akicita nodded.

“Anything missing from the room?”

“No one will say. I’m not sure anyone knows, except for the Oya herself.”

“But she’s upset, so they’re upset.”

“Yep.”

“What would anyone want in the Kadisha lodge room?”

“Damned good question.”

Akicita and I crossed the road and jumped the ditch. When we were across, Akicita grabbed the handlebars of Terry’s motorcycle and heaved it off the fence. She stepped aside and let the ’cycle bounce on the sidewalk and slide down the ditch into a mix of ice and slush and mud.

“Always good to throw away trash,” I said, approvingly. Akicita grunted. Two of the kin stood nearby on the front lawn, one with a half-grin on her face, while the other just waited, his face a mask.

I pushed open the gate and stepped inside, Akicita next to me. I recognized the kin, Dove and Hunter. We’d gone to high school together. Dove was good with a knife and even better with her brain. Hunter could field-strip a gun blindfolded and knew how to tickle a meal out of a gravel pit. The Oya depended on both of them.

“It’s not a good time. The Oya has visitors,” Hunter said. He moved to block the walk up to the house. He was tall and rangy, like a basketball power forward. Dove gripped his arm and stopped him dead. She was built like a football lineman, and all of it was muscle.

“The Oya always likes to see Tony,” Dove said, her voice low and soft. “And Aki’s been a friend of the lodge since she wore a diaper.”

“But, Dove, he told us—”

“Orders from a Voge,” Dove said, her voice sharp and harsh. She spat on the frozen ground. “Last time I checked, he’s not part of us.”

“Dove, she said they needed to be alone.”

“She didn’t scold us when we let Beth go in, did she?”

“That’s different,” Hunter argued. “She’s one of us.”

“Let me make you both happy,” Akicita said. “The Oya wants to talk with me.”

“About?”

“A personal matter.”

“Not enough,” Dove said and shook her head. “Not enough to get inside by a long shot.”

“It’s about Beth. And Limbo,” Akicita said, reluctantly. She glanced over at me.

Comes the dawn. Sometimes I think Oly might be right and I am an idiot.

“Aki’s been filling me in about Limbo and Beth,” I chimed in. Akicita nodded. She looked uncomfortable.

“Yeah?”

“I approve, by the way,” I said. Dove looked thoughtful for a moment, changed direction, looked at Akicita expectantly and waited. Akicita waited, then sighed and continued, reluctantly.

“Limbo has something he wants me to talk about with the Oya . . .”

Dove smiled, slowly. Akicita hurried to add: “And I didn’t tell you anything!”

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“Does Beth know the Oya wants to talk with you?” Dove asked, shrewdly.

“Not yet,” Akicita admitted. “But she will. Limbo’s got his mother’s ring ready.

Added another pair of stones and got it sized properly.”

“What are you two going on about?” Hunter asked, confused.

“Beth and Limbo,” Dove explained, patiently. “But keep your mouth shut. Limbo’s finally got enough courage to ask her, but he’s old-fashioned. He wants the Oya to approve, and Aki’ is acting as go-between.”

“Does everyone in town know about this except me?” Hunter complained.

“Do you really want an answer?” Akicita asked.

“No,” Hunter said. “But if it’s about Beth and Limbo, then it’s all right.” He hesitated one more time, looked at Dove and up at me. “But what about letting Tony in?”

“Summit business,” I said. “I’m the mayor now.”

“Sam’s dead,” Dove said thoughtfully. “So I guess you are the mayor, at least until the next election.” She looked over at Terry’s bike, laying in the ditch. “Maybe you’ll campaign about getting new street drains.”

Dove smiled and stepped aside and took Hunter with her.

Akicita reached behind us and shut and latched the gate. I saw her glance at Dove and her grin back. I realized these two were very pleased with themselves. Birds of a feather and all that. I shook my head and kept moving.

I heard the voices as we walked up the steps to the porch.

“It’s time for you to leave, Beth. Jerry doesn’t want you here.”

“Go to hell, Terry,” Beth suggested, in a calm, conversational tone.

“If you don’t walk out the door, I’ll put you out,” Terry Voge said. He sounded eager.

“This is a private meeting. Just Jerry and me and the Oya.”

“Don’t touch me!”

“And what are you going to do about it?” Terry asked, his voice a taunt. “I’ll do any damned thing I want.”

I turned the doorknob and pushed the door open, Akicita right behind me. I stepped inside.

The Oya sat in an overstuffed chair and faced the front door. Beth stood next to her, face to face with Terry, his hand raised in a f ist, his head turned to see who dared to disturb him. I took two quick steps, crossed the room, and wrapped my hand around his fist.

“Don’t do that, Terry,” I said softly into his ear. “Don’t even think about it. She’s my little cousin.”

I squeezed.

Suddenly, in my mind, I was a junior high school kid again. The look on Terry’s face, the sound of his voice, the sneer and the fist . . . I felt gristle and bone move under my hand, and I realized I enjoyed it as his expression changed from gloating and self-satisfaction to plain old-fashioned pain.

“Let him go, Tony,” the Oya said sharply, after a pair of heartbeats, just long enough for a point to be made.

I glanced up and realized she looked tired, but determined. She was coldly elegant, her chair like a throne, her only jewelry an obsidian and hematite necklace with a little piece of bone in the middle. I released Terry and stepped forward past him, next to Beth.

Terry bent over and massaged his hand. Akicita moved next to me, to leave the path to the door open.

“It’s time to leave, Terry,” Akicita said.

“Screw you, Aki’,” Terry said, his voice half a gasp.

“Wouldn’t be much fun for either of us,” Akicita said. “And I don’t much like the suggestion.”

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“I don’t much care,” Terry said stubbornly. “I don’t leave until Jerry says I leave.”

“Where is he?” I asked.

“He just called,” Beth said. “He’s on his way.”

“You all right?” I asked.

“I didn’t need any help, Tony,” Beth said tartly. She looked contemptuously at Terry. “I can handle myself.”

“Beth,” the Oya said, reprovingly. She sounded like one of my elementary school teachers, gently reprimanding a prize student. “Polite. Always be polite. Tony was just trying to be helpful.”

“Not a problem, ma’am,” I said. “Sometimes she gets an attitude. Comes from my side of the family. I’m used to it.”

Beth glared at me. I smiled back.

“And Beth appreciated your help, even if she didn’t need it,” the Oya added reproachfully. She tactfully ignored the looks we gave each other. “Terry just forgot his manners for a moment, didn’t you, Terry?”

Terry said nothing. I closed my eyes and concentrated on my breathing. I opened my eyes and faced the Oya.

“We need to talk,” I said.

“About the alien ship?”

“Yes,” I said.

She turned to Akicita.

“And I presume you’re here about Beth and Limbo,” the Oya added. Akicita nodded.

Beth looked at the Oya, then at me. Her expression said she wanted to be right there, in the middle of both conversations, but she also wanted to be invisible. She started to step away, reluctantly, toward the door. The Oya motioned for her to stay.

“Some things always come first,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am,” Akicita said.

“Aki’, we understand that Beth loves Limbo,” the Oya said. Beth blushed and ducked her head, but she didn’t argue. “I also understand Limbo loves her. And I understand you’ve been acting as a matchmaker—”

A car door slammed outside and the fence gate opened and shut. I heard Dove’s voice and a lower voice, gravelly, answer sharply. Footsteps on the porch, and the front door opened, and Jerry Voge stepped inside.

He was a couple of inches above average height, broad and thick through the belly and chest and shoulders. On him it was mostly fat, where on Terry it was mostly muscle. Other than that, they looked the same, with long, black hair down to their shoulders, thin mustaches, and pale blue eyes. That’s where the differences showed.

Someone wrote once that the eyes were windows to the soul, and it showed in the brothers: Terry was flat out mean, but he was easy to distract and he did what he was told. Jerry was vicious, the kind of man who, when a rattlesnake bit him, the rattlesnake died. He enjoyed giving orders, particularly if someone got hurt, and he enjoyed even more the anticipation of their pain. Problem was, he was the brother with the brains, which made him even more dangerous.

He glanced around the room, saw Akicita and me and how Terry held his hand. I saw him dismiss us in his mind and concentrate on the Oya.

“Jerry,” she said politely. “Terry might need a ride home. It seems he’s hurt his hand.”

“That’s too bad,” Jerry said, coldly. He stepped next to his brother and studied his hand. “Make a fist. Now spread your fingers wide. Again.”

Terry obeyed. He winced at the pain, but the hand flexed and relaxed.

“Not likely anything is broken, but we need to double check with Doc,” Jerry decided. “Go get in the car and wait for me. I’ll be out in a minute.”

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“My bike—” Terry started to argue and Jerry shook his head.

“I’ll send someone for it. Now get in the car.”

Terry glared at Akicita and me and left the house. I heard Dove’s laugh outside.

Jerry’s lips tightened. I got the feeling Dove’s name was now added to a list in Jerry’s mind.

“I’m here for a private talk with the Oya,” Jerry said to me. I glanced at Beth, then at the Oya.

“Beth belongs here,” the Oya said firmly. “And we don’t mind if Tony and Akicita stay.”

“Is that so?” Jerry said. “Now, that just doesn’t sound very smart to me. Some things need to be talked about in private. Some decisions need to be made without a crowd looking over your shoulder.”

“They are my guests,” the Oya snapped. Jerry shrugged.

“Your choice.”

He reached inside his coat pocket and pulled out a long, thin leather pouch. He opened it and removed a small, empty, vintage medicine bottle without a label. It was a soft rose-colored glass, maybe three or four inches long. Next to me I felt Akicita stiffen. Jerry looked at Akicita and smiled, a nasty gash that showed teeth and gums and absolutely no humor. He laid down a piece of felt out of another pocket on a side table, uncorked the bottle and shook it gently and respectfully over the felt.

An old, tiny, polished piece of bone slid out.

The Oya went very quiet. All her attention was focused on Jerry. Her face was like old stone, lines carved and hardened.

“What do you want to say?” she asked. Jerry unfolded a piece of paper and read from it.

“Cecelia Syversdottir Satter,” he said. “Born, July 16, 1894. Died, April 7, 1979.

Married to John Satter. Six children, lived near Peever, a school teacher, etc.”

He handed the paper to the Oya.

“You can read the rest. It’s all there.”

“You violated the Rainbow!” Beth sounded both frightened and seriously pissed off.

“We’ll have all the lodges after you! Tony, you’re the mayor, I—”

Jerry held up his hand. He looked nervous but stubborn. He ignored Beth and focused on the Oya.

“We have permission from one of our own people. This bone is from her direct ancestor. We filled out the forms and went through the Custodian and it goes back as soon as I leave here.”

“You can’t do something like that—!”

“Mother Lu wanted me to pass on a message.” Jerry spoke directly to the Oya. She focused on the paper in her hands, the paper with the name on it, and then up at the rose-colored medicine bottle. “Mother Lu thinks Tony is making mistakes with the aliens and their ship, and Summit is going to end up hurt. Now, Mother Lu, she doesn’t want anyone to get hurt. She doesn’t want Summit to get hurt, so she’s sent me to talk with the Oya and the Kadisha.”

“And you, of course, have talked to some of the other lodges,” the Oya said. It wasn’t a question.

Jerry picked up the bone, delicately, and slipped it back in the bottle. He corked it, put it inside the leather pouch, and slid it back in his coat pocket. The felt went into another pocket.

“Maybe one or two,” Jerry said. “Maybe a few more.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “Mother Lu wants to be in charge of talking to the Ship people. She wants to be in charge upstairs.”

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position of strength. This isn’t a dispute between neighbors or an argument about who gets to f ish in what lake. This is the real thing. Mother Lu and the Nacacijin need to be in charge of this, not you and your Pool Hall people.”

“You think we’re too weak,” I said. Jerry hesitated for a moment, glanced at the Oya, then nodded.

“What if individuals want to go with Tony and his lodge up to the Ship?” the Oya asked. Beth stirred next to me.

“If a lodge votes to stay down here, we expect everyone in the lodge to stay down here,” Jerry said flatly. He wiped the smile from his face and studied me for a moment. “One exception. If Tony’s Pool Hall wants to go, well, they’re free to go. Surviving, though? That’s going to be his problem. Might be kind of tough up there, by themselves. Not sure if it would be a good idea to go. Alone.”

“Who says you can give orders to the Oya and the Kadisha?” I challenged.

“I’m not giving orders,” Jerry said, his face calm and placid. “Just Mother Lu’s opinion.”

“I’d be glad to take individuals,” I said, “or an entire lodge. You can’t stop them.”

“You remember when you came home that one time after Aki’ got hurt, when you got all high and mighty and told me to listen to what you had to say? And then you followed it up with your fists and your feet? Well, now it’s your turn to listen,” Jerry said softly. “We’ll do whatever we want. Right now, I want you to get the hell out of here. I want to talk with the Oya. Without you or Akicita.”

“Jerry—”

“I think it would be a good idea for you to leave,” the Oya said.

To me.

I turned to her, surprised and ready to snap, when I felt Akicita’s hand on my arm.

She shook her head and gently pulled me toward the door. Beth started to follow us, looked back at the Oya, and meekly sat down in one of the chairs next to her, a defeated look on her face.

I shut my mouth and followed Akicita outside. She closed the door and walked down the sidewalk to the front gate. Dove and Hunter waited, their expressions grim.

“The Oya kicked you out,” Dove said.

“Jerry Voge kicked us out,” I corrected her, still angry. “But the Oya didn’t argue.”

“You’re not in there with her,” Akicita said, sympathetically, to Dove. “She’s talking lodge business and you’re not in there.”

Dove’s face tightened and she looked angry and ashamed at the same time.

Hunter stepped back, out of earshot, and concentrated on the street.

“She told me to stay outside,” Dove said in a low rumble. Her voice sounded like the words were torn out of her heart. “The Oya’s deciding things in that room. Things I could help her with.”

“And she told you to say out here,” I said.

“And she told me to stay out here,” Dove confirmed.

“We’re going to the Coffee Cup,” Akicita said after a moment. “I owe you lunch.”

Dove hesitated, glanced at Hunter, who studiously avoided any eye contact, then turned back and smiled with relief.

“Give me a few minutes,” she said.

Akicita nodded to both of them, opened the gate, and we walked across the street to our town cars.

“What the hell was that all about? Why did we leave? What was that whole business with the bottle and the bone and the name?” I demanded.

“I did for you exactly what Oly used to do for Sam,” Akicita said. “I got you out before you opened your mouth, inserted your foot, and got us all into trouble.”

“You’re not Oly,” I said angrily. “And I’m not Sam.”

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Akicita looked at me and didn’t say anything. She took a toothpick out of her pocket and put it in her mouth.

“You’re right,” she said. “But we’re the best Summit’s got. Unless you agree with Jerry and want Mother Lu in charge?”

I started to answer, then shut my mouth.

I heard the front door slam. Akicita and I looked up at the sound. Beth ran outside, down the porch steps and past Dove and Hunter. Tears streamed down Beth’s face.

She ran down the sidewalk and was gone.

“What the hell is going on?” I asked. “What has Jerry got on the Oya? Why did she even listen to him?”

“You didn’t notice,” Akicita said. It was a statement, not a question.

“What?” I asked. “What didn’t I notice?”

“You saw the bone and the bottle?” Akicita asked. I nodded, puzzled.

“That was an old, old bone. Even older than the kind Oly works with. The bone and the bottle of someone who everyone has forgotten. And Mother Lu made the Custodian take it out from the Rainbow to make a point,” Akicita explained patiently, as if I was a slow child and she had to use easy words.

“Yeah?”

“Jerry knew the name. And Jerry never studied genealogy in school,” Akicita said flatly. “He had no way to know whose bone that was. And he didn’t have to ask the Oya to get out the Registry and look it up. He knew it ahead of time.”

“How could he know that name?” I protested.

“Damned good question,” Akicita said. Her eyes narrowed, and she bit down on the toothpick.

“I don’t think the Oya and the Kadisha have the Registry any more. I think Mother Lu’s got it.”

We drove away from the Oya’s house. I watched Dove and Hunter in my side view mirror. Their faces were blank, expressionless. Dove started to raise her hand, as if she was going to motion to Akicita, but then let her hand fall. They turned away from us, back toward the house.

Akicita led the way and I followed. It felt good for some reason to eat dust and have something real to complain about, even if it was just to myself. A few minutes later, Akicita turned into the parking lot of the Coffee Cup.

The Coffee Cup wasn’t much, just two concrete islands with fuel pumps and a small building with big glass windows, blue, dented siding, and a stuck half-open screen door. It was the only fuel station, and the only restaurant, in Summit. Both the fuel and the food were self-service.

We parked and walked inside. Two women, one the mother and the other her daughter, sat up on a small platform, next to a pair of cash registers. Racks of candy, cigarettes, and snacks ran down all the sides of the platform. Beer and soda were racked in the coolers at the far end.

“Hey, Aki’.”

“Hey, Tony.”

“Hey, ladies,” we replied. Akicita gestured to the back of the room. The mother nodded absently and concentrated on her controls as a truck pulled next to the fuel pumps.

There was a small table in the back. Akicita set up three folding chairs while I walked over to the waist-high deep-freezer next to the ladies’ room.

“Two lunches, or three?” I asked.

“She’ll be here,” Akicita said. “Make it three.”

Through the glass-topped freezer lid I saw frozen hamburgers and bratwurst.

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leftovers from everywhere. No one at the Coffee Cup wanted to offend anyone. It was bad for business. I lifted the lid, took out three hamburgers and three sausages, and shut the lid.

There was a little counter between the freezer and the ladies’ room door. On top of it was an electric fry pan. Hung on the outside wall of the ladies’ room were a spatu-la and a tattered, gray cooking mitt.

I plugged in the fry pan, let it heat, and dropped in the hamburgers and sausages.

I covered the pan with its lid, then reached above the freezer and removed three paper plates, extra-thick. I f lipped the burgers, rolled the sausages, and covered the pan again.

The customer door chime sounded. Dove walked inside. I held up a plate and motioned toward the back table.

We ate quietly and quickly. I expected the food to be fuel and nothing more, and I was surprised. The sausage was full-flavored, and the burger was exceptionally rich.

Something must have showed on my face.

“They make their own sausage and grind their own hamburger,” Akicita said, and gestured to the front. “They get it from Limbo’s lodge.”

“We make sure it’s good. We help the Farmers with their plants and animals,”

Dove added. “Limbo gets things mostly the way he wants, then we handle the details. He and the Oya get along well. They’re both perfectionists.”

“We want both of your lodges on the Ship,” I said. “We need both of you.”

“And you want to start your own Rainbow and your own Registry,” Dove said.

“Of course.” I sipped my soft drink. “They go where Summit goes.”

Akicita f inished her food and took our plates and dumped them in the recycler.

She refilled her drink and sat down with me, across from Dove.

“What’s going on?” I asked Dove. She scowled and Akicita looked as if she wanted to strangle me.

“We want to help,” Akicita hurried to add, and glanced at me as if I was a barbarian who had no idea of how to act in public. She was right, usually I was more tactful, but today I just didn’t have the time to be diplomatic. Dove glanced at us and nodded.

“I was at Sam’s last night, playing pool,” Dove said. She looked nostalgic, as if all she wanted right then was to be somewhere else with another beer.

“So?” I said. There was always someone from each of the lodges around Sam’s, just in case something happened and people needed to get out the word. If it was after hours, the call went to Oly or Chuck or me or whoever else was on duty. And, just in case, there was an electric line hung across Main Street, from the top of one of the power poles to another, with a light bulb in the middle. If no one answered a call, the light bulb turned on. Somebody was always watching the light bulb.

I tell you, in Summit, we got things covered.

“I got a call from the Oya last night,” Dove said.

“And?”

“She tried to log into the Registry, just after midnight,” Dove said. “When she got in, nothing was right. First it showed pictures of little panda bears running all over the screen. Then it showed the Registry but it was all scrambled. Somebody had gotten in and encrypted it. With a new key.”

“And it wasn’t you or someone from your lodge,” Akicita f inished. Dove nodded.

She did not look happy.

“I got over as fast as I could. We worked on it until this morning. Nothing helped.

We got nowhere. Finally, we called Beth.”

“The names are all gone,” Akicita said flatly. Dove shook her head.

“They’re there, all right,” she reassured us. “The size of the database is right. So Bury Me in the Rainbow

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far as we can tell, no one got into the actual records themselves. But we can’t access them. We can’t map them to the Rainbow. We have no idea which person, which history, which memories, goes to any medicine bottle in the Rainbow. Everything is locked up. It’s as if someone changed the lock to the records room and didn’t give us a key.”

“Damn,” I said. I looked over Dove at Akicita. Jerry Voge knew the right name and the right bottle. Which meant the Nacacijin knew how to get into the Registry, and Jerry had just showed that to the Oya and Beth.

Shit, I mouthed silently. Akicita nodded, her face set.

“All that’s left is the bone or the note or the tattoo or the lock of hair in the bottle in the Rainbow,” Dove said, her eyes focused down on the table. She sounded numb.

“What good is that? It’s just a piece of . . . something. Everything else, all the story of the person, is gone.”

“Who else knows?” I asked.

“No one,” Dove said. “Yet.”

“What happened next?” Akicita asked.

“This morning Mother Lu called and talked with the Oya. She listened, then told Hunter and me to wait outside. She said Terry Voge was coming over and to let him in, but no one else,” Dove said.

“What do the Kadisha think is going on?” Akicita asked.

“What do you think?” Dove f lared. “They don’t know anything for sure. All they know is something’s wrong. Why else would the Oya let Jerry and Terry inside her house? Why would you two show up? Why is Beth crying? It’s confusing the hell out of everyone. They know something’s wrong, but they don’t know what.”

“Sooner or later the Oya will have to tell them something,” I said.

“Sooner,” Dove confirmed. “It’s going to have to be sooner.”

“It’s all aimed at you, Tony,” Akicita said, quietly. “At you and the Ship.”

Problem was, Akicita was right. Mother Lu knew I needed Limbo and the Farmers. They were key to getting the other lines. And Limbo wouldn’t go upstairs if the Kadisha wouldn’t go. Particularly if it meant losing Beth.

“Dove, I’m going to tell you a secret,” I warned her. Dove waited.

“Jerry showed the Oya a medicine bottle and a bone, fresh from Brother Stephanie, right out of the Rainbow. He knew the name and the kin. He knew everything. Mother Lu wanted to make the point of who is really in charge in Summit,” I said. “After that, Jerry kicked us out so he could tell the Oya what she was going to do next.”

“And tell Beth what she was not going to do,” Akicita said, her voice flat and expressionless. “That she wasn’t going to marry Limbo if he went to the Ship. Because the Kadisha and the Rainbow weren’t going to the Ship unless the Nacacijin and Mother Lu are in charge of Summit.”

“Can you get the Registry back? Isn’t there something your brother Tom can do?

He’s supposed to able to make computers do anything,” Dove asked, pleading.

“We’ll put him to work,” Akicita promised. “Maybe he’ll get lucky.”

Dove’s phone vibrated. She took it out, read the message and stood.

“The Oya needs me.”

“Keep your eyes open,” I urged. “Let us know if there is anything we can do or if anything changes. And Tom’s going to need a username and password.”

“And you’ll fix this?”

Akicita nodded. I wanted to kick her under the table. Sam always told me to never make a promise you can’t keep, and I had no idea how to fix this.

But it worked, this time.

“I thought you might need that.”

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the table. A username, password, and three confirmation answers were written on it.

Dove stood, gave Akicita a relieved smile and left. I stood, refilled our coffee and sat down again.

“Alea iacta est.”

The die is cast. I had no idea Akicita knew Latin. One of the side benefits of Jesuit school.

What the hell.

I brought the phone to life through one of Tom’s encryption programs, slaved in Akicita’s phone, and called Tom. I explained things while Akicita listened, stared at her cup, blew on it to cool it down, and slowly sipped.

“Some of the Nacacijin are good with computers. Some of them retired from Langley,” Tom said after I finished bringing him up to date. He sounded both like he was doubtful he was going to succeed and, at the same time, as if he was going to enjoy the challenge.

“Do what you can.”

“I’ll need passwords and usernames.”

“Got it. Aki’ will bring it over. And Tom,” I cautioned him, “don’t think Langley-type encryption when you work on this. Think Beijing style.”

“Beijing? Why?”

“You know Uncle Weng?” I asked.

“Old guy who runs the bait place down by the Jim? Yeah. I buy worms and min-nows from him when we go fishing.”

“Well, Chuck isn’t the only person up here in the hills who’s got something to hide.”

Tom didn’t seem surprised. “A lot of different agencies hide a lot of different people up here. I hid Weng myself. It’s far enough away to be isolated but close enough to Minneapolis that people can get in and out in a day or so.”

“So we’re convenient?”

“And everyone up here knows how to keep their mouth shut.” I paused for a moment to let that sink in. “That’s important.”

“You’re telling me Weng’s up here hiding.”

“He’s here to keep him safe,” I corrected. “He found out he really liked money, back in Beijing, back in the old days. And he decided he was owed his share of the pie.”

“Yeah?”

“From what I hear, things were going great. Until one of our agencies found out about his little side businesses. They blackmailed him, one secret at a time, until he worked for us.”

“Let me guess. Something happened, and the Chinese found out.”

“Eventually. When they did, the agency pulled him out and handed him to me. I hid him up here.”

“Anything more I should know?”

“His full, real name is Leng Wengchiang. He used to work for the encryption section of the guobao, the secret police. When you pronounce that, in Mandarin, it sounds the same as the words ‘national treasure.’ That’s what the Chinese also call panda bears.”

“Uncle Panda.” I thought I could hear Tom smile through the phone. “And the Registry screen now shows a bunch of dancing pandas.”

“Yeah.”

“At least he’s got a sense of humor,” Tom said briskly. “And he’s Nacacijin?”

“Yep. His choice when he got up here.”

“Got it.” Tom didn’t sound surprised. “Once a bad ass, always a bad ass. I’ll call you when I’ve got anything.”

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The line went dead. I sipped my coffee, and Aki’ pulled her toothpick in and out of her mouth.

“You know Mother Lu has those codes to the Registry hidden and guarded. She might even erase the Registry if Tom gets close.”

“She might.” I didn’t have a clever answer. “But she expects us to try to get the Registry back. If we don’t try, it’ll look even more suspicious. And, hell, what would the rest of the lodges think about us if we didn’t try? It’s a risk, but we don’t have much choice.”

“What happens to the Kadisha if the Registry is gone?”

“They won’t be a lodge any more.” I thought that through, tried to imagine the Oya and the rest of them without the Registry, without any purpose. “They’d be lost.”

“Exactly. The Oya knows that. She’ll do what Mother Lu tells her.”

I tried to think of something profound, something Sam might say. Akicita waited.

And waited. And waited.

“I need a beer.”

“Make that two.”

Carole and Limbo left me messages that night. They were on board the Ship. Foremost had cleared them through the Ship equivalent of customs and immigration.

First, they got a tour, mainly for Limbo. Then, meetings. Carole and Limbo couldn’t give final agreement to anything, but they’d start the process.

“We can’t talk after this, Tony. Some kind of security rules. I miss you, I love you, I wish you were here.”

Like hell she did. I saw her face on the message. She was pumped. She always loved anything new and now she was in the middle of everything new. More than that, like in that old song from the musical Hamilton, she was in the room where it happened. She had a seat at the table. She was making history and she knew it and she loved it. A hundred years from now everyone would remember her name. If I was remembered, it would be as what’s his name, Tony the boyfriend.

Which was fine with me. I didn’t want to be remembered. I didn’t want to live in interesting times. I just wanted to get things figured out, down here, then sit in the pool hall and have a beer. As far as I was concerned, Carole and Limbo could have all the credit. I didn’t even want to be a footnote.

Problem was, in all the history books, in all the novels, everything looked so clean and tidy. This began, so that had to happen. It was clear and obvious and fell together perfectly.

Bullshit.

Everything in Summit was a mess. I had a dead alien. I had lodges fighting each other. I had people confused and upset and no one knew what the hell to do. So, they expected me to figure things out and tell them what to do.

Wonderful.

I missed Sam.

Someday, someone will get a Ph.D. thesis out of these four days. Maybe more than one someones. To me, it was just a blur of politics: breakfast, lunch, dinner, and night.

Akicita and I and the brothers and Chuck and everyone else from the Pool Hall met with lodge after lodge after lodge. Mother Lu and the Voges did the same. We lapped and overlapped each other. We’d politely nod and smile and watch our backs.

Pool Hall claimed the only way for Summit to survive was to leave, that the flatlanders were coming for our land and there was no way to stop them. The Nacacijin agreed. None of this made the other lodges happy, but both of us kept hammering the message, again and again and again.

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That was all we agreed on.

Pool Hall (which meant me) thought the best way to survive was to go to the Ship and negotiate. To get ourselves in a good position by making friends and allies. To find a comfortable little corner upstairs, get ourselves set up, and figure out what was going on before we pushed for any changes.

Nacacijin disagreed. Mother Lu wanted to go up strong, figure out the major power blocs, use what the Ship wanted from Earth as leverage, and start pushing for one side or the other. She wanted to be a player, from the get-go, before she even knew all the players and what they were trying to get.

We claimed they were reckless; they claimed we were going to get Summit steam-rollered. Problem was, neither one of us really knew who was right. . . .

On the sixth night, I got more messages from Foremost and Carole and Limbo.

Foremost was terse.

“We’re coming back tomorrow. Carole and I will be on the first shuttle; Limbo will be down a couple of hours later. You and I and Carole need to talk. The Synth are coming with us. One of them is a priest. She wants the dead Synth. I promised them everything would be ready.”

Limbo sent two messages. The f irst was a technical treatise on soil conditions, water availability, possible farming techniques, food storage, transportation technologies . . .

Essentially, it boiled down to:

“Yeah, we can live here. We’ll have to work, but we can do it.”

I forwarded that to the Farmer lodge, the Rancher lodge, the Pig lodge, and to Flipper and the Fish lodge.

The second part of the message was more private. Even for Limbo it was terse:

“What’s going on with Beth? Is she okay? Why won’t she write back to me? What the hell is going on, Tony?”

I thought about it. I really did. In the end, I decided Limbo and Beth were both grown-ups, and I’d be damned if I was either one’s Mommy or Daddy. Hurt feelings were important, but they needed to talk with each other. Not to me. So I sent a message back to Limbo.

“Forwarded your message to Beth. Keep trying on your end.”

And I sent his message to her, with my own addendum.

“Don’t be an asshole. Talk to him.”

All right, I admit it, diplomacy was not my strongest suit. But sometimes, when you don’t know what to say, it’s better to just be straight out with it.

Carole’s note was more interesting. She was careful. She assumed someone (probably multiple someones) was going to read her message. First, she told me she loved me (which I always liked to hear). The rest of the note was simple and clear and didn’t really tell me anything I didn’t already know. It was along the lines of: The weather here is very nice. We had rain today. How is it at your place?

Except for one line, which I f igured was driving everyone crazy at the CIA and MI-6 and FSB and MSS and every other set-of-initials intelligence agency.

“Remember what Sister Virginia always told you.”

I remembered.

Sister Virginia was our Latin teacher. She was the meanest and smartest nun in parochial elementary school. She had to be mean because everyone hated her class.

She had to be smart because, well, we still had to pass the damn class even if she had to pour it in through a funnel stuck in our ears. And it’s hard to teach kids who just don’t want to listen.

My problem with her was that she was one of the people who f igured out I had Bury Me in the Rainbow

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potential. When I got stubborn, she’d whisper in my ear and then go to work. She was an expert with her ruler. My butt and my palm were red more than once. She never would have been allowed in the public system or anywhere near a city. The lawyers and parents would have been all over her with lawsuits shimmering in the air.

But this was Summit.

The result was that I passed her damned Latin class and I still remembered it.

Her favorite sayings were Cui bono? and In Assumptis.

Who benefits? and Never Assume.

I knew, before he left, that Foremost and I agreed on the most basic point of diplomacy: All politics is local.

What I didn’t know was what was going on among the aliens on the Ship. And Carole didn’t want to talk about it where everyone on Earth could hear. Since Sister Virginia had been dead for twenty years, it was a good way to get me a message.

Cui bono. Who benefits? Follow the money. Different versions of that saying were pretty much standard to any politician. That one I could follow.

In Assumptis. Never assume. What did that mean? What was I assuming that I shouldn’t?

We were going to have a quiet conversation, away from everyone, when she got home.

I sat up in bed that night. Tomorrow was the public auction and then Sam’s death auction. Tomorrow, everything—for the moment—was going to come to a head.

I knew better than to think all of our problems were going to be resolved in one day. Things don’t work that way in real life. I firmly expected I’d come out of tomorrow with just as many—likely more—questions and problems than I had now. But at least some things were going to get decided.

I turned out my light and went to sleep.

Just before noon, we drove out of town, headed east. We went in two pickups: Akicita and I in Sam’s old beater, Oly in his new machine.

We all dressed in the same clothes we wore the day the Synth died. Oly was in his burying suit. Akicita wore jeans, boots, a camouflage T-shirt, and her hunting jacket.

I wore my standard jacket, pants, and shoes, including my government issue handgun, fully loaded, in my old, familiar shoulder holster. Akicita’s rifle was snapped in the rifle rack fixed over the rear window of the truck. She worked a toothpick in her mouth, slow and relaxed.

We went the back way to avoid attention. The concrete road turned into asphalt, which potholed into gravel and rumbled down to dirt. Corncobs, for traction, were ground into the dirt on the top of the hills. That finally ran out and we drove along the trail, prairie grass on both sides, stretching up after winter.

Finally we reached Blue Sky Abbey land, the back entrance. We stopped, Akicita jumped out and pulled open the back gate, old wood with a string of barbed wire on top to keep the cows either in or out. We drove through, and she pulled the gate shut behind us and climbed back in.

We drove around and through a grove of trees. In front of us was a meadow with spring flowers, yellow and white. We stopped, Sam’s truck on the right, Oly’s truck on the left. We all got out, unloaded everything, took our positions, and waited.

Oly stood on the left, Akicita on the right. I was in the middle with an empty space next to me. A bundle covered by a soft orange and brown blanket was carefully positioned on top of a buffalo hide, in front of Akicita. A larger object, almost as tall as Oly and covered by a tarp, stood in front of him. A third bundle, smaller, made of felt, rested on a blanket spread in front of the empty space between Akicita and me.

I felt the last package in my pocket. I rolled it around, just to make sure it was all in one piece.

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“There.”

Akicita pointed at the sky, to the south. I looked and saw nothing. Then sunlight flickered off hull metal and two minutes later a shuttle grounded in front of us.

Everything was quiet. Sunlight, not the weak stuff of winter but something with enough muscle to make a man feel the warmth, danced in and out of light, puffy clouds. I heard a bird warble and cluck in the tall grass. Wind, warm and thick with the smell of spring, brushed my face. All I wanted, right then, was to be alone on some quiet lake, out in the sun, with a cold beer and a fishing rod . . .

The passenger hatch opened. Carole stepped out.

“Damn it,” Oly cursed softly, his voice low. Akicita slid two steps to the right, away from me, to give herself room to move. She unslung her rifle and jacked a round into the chamber. I unsnapped my holster strap.

Foremost came out after Carole. He was in full formal robes, brown and black, with gold piping and striping at the collar and the sleeves. He bowed and gestured for Carole to go first. They walked across the meadow to us. The hatch closed behind them.

“Tony, we’ve got to talk. My God, you won’t believe what it’s like! It’s incredible.

We’ve got to—”

Foremost touched her arm and she stopped, startled. Foremost never touched anyone. It was one reason he f it into Summit so well. Touching was personal. People down in the flats hugged and touched too much.

“Please, Ms. Carole. Tony must concentrate.”

Amateur diplomats never knew when to shut up. Professionals knew the value of silence. Foremost was a professional.

He looked at me and I nodded. Carole hesitated, puzzled, then checked out Oly in his suit and his frown, and Akicita with her rif le and the blank look on her face.

Last, she looked at me and saw how I stood, relaxed and ready, a little smile on my face, just like I always looked when I was on the job and things weren’t going right.

She didn’t have a damned idea at all of what was going on. She wasn’t from Summit. Neither was Foremost. But, suddenly, she was a Secret Service agent again. She knew something was wrong. She quickly moved past me and to the side, careful to stay out of everyone’s line of fire. I didn’t look, but I could hear her going for Sam’s truck. She knew where I kept my backup piece.

Foremost moved up close to me.

“Where do you want me to stand?”

“Your place, if you want it, is next to me. Behind the blanket. You earned it.”

“My claim on the Synth.”

He sounded like something now made sense to him. I nodded.

“You almost died. That counts for quite a bit up here.”

Foremost stood silent for a moment and just looked at me. I ignored him and concentrated on the Ship.

Sam’s truck door opened and shut, and I heard the metallic snick! click of a clip going in and a round being jacked into the chamber.

“Where do you want Ms. Carole?”

“Behind us.” Where she might have a chance . . . .

“Bullshit.” Carole did not sound happy. She was still behind me, and I could not see her face. “If this is official business—”

“Nothing official about this. It never happened. Don’t put it in any report.”

“Damn it, Tony—!”

“This is Summit business.”

“I’m not somebody you have to protect,” Carole snapped. “I can handle myself.”

“Behind us,” I repeated. “Either that, or get the hell out of here. Keys are in the Bury Me in the Rainbow

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truck. This isn’t your problem, Carole, and I don’t need the distraction. Your choice, but decide. Now.”

I waited. I didn’t hear any footsteps leaving. I f igured I was going to catch hell tonight, but that was later and this was now.

Foremost walked to the blanket. He knelt, undid the tie cord on the bundle, pulled it slightly open. He nodded as if he found what he expected, tied the cord, and stood next to me, to face the shuttle.

“Your clothes and Oly’s and Akicita’s are the same as you wore when the Synth tried to kill us at the cemetery.”

“Yep.”

“You should have told me,” Foremost said reproachfully. “I am not dressed properly.

My death clothes are back on the Ship.”

“You’re a flatlander.” I tried to say it kindly. “We don’t expect you to know the rules.

We make allowances.”

The hatch opened again, and a Synth stepped out. The Synth priest looked like a copy of the Synth we killed: short, squat, and grey. She wore spotless white clothes.

They almost hurt my eyes when the sun hit them. I glanced over at Oly. He nodded back, just a fraction.

“She’s the priest.” Foremost said it loud enough for Akicita and Oly to hear. “And the boss.”

“Formal attire?”

“Yes. Very.”

“Are we on camera?”

“Wrong question. Correct question is ‘How many cameras? Whose cameras?’ ”

“They’re watching upstairs, on the Ship?”

“Everyone’s watching, upstairs and downstairs. What do you call a cluster of your spy satellites? A gaggle? We practically had to brush them away to get down here.”

Two Synth attendants, larger and heavier but otherwise identical, stepped out of the shuttle and followed behind the priest. Under their robes I caught a glimpse of holstered lasers.

The priest headed straight for us. I heard Oly’s raspy breaths get faster. Akicita was silent. I concentrated on the wind and the Sun and the shadow and forced myself to relax. The priest stopped in front of Foremost, her attendants a respectful two steps behind her.

“We want the body of our honored warrior,” the Synth priest said.

I liked that. No diplomatic pretty talk, no wasting time. Straight to the point. I followed suit.

“Go to hell,” I suggested. Her head snapped over to focus on me. “Your warrior tried to kill Ambassador Foremost while he was associated with my lodge and under our protection.”

The priest said nothing. She looked at me as if she was trying to decide if it was worth it to talk to me.

It was an act, and we both knew it. I was sure she knew who I was and as much about Summit and the lodges as she could find. Which probably wasn’t much. And it probably didn’t make any sense to her anyway.

But I wasn’t her real audience. Her audience was all the people watching us through all those out-of-sight cameras. They were the ones she had to impress.

And she got right to it.

“Our warrior had a contract. A legal and binding contract. He followed our laws and customs. You should have stayed out of the way and let him do his job.”

I paused for a moment, deliberately. I hoped the Synth translation programs got every word of what I said. I did not want mistakes.

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“This is our land,” I said. “Our customs. Our laws. And our laws say we protect our lodges and those associated.”

“I don’t give a damn about your customs or your laws,” the priest said. “You’re nothing but savages.”

“Your opinion and your problem, not mine,” I said sharply. “Your warrior tried to kill the ambassador, and failed. I tried to stop your warrior, and I failed. We both have a claim on your warrior because he tried to take our lives, and failed.”

“And that one?” the priest said, and pointed at Akicita. Yeah, she’d been getting briefed upstairs. She knew about Aki’.

“Akicita honored our lodges and killed your warrior,” I said.

The priest focused all her attention on Akicita. Aki’ stared back at her, then drew her toothpick into her mouth, waited an instant, and slid it out the other side of her mouth. She said nothing.

“Honor calls to honor,” I said. The priest looked back at me. I nodded to Akicita.

She reached down and uncovered the bundle in front of her. Inside was a package of meat, about thirty kilograms, not as red as beef and not as pale as chicken, carefully wrapped in transparent plastic. She made sure the Synths saw it, then re-tied the bundle and stood, the package in her arms.

“Your warrior’s flesh. My claim on your warrior.”

Akicita stepped forward, and the two attendants shifted position and reached for their weapons. I saw, out of the corner of my eye, Carole bring up her handgun, still not quite aimed at the priest, but ready.

The priest held up her hand, and the attendants relaxed. Akicita held out the package. The priest looked up at her and stretched out her arms. Akicita put the package, gently, in her arms. The priest paused, as if the weight didn’t bother her one bit, closed her eyes, then opened them and handed the package to one of the attendants.

“He died well. Take him home.”

The priest glanced over at me. I ignored her and felt only the wind and the Sun and the shadows. . . .

“Accepted,” the priest said.

Akicita stepped back. I nodded to Oly.

“Your warrior fought honorably,” Oly said. He spoke slowly, as if he was in church.

“His job was to kill the ambassador. He tried to do only that, without killing others unless they got between him and his target. He did not kill for the sake of killing.”

“His flesh failed, but not his spirit,” Oly continued. “I offer you his last moment, so you will know how he died.”

Oly pulled the tarp aside. Foremost jerked and then regained his composure. Carole made a noise and was silent. The Synth priest and attendants made no sound.

I always said Oly was a taxidermist genius.

The Synth warrior seemed alive. He knelt on one knee, and used his laser to push aside and peer through a tall clump of prairie grass. I could almost swear he breathed, and the yellow flecks in his eyes looked too damned realistic. He looked alive enough to make me nervous.

The Synth priest stepped forward and reached to touch the dead warrior. She stopped, just short, then moved back. She gestured to the other attendant, then turned back to us.

“Accepted,” the priest said. I glanced at Foremost.

“He died well,” Foremost said. He knelt, picked up his bundle, and unwrapped it.

Inside were the Synth warrior’s bones, smooth and fresh and clean.

“I hold the bones of your warrior,” Foremost said. He wrapped the bones again, carefully and respectfully. The priest stepped forward to accept them.

And Foremost turned to me.

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“You associated me with your lodge. The Pool Hall protected me,” Foremost said.

He kept a firm hold on the bundle.

“Damn it,” Oly said under his breath.

“This will be my death gift for Sam,” Foremost continued. “From my people, at the auction.”

“Double damn it,” Oly said softly, and Akicita cursed.

I could not refuse. I held out my arms and accepted the bones.

“What are you doing?” the priest cried out. “Those are ours!”

“When your warrior tried to kill me, and failed, I had a claim on him, under Summit law and custom,” Foremost said to the priest.

“The bones belong to us,” the priest said, stubbornly.

“You can bid on them at the auction, this afternoon,” I said. “I cannot refuse a death gift.”

“No,” the priest said, and gestured to the attendants. “We want them now.”

I felt it then, as I had only felt it a few times. I didn’t run. Inside my head I heard a snap, and a cold wave blew from the top of my head to the soles of my feet.

Something showed on my face. Oly looked at me and then I saw a flash of sunlight and realized he now held a long knife. I heard the snap as Akicita released her rifle safety. Foremost turned away from me, to face the Synth priest, and both of his hands suddenly sparkled and shimmered. I knew, from the way he moved, and how the priest and the attendants slowed, that Foremost was now fully armed and deadly.

I could feel Carole was ready behind me.

I stayed absolutely still.

“The bones go to the auction,” I said to the priest, and repeated, “I cannot refuse a death gift.”

And it was all on camera.

The priest and I looked at each other. All on camera, to the Ship and to all the people behind the spy satellites on Earth. Now this was about politics, not just a poor, dead Synth.

The priest held up her hand, and the attendants stopped. She concentrated on Foremost.

“Do you realize what you’re doing?” she slowly asked Foremost. “You’re not leaving me any choices. If I don’t come back with his bones, then I’ll have to explain what happened to his kith and kin. They will demand satisfaction from these people.”

“I am associated with Tony’s lodge,” Foremost said calmly. “And he is associated with mine. Anything happens to the Pool Hall, those kin will also have to deal with my people. On the Ship.”

“This is insane!” the priest said. “You’d risk war, down here and on the Ship, for these savages?”

“Yes,” Foremost said.

The priest hesitated, looked at Oly and Foremost and Carole and Akicita and me.

She waved the attendants back.

“We’ll be at the auction,” the priest said grimly.

“Then you have to come with us now,” I said, resignedly. I noticed Foremost’s hands were calm and placid, all the sparkling gone. Akicita’s rifle was pointed firmly at the ground and Oly’s knife was out of sight.

“I have to return to the Ship,” the priest protested. She gestured at the flesh and the tableau. “I have to return what you’ve already given us.”

“Not enough time,” Oly said, and shook his head. “Auction starts in two hours. You can’t get up to the Ship and back down here fast enough. If you need to get everything back to the Ship, you’ll have to send the shuttle up and have it come back for you.”

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“What about my attendants?”

“They go back with the shuttle,” Oly suggested. “You come alone to Summit.”

“Delay the auction until I return,” the priest said. Oly ignored her and looked at me.

“Carole!” I shouted.

“Yes,” she said. Her voice was calm and reasonable and way too close, just behind me. I glanced back and realized she had moved closer, next to me, when we faced the Synth. I also noticed my spare in her hand. I wondered what she had done when the priest moved toward me, and decided it was probably better I hadn’t seen.

“Foremost and I and Akicita will go in Sam’s truck. The priest will go with you and Oly in Oly’s truck,” I ordered. “Your job is to keep the priest alive.”

“My job is to guard the ambassador,” Carole protested.

“Foremost is still associated with the Pool Hall,” I reassured her. “We’ll keep him alive. The priest isn’t associated. She doesn’t have any protection. Either you guard her, or she just takes her chances.”

“At a death auction, by herself, in Summit?” Carole sounded skeptical. “What happens when she starts bidding on those bones? You can’t associate her to give her protection?”

I looked at the priest. Foremost stepped next to the priest, spoke quietly and quickly to her in some language I didn’t understand. The priest listened, asked a few questions, then turned to me.

“No,” the priest said stubbornly. “No one can put me under their protection. It’s not

. . . acceptable.”

“Tony,” Oly interrupted, “this is crazy. Just take the damned bones and give them to the Oya and the rest of the Kadisha, and let’s get the hell out of here. The Oya can handle this. Funerals are their job.”

“He can’t do that,” Akicita said. Her voice was different, older and more confident, as if she knew exactly what she was saying and we damned well better listen. “The bones are a death gift. Tony doesn’t have a choice. They go to the auction, and they go to open bid.”

Akicita was right. I didn’t have a choice. Foremost had made sure of that.

I walked to Sam’s truck and opened the driver’s side door. I set the bones, carefully, on the floor and got behind the wheel. Foremost opened the passenger door and sat next to me, and Akicita climbed into the back. I switched on the engine, put the truck in gear, and headed for Summit.

Foremost didn’t answer one damned question on the drive into town.

I knew he was a diplomat before, but I’d never seen him in action. I’d ask a question, and he’d think and think and then give me a long and thoughtful speech. When he was done, I realized he had talked for ten minutes and not said anything. I tried again and again, different questions and different ways of asking them, and he was very polite and told me nothing. In the end I gave up and just drove.

The streets around Sam’s place were clogged with trucks and town cars and people on foot. I edged us forward until I was stopped by a sawhorse roadblock about a block from the house. My brother Bob was on duty. Two more cousins, Shelley and Little Digger, stood just behind him. I rolled the window down and waved Bob over.

“Where the hell have you been?” he asked. He noticed Foremost and Akicita and our death clothes. His expression changed. “You got trouble?”

Akicita climbed out of the truck. She glanced at me and was gone, lost in the crowd as it pushed toward Sam’s house and the auction.

“Nothing we couldn’t handle,” I reassured Bob. “Be ready, though. Oly’s behind us.

He’s got Carole and another alien.”

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“One of this kind?” Bob asked, and nodded at Foremost.

“No,” I said. “It’s a Synth.”

“Like the one that tried to kill everybody at Sam’s funeral?” Bob asked, surprised.

“Yeah,” I said. “Except this one is a priest. And female, if anyone asks. Let them all drive through.”

“Is the priest associated?”

“Nope,” I said. “But Carole’s going to babysit her and keep her out of trouble.”

“Carole the flatlander? Your special friend? Is she associated?” Bob asked. He kept his eyes on the crowd while he talked, but I knew he and Shelley and Little Digger listened very carefully. I also knew whatever I said was going to be told all through the Pool Hall, and half the others in Summit, by the time we drove the block to the house.

“No,” I said. “She’s not associated. She can’t be. She’s on government business. She owes the flatlanders first loyalty.”

“So she’s fair game?” Bob persisted.

“No,” I said, carefully and slowly. “Pass the word. No one bothers her, in any way. I don’t care if they’re from us, another lodge, or a flatlander.”

“Yeah?” Bob asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

“And if someone does bother her?”

“I will deal with them. Personal. Not lodge business. Personal,” I said, my voice flat and expressionless.

Bob and Shelley and Little Digger all started to grin.

“Really? Personal?” Bob said. “I’ll put out the word right away. Don’t want to mess up something like that.”

“Shut up,” I said. Shelley and Little Digger and Bob all started to laugh. They moved aside the sawhorses and we drove through. In the rearview mirror I saw them put the sawhorses back in place.

“Carole is not associated?” Foremost asked.

“No,” I said shortly.

“Is that safe for her?”

“She can take care of herself.”

“Why not associate her?” Foremost persisted.

I drove the truck onto the lawn next to Sam’s house and turned off the engine. I picked up the package of Synth bones, and when I straightened, Foremost still looked at me and waited for his answer.

Damn it.

“If I associate her with my lodge, I’m giving the honor of the Pool Hall to keep her safe,” I said. “But her first responsibility is to D.C. I can’t make the Pool Hall choose between Summit and the flatlanders, in case something happens. Better to just keep this personal.”

“But you, personally, want to keep her safe?”

“Yes.”

“So, this is related to your mating rituals,” Foremost said thoughtfully. His gaze was appraising, just like Sam before he gave me the truck to go on a date. Right then it didn’t matter that I was a grown man, two meters tall, veteran of more stakeouts and fights than I could remember. I still blushed like a thirteen-year-old virgin.

“Yes,” I said, in a strangled voice.

“Interesting,” Foremost said. He opened his door, stepped out, and shut the door.

He spoke to me through the open window.

“Miss Carole is very important to me, also,” he said. “You will, of course, be very careful with her. I would not want her to be hurt in any way.”

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. . . and make sure she’s home by midnight. . . .

“I will,” I said, resignedly. I opened my door and stepped down, the bones under one arm, and shut the door. “Now, let’s get moving. It’s already been one hell of a day, and I don’t expect it’s going to get any better real fast.”

Sam’s house and yard were transformed, from a small white bungalow on a corner lot in a quiet part of Summit, into a community celebration. Town cars were parked up and down the street, and across the street on an empty lot. People flowed down the streets and sidewalks and over the lawns and converged at the house.

There were three f latbed semi-truck trailers parked on the lawn around Sam’s house. The two closest to the house were the bid trailers. They were covered with Sam’s possessions. Foremost and I went to the nearest trailer, just to check things out.

I saw Sam and Laverne’s life laid out, ready to be auctioned away.

I saw wrenches and sheets and Laverne’s collection of souvenir brochures from all the state parks she made Sam visit. I saw half-filled bottles of bleach and laundry soap, a chainsaw, and Sam’s second-favorite shotgun, a double-barrel, unloaded and with the chamber cracked open. Each item was separated slightly from the one next to it, so people would know what would be in each bid.

“You must sell it all?” Foremost asked, subdued.

“No,” I said. “We could keep it, but why? We’ve got what’s important and what we’re going to use. The rest is just stuff.”

“It doesn’t carry memories?” Foremost asked.

“Of course it does,” I said, exasperated. “But if I see someone on the street wearing one of Laverne’s old necklaces, well, it’s like I see a little piece of Laverne. And the necklace picks up more memories when it’s used. Hell of a lot better than sticking it in a drawer and forgetting about it until I die. Then someone else will throw it away, and Laverne’s memories really will die.”

An ice cream truck was parked at one corner of Sam’s lot. Tinny music played through speakers mounted on the roof, and the truck was surrounded by children, shouting and running and jumping up and down. Parents handed out money and grandparents held babies. Two servers worked as fast as they could, scooping out cones and cups and shakes and malts and sundaes. They looked frantic, but they had grins plastered on their faces.

Foremost and I let the crowd move us, past the ice cream truck and down the street. On the other corner, farther from the house, was a barbecue tent run by the local church council. They served beef, Texas-style, on one side, and pork, North Carolina-style, on the other. The smell made my mouth water, and I closed my eyes for a moment and let the rich smell pull the last of winter out of my bones.

“Hungry?”

I opened my eyes and saw Carole standing in front of me. The Synth priest stood just behind her, her attention totally focused on a plate of half-eaten barbecue, sauce smeared over her teeth and tendrils. But, mostly, I saw Carole. Her hair was loose, and there was a dot of mustard at the corner of her mouth. She looked beautiful.

“Yes, we are hungry,” Foremost said, when I didn’t answer.

Carole handed me a paper plate of barbecue, Texas on one side, Carolina on the other, with rice and a fork in the middle, and a plastic cup of beer.

“You don’t work for the government anymore, so you can have a beer with lunch,”

Carole said. She turned to Foremost and offered him an open Mason jar of moonshine, brilliant fish scales in a shifting pattern at the bottom of the jar. “Ambassador, if I remember correctly, alcohol is food for you. Flipper said this was his special blend, just for you. He pulled the fish skeleton out personally.”

“Bullhead?” Foremost asked, hopefully.

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“Bullhead,” Carole confirmed.

“Thank you,” Foremost said fervently. He took the jar and helped himself to a long sip. When he was done he glanced at me and delicately belched. I nodded approvingly.

Carole led us to one of the wooden picnic tables next to the barbecue tent. We sat and concentrated on eating and drinking our lunch. My brother Steve saw us and sat next to us, my niece Elizabeth on one side, my nephew Daniel on the other. Foremost showed them his claws and slid them in and out, which seemed to interest Steve as much as it did the kids.

I finished my plate, and Foremost finished his jar. I put the plate in the trashcan and retrieved Carole’s deposit on the mason jar from the drink tent people. I sat back at the table, next to Carole, while Steve and Foremost played with the kids. The Synth priest stayed slightly apart from all of us and watched and said nothing.

“What’s next?” Carole asked.

“They are,” I said.

Mother Lu stood beside the barbecue tent. She was tall for a woman, almost six foot, lean and wiry, with gray hair pulled back and tied out of the way. I caught her eye and nodded, and she nodded back. She leaned over and said something to a man and a woman, Nacacijin, in front of her. They stepped ahead and began to make a path so she could walk through the crowd toward the back of the yard. A moment later, when the crowd around them thinned, I saw her again, with the Voge brothers.

“Trouble,” I said to Carole. “Trouble is what’s next.”

Foremost and I headed for the back of Sam’s lawn, toward the death gift trailer.

Bob was there, and he and Tom and Limbo and Flipper kept the crowd back and shooed away the kids. Death gifts were laid around the edge of the trailer, with the center of the trailer left clear for me.

Each gift was carefully arranged according to an old protocol known only by the lodge councilors. Oly was at the end of the trailer, Akicita next to him. Oly would comment and point, and Akicita wrote everything down in a notebook with a stub of pencil.

“Tradition passes on,” Mother Lu said. She stood next to me, her voice a soothing soprano, her eyes fixed on Oly and Akicita. I glanced at Mother Lu, saw the Voges on the other side of her, then focused back on the trailer.

“Talk?” I asked.

“Talk,” Mother Lu agreed. I stepped slightly away from Foremost and gestured for him to stay behind. Mother Lu did the same to the Voges.

“Is your death gift up there?” I asked in a low voice.

“On the far side,” Mother Lu said, and pointed. I saw her gift, a conch shell, set on top of an offering blanket.

“A summons?” I asked, surprised. Mother Lu nodded.

“One call for help, no questions asked. As long as it isn’t against our lodge, we’ll do whatever the owner asks.”

She saw the look on my face and shook her head.

“No, that’s not a way out, Tony. Even if, somehow, you end up with the shell, I will not answer a summons to return the Oya’s key to the Registry. That would be against our lodge.”

My lodge. Your lodge. Our lodges . . .

“This isn’t good, Mother Lu. Sam told me once that Summit needed the Nacacijin as a safety valve, as a backup in case the Pool Hall couldn’t get the job done. He also said you were a good home for all the different people who didn’t quite f it in anywhere else.” I kicked at the ground, and shook my head. “But this. With the Registry and everything? This isn’t good.”

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“Sam admired us, in his own way,” Mother Lu admitted. “He told me that, when he was young, he seriously considered joining us. In the end, he chose the Pool Hall, but it was a close decision. He said there was a time for one lodge, and a time for the other, to lead Summit.”

“Mirror, mirror, on the wall,” I murmured to myself. Mother Lu smiled.

“Exactly.”

“And the Oya and the rest of the Kadisha?”

“Are caught in the middle,” Mother Lu said regretfully. “She is, right now, only a tool to force a decision.”

“You believe Summit should stay down here.”

Mother Lu shook her head.

“You misunderstand. You and I both believe Summit needs to go on the Ship. The problem is, I don’t believe your lodge is the right one to lead us once we get there.”

I studied Mother Lu for a moment, then turned slightly to face the trailer and the death gifts. I spoke slowly.

“You believe we need to go with our guard up, on edge to gain every advantage. You believe we can’t trust any of the aliens, and the only way to be safe is to discover all their weaknesses and play them against each other.”

Mother Lu seemed surprised.

“You do understand.”

I nodded.

“Understanding is my lodge’s job. I understand what you’re saying, but I don’t agree. I believe the best way to succeed on the Ship is for the aliens and ourselves to work together. I will be wary, but I will consider the aliens as potential friends, not enemies, until they prove otherwise.”

“You’re wrong.” Mother Lu shook her head. “You trust too much. You’ll get us all killed.”

“It’s my job to make sure I’m right. It’s your job to keep me honest and to be ready in case I’m wrong.”

I reached out and offered my hand. We shook.

“Enjoy the auction.”

I walked forward and left Mother Lu behind. I ducked under the police tape and went to Oly and Akicita.

They stood next to the f inal death offerings, at the back edge of the trailer. I watched as they carefully rearranged several offerings.

“You got them?” Oly asked. I handed him the package of Synth bones. He took them, unfolded the fabric to examine the bones, then carefully placed them on the blanket laid out for them on the trailer.

“Foremost is next to last?” I asked, surprised at where Oly placed the bones.

“Seniority rules,” Akicita explained. “Farmers go first, same as always.”

“But we did move things around a little,” Oly admitted as Akicita spread an empty display blanket on the trailer.

“That’s for the Kadisha,” Oly said, indicating the empty blanket. “Last three are Mother Lu, Foremost, and then the Oya to finish everything.”

The various Keepers stepped forward and either placed an offering on their blanket or handed it to Oly or Akicita. I waited for Beth or Dove or the Oya herself to place an offering gift on the empty Kadisha blanket. After a few minutes I realized it was going to stay empty.

“Damn it,” I swore. “Tell me there’s a mistake.”

“No mistake,” Akicita said. “Tom couldn’t get into the Registry. It’s locked up tight.”

“Every Keeper brings a death offering when another Keeper dies. It’s how we keep the peace,” I said.

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“Don’t tell me the law,” Oly snapped. “Tell the Oya.”

Akicita shook her head.

“If their lodge doesn’t run the Rainbow, then they don’t have a purpose. She doesn’t have anything to put up as a death offering.” Akicita sounded sure of herself, not just a young person explaining rules she didn’t really understand. She pointed over at the Oya and the rest of them, Beth and Dove and Hunter, clustered around her.

“They don’t believe they’re a lodge any more. She doesn’t believe she’s a Keeper. And if you’re not a lodge and she’s not a Keeper, then what the hell are you?”

I glanced over at the Kadisha. They milled around, no discipline, no order, with the Oya in the middle, her head down, her eyes staring at the ground. I looked over at the Nacacijin. Mother Lu was impassive. Jerry smiled.

“We can’t hide an empty blanket,” I said to Oly. He nodded.

“So what are you going to do about it?”

I didn’t answer. The Synth priest wanted a war, Mother Lu wanted to take over Summit, the Oya and her lodge were about to dissolve, and Limbo and Beth were never going to get together. Everything was going to hell, and everyone wanted me to make it right. Now I understood why Sam said only an idiot wanted to be a Keeper.

Behind me I heard the auctioneer start to warm up the crowd for Sam’s household goods auction. Bob waved for me to join the rest of the family at the bid trailers.

“It gets worse,” Akicita said as I turned to walk toward the bid trailers. “When the other Keepers see the Kadisha aren’t a lodge anymore, they’re going to wonder if Mother Lu is in charge now. And we have the vote on the Ship right after the death offering auction.”

The auctioneer for Sam’s household and effects stood in the empty spot in the middle of the f irst bid trailer, high above the crowd. He spoke into an old-style micro-phone, like a sugar cone with a big black bulb of ice cream stuck on top. His daughter and son-in-law stood on either side of him. Their job was to hold the bid items up high, so everyone in the crowd could see them, and help the auctioneer catch bids from the crowd.

“Each one of these things is a treasure,” he announced, and his voice boomed across the crowd. He picked up one of Laverne’s artworks and held it up high so the crowd got a good view. It was a crocheted pattern, yellow and gold like a sunflower.

In the middle of the pattern was the snipped out face of a plastic baby doll, the open eyeholes and mouth staring at us. Carole, next to me, shook her head. I looked down at her and shrugged, palms up.

“She liked to do them,” I said, apologetically. “Sam and I never understood it, but they made her happy. Always creeped me out.”

The auctioneer did an elaborate double-take, as if he hadn’t seen the pattern before. He shook his head and carefully put it back down.

“To someone,” he said. The crowd roared laughter.

“And we’re going to give you a chance to buy a treasure. We’re going to sell it all,”

he said, and waved his arm to encompass everything on both trailers. He bent over and lowered his voice and turned in a slow circle, to encompass the entire crowd.

“Be smart. Bid high, and bid often. We’re going to move all this, and we’ve going to move it fast. If you wait, it’s going to be gone. Some of it is junk, and some of it is going to be worth a lot more than what you pay,” he said. “That is, if you get your bid in.”

He stood up straight, stepped back, and pointed to his daughter.

She promptly picked up Laverne’s crochet. Next up for sale was a pair of antique duck decoys. I saw a woman across the way, a folk art dealer I recognized from Minneapolis. She saw Laverne’s artwork and got a determined look on her face. A few 188

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bodies down I saw a man I didn’t recognize, but who wore a light jacket with a duck in full flight emblazoned on the upper left breast. His attention was locked on the decoys.

“One!” the folk art bidder called out. The crowd was silent.

“Going once,” the auctioneer’s daughter said. She held the pattern higher. “Such a good deal. Someone, give me another bid. Come on, another bid? Going twice—”

The auctioneer stepped forward on the stage, touched his daughter on the shoulder.

He reached down, picked up the duck decoys, put them in his daughter’s other hand.

“These two go together!” the auctioneer declared. “You buy one, you get them both.

If you don’t want one, well, that’s your problem. To get the one you want, you’ve got to take the other. And if I see anybody talking to another bidder, getting together? Well, then, I think I’ll just add a couple more pieces to the bundle, get in a few more bidders, make it even more interesting. Get my drift?”

Art lady and duck man looked at each other. She shrugged. He nodded, respectfully. They both turned back to focus on the auctioneer.

“Ten!” duck man said.

“Fifteen!” folk art said.

“And let the bidding begin,” the auctioneer said, a big grin on his face.

An hour later both bid trailers were empty.

I paid the auctioneer and made sure everything was fine with the charity and ice cream people as they shut down the food. A half hour later they were gone. A few minutes later the last flatlanders picked up their purchases and headed out of town.

I walked over and stood in front of the tape. I glanced around at Oly and Akicita and nodded. Oly barked out an order, and Bob and Tom and Limbo and Flipper cut the police tape and rolled it up so people could get in close. Pool Hall people carefully lifted away the tarps and folded them away. I stepped up and into the middle of the trailer.

Around me, laid out along the edge of the trailer, were death gifts from each Keeper of a lodge. They honored Sam, Keeper of the Pool Hall lodge. My first official task, as new Keeper of Pool Hall, was to auction these gifts.

“This is one of the biggest jobs we do,” Sam told me, when I assisted him at my first death gift auction. “The Keeper of our lodge is always the auctioneer, and no bidder is allowed to bid money or anything like it.”

“What do they bid?” I asked, puzzled.

“Whatever else they want.” Sam shrugged. “It’s our job to make sure it’s the right whatever and it goes to the right person . . .”

The crowd was much smaller now and it was only Summit people, except for the Synth priest, Carole, and Foremost. Carole and Foremost stood together. The Synth priest was off to the side.

Each lodge was separate from the other, with the Keeper, Councilor, and Successor in front, the senior members quietly behind them. I saw Limbo and the Farmers, Flipper and the Water, Mother Lu and the Nacacijin, and all the others.

Beth, as Councilor of the Kadisha, stood on one side of the Oya. To my surprise, Dove stood on the other side, in the Successor position. I looked at Dove and she looked up at me and blushed. I nodded thoughtfully.

The Kadisha, upset and disorganized, moved restlessly behind Dove and Beth. I saw members whisper to each other and point at their empty death gift blanket. They seemed puzzled and frightened and lost. The Oya stared ahead, her eyes unfocused, and ignored everything and everyone. Her necklace seemed to sag on her neck.

Beth was still and quiet and pale. Limbo half-turned so he could see her. The gap between them, only a few meters of short grass, seemed one hell of a lot bigger.

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Oly stood on one side of me, Akicita on the other. I held up my hands and the crowd went silent.

“Sam is dead,” I said. “He was Keeper of the Pool Hall.”

“Sam is buried,” Oly said. “I was Councilor of the Pool Hall. I confirm Tony is now Keeper. I confirm Akicita as his Counselor.”

“Every lodge has brought a death gift for Sam.” Akicita’s voice carried across the lawn. “These gifts honor Sam, and bring together the lodges of Summit.”

“Let the auction begin,” I said. I moved sideways to stand directly behind Limbo’s gift.

Limbo stepped forward and picked up his death gift. He handed it to me and I held it high so everyone could see. The gift was stalks of oats and wheat and corn and rye, tied together with a long stalk of prairie grass.

“The Farmers will create a new plant, combining the best from each of these grains,” Limbo said. “This plant will fit into whatever environment the winner desires. This is our death gift to Sam.”

“Bidding is open,” I said to the crowd.

Tinker, from the Mechanics, stepped forward. She was short and slim, her fingers permanently stained by grease and oil.

“We bid repair and improvement of any machinery,” she said.

She looked up at me, then over at Mother Lu, and I winced. If Sam was alive, I knew she would have only paid attention to him. Problem was, by now everyone knew there was a power struggle between the Pool Hall and the Nacacijin. I expected most of the lodges would make sure they were on the right side of both of us, at least until they were forced to choose sides.

“Anything you want. We’ll analyze it, f ix it, make it do what you want,” Tinker said.

Like a Ship’s life support systems, I thought.

“Accepted,” I said. Akicita wrote down the winning bid. Tinker walked to the trailer, checked what Akicita had written, signed the paper, and took the grain stalks.

Tinker didn’t go back to her line. Instead, she walked over to Flipper and the Water lodge. Flipper stood rigid, his folk tight together behind him.

“This is for you,” Tinker said to Flipper, and held out the gift. “We never meant to spill oil and grease into your lake.”

“There were new fish in that water,” Flipper said, his voice carefully neutral. “First generation f ish we had just designed. A lot of people suffered because those f ish died.”

“I know,” Tinker said, regretfully. “I can’t change what happened. All I can say is it won’t happen again. And offer you a new plant to help your next generation of fish.”

The Water Line stirred restlessly and glanced at each other. Flipper thought for a moment, stroked his chin, and nodded.

“Accepted,” Flipper said. Tinker grinned and Flipper nudged his Councilor, who offered Tinker a jar full of fish moonshine. Tinker sipped politely and handed the glass to Flipper, who also sipped. Both the Mechanics and the Water people relaxed and smiled.

“Next item,” I said, and moved sideways to stand behind another blanket.

A half hour later, we were almost at the end of the auction. Three items were left: Mother Lu’s conch shell, Foremost’s bones, and the Kadisha’s empty blanket. I looked at all of them and touched Akicita on the shoulder.

“You do Mother Lu, Aki’. I’m going down to bid.”

“Luck,” Akicita said. She glanced at Mother Lu and looked worried.

“Yeah,” I said.

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I walked down the steps and over to stand at the front of our line. My brothers were in the front row behind me, Chuck and everyone else tucked behind them.

Oly shuff led next to the Nacacijin death gift. Mother Lu stepped forward and picked up the conch shell.

“This symbolizes a call for help.”

She blew gently into the shell and a low, piercing moan spread out. She held the tone steady for a moment, then slowly let it drift away.

“You call, and we’ll be there.” She handed the shell to Akicita and stepped back.

“Bidding is open,” Akicita said.

I stepped forward while everyone stiffened behind me.

“We bid forgiveness,” I said.

“You want to be forgiven for something you’ve done?” Akicita asked, puzzled. I shook my head.

“I offer to forgive someone else, person or lodge, for what they’ve done to me and my lodge,” I said.

“Does anyone need this forgiveness?” Akicita asked the crowd. The Keepers and Councilors all looked at each other uneasily. There was a great deal of foot shuffling and low whispers.

“Accept the bid,” Mother Lu called out.

The crowd was silent. I realized I was sweating, even though the day was getting older and colder.

“Why?” Akicita asked. Mother Lu smiled and shook her head. It seemed obvious to her.

“True forgiveness is a rare gift,” Mother Lu explained. “Any person or lodge can always use forgiveness. Nacacijin and Pool Hall might fight and disagree, but no one ever doubts that each of us does what we think is right. Sometimes, in the end, one of us is right, sometimes the other. Forgiveness after things are decided? Priceless.”

Akicita thought for a moment, glanced at both of us, and nodded. She picked up the conch shell.

“Accepted.”

I stood quiet for a moment. Mother Lu studied me as if she was trying to figure out what I was doing. I carefully kept my face smooth and expressionless.

I climbed up the ladder and resumed my position as auctioneer in the middle of the trailer. Akicita looked grateful and stepped back. I shifted to the side and stood directly behind Foremost’s death gift blanket.

Foremost and Carole stood together in front of the blanket, Foremost slightly forward, Carole behind him and to his right, in a Councilor’s traditional position. The Synth priest stood a few steps away from Foremost, a line by herself.

I pointed to the Synth bones and gestured to Foremost. Foremost stepped forward and picked up his death gift. There was a murmur and low rumble from the crowd.

“These are the bones of the Synth who attempted to kill myself and Keeper Tony,”

Foremost said. “The Synth who was killed by Councilor Akicita. These bones are my death gift to Sam.”

He waited for a moment, turned, walked back to his place by Carole.

“Bidding is open,” I said.

The Synth priest stepped forward. She seemed short and slim among the taller and broader humans, but her every movement was confident and economical, with no wasted motion. She reminded me of a killer animal, a hunter: all business, totally focused, and indifferent to anything except complete and unconditional success.

“These are our bones, and we want them back,” she said to Foremost. “What do you want for them?”

Foremost stared at the Synth.

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“Your vote. In the conference,” Foremost said.

“To take these savages on board the Ship? No.”

“Not even for one of your own?” Foremost asked. The Synth moved toward Foremost. It was a quick move, a jerk and a step.

I stepped forward.

“Enough! Sam’s auction isn’t about setting things up for a fight. That doesn’t honor Sam.”

I turned to Foremost.

“You can’t trade the bones for a vote. That’s out.”

I turned to the Synth.

“And you can’t bid directly for the bones. You’re not recognized as a lodge. Somebody else is going to have to bid. If you want to work out a deal with them afterward, that’s fine. But nothing directly with Foremost.”

I stepped back into position. I’d done my best.

“Fine,” the Synth priest said. She turned to face everyone, her back deliberately to Foremost.

“One of you will bid and win the bones. Whoever does, I’ll buy them. I’ll pay your kind’s greatest desire,” she said. It came across as a sneer.

“Money. As much money as you want.”

The crowd was silent. Even if Summit voted to go to the Ship, only a few from each lodge would go. Most people never wanted to leave home. And Summit wasn’t a rich place. Everybody needed something. Kids who needed to go to college. Old people who needed help. As many other needs as there were problems and people. I saw the different Keepers and Councilors look at each other, and then at the other lodges. I saw desires and hopes and dreams chase across their faces.

I imagined a Summit where every person was suddenly rich. No work, no sweat, just everything we wanted dropped in our lap. No one would have to suffer through another bone cold winter with not enough heat, or sweat through a scorching summer. No one would have to spend a year coaxing a crop to life or a summer mucking out stalls in a barn full of cows. No one would spend their days behind a counter, or trapped in a job they hated. We could each be completely happy.

And alone. Just like the exiles, outside Summit, were alone at their parties in Chicago and New York and London and Los Angeles. Just like I had been alone, outside Summit.

I imagined it, and I didn’t like it. I saw the death of Summit. I looked over and saw Mother Lu. She frowned and shook her head. She didn’t like this either.

And suddenly I knew exactly what I had to do.

I turned to the Kadisha.

“What is your bid for these bones?” I asked, my voice pitched so everyone in the crowd heard me.

The Oya looked up at me, startled.

“We don’t have anything to bid,” she said slowly, and unconsciously touched the totem bone in her necklace.

“Yes, you do.”

I stepped forward, reached into my pocket and pulled out that antique, clear as artesian water from a pothole lake, medicine bottle Outhouse Ned had mucked up from Sam’s outhouse. Inside was a small bone, a tiny fragment, a chip off the Synth.

I walked over to the Kadisha’s spot and placed the bottle in the exact center of their empty blanket. I looked up at the Oya. I felt the rest of Summit watching me.

“The Synth died in Summit. This is our memory of him. You’re the Oya of the Kadisha. The Rainbow and the Registry belong to you and now this belongs to you.

Bid this memory for the bones.”

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I turned to face the crowd.

“And the Pool Hall line says the Synth belongs here. We’ll bury him in the Rainbow, and we’ll rebuild the Registry,” I said. I stared at Mother Lu, def iantly, then back at the Oya and the rest of the Kadisha.

The Oya reached out, then let her hand drop.

“But the Registry is lost. Their stories are gone. All we have left are pieces of bone in little glass bottles. . . .”

My brother Tom shook his head and spoke deliberately. He reached, picked up the memory bottle, and forced it into the Oya’s hand.

“Bullshit! Bid this. Put it in the Rainbow. Start the memories again. As for the others, it may take time, but we’ll get them back. If we can’t open the Registry, we’ll talk to every damned person in Summit until we know everyone in the Rainbow, all of their history, all of their stories. We’ll build it back for you.”

The Synth priest walked over to the medicine bottle. She looked at it, studied the bone inside.

“That’s a Synth bone?”

“Yes,” Oly confirmed. “I cleaned it myself.”

“We want it back,” the Synth priest said. She sounded puzzled and uncertain. “And why isn’t it with the others?”

“It doesn’t belong with the others.”

The Oya spoke firmly. She straightened and stepped forward. Her line heard her voice and, almost on automatic, formed up behind her.

“What the ambassador has are bones from a body. What’s inside that tiny bottle is more than a bone. It’s a little piece of a person, a reminder, a pointer to his story in Summit.”

The Oya glanced at Mother Lu, then over at Limbo and back to Beth. She paused a heartbeat, two, then looked up at me and nodded. She walked over to face Foremost.

“We bid a place in the Rainbow for the Synth. He died here, and he’s part of our story.”

“Accepted,” Foremost said.

“No!” Jerry Voge exclaimed.

“Never!” the Synth priest shouted.

We weren’t going to the stars.

I knew it as soon as I saw the Synth priest’s face. I suspected Foremost never had the Synth’s vote, up on the Ship, but now the priest’s hatred and opposition were fixed. Foremost stood with his head down, his eyes closed, and I realized I must be getting better at reading his body language because his despair came across clearly.

“To hell with ’em all,” Akicita said, softly, from behind me, her voice pitched so only I could hear her. “This is Summit, Tony. That’s all that matters. You keep it that way and we’ll do all right.”

“But for how long, Aki’? How long are we going to last against all the flatlanders?”

I said, my voice also low. “This Ship was our final chance.”

“We’ll last as long as we can,” Akicita said. “Now do your job.”

Foremost handed the bundle of Synth bones to the Oya.

She nodded and walked back to her people. She held the bones cradled in one arm and gently stroked them with her other hand. She looked up at Dove and Beth and smiled. Tears ran down all their faces.

Then the Oya turned, walked to the Synth priest, and held out the bones.

“I believe these are yours.”

The Synth was shocked. The tendrils over her mouth stopped in their ceaseless twisting. She hesitated, then took the bones. She looked down at them, studied them.

She raised her head to look at the Oya.

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“What do I owe you?” the Synth priest asked. She sounded surprised and suspicious.

“Isn’t that the way of Summit? To pay for every favor? So what do I owe you for this?”

“That’s not our lodge’s way,” the Oya said. “The Kadisha study and try to understand all the different groups and people, but we don’t tell anyone what to do. Our job is to remember the dead. And we want you to know you are invited, when we bury the Synth in the Rainbow.”

The Synth priest was silent. Foremost leaned forward and spoke softly.

“The best part of each of us,” Foremost said. It sounded like he was quoting something old and precious. “Wasn’t that always the goal? To put the best part of each of us, the part we’d like to see go forward, on the Ship?”

“Yes,” the priest said, her voice strangling.

“And when it works, it hurts, doesn’t it?” Foremost said. “Mirrors always hurt the most. The blemish is always largest when we see it on ourselves.”

The priest held the bones and looked at the Kadisha.

“When is the ceremony?”

“Tomorrow morning, at dawn,” Beth said. “Meet us at Blue Sky Abbey.”

I waited and no one spoke.

The Synth considered this for a moment, and studied the bones and the bottle. I saw the Oya tremble. Dove put her hand on the Oya’s shoulder. Beth put her hand on her other shoulder.

The Synth stood still. A light wind tugged at her robe. The tendrils in her mouth moved back and forth, slowly and rhythmically. She looked up at the Oya and concentrated on her face.

“We accept these bones,” the Synth said slowly, then looked over at Foremost and up at me.

“Your place on the Ship is approved. We withdraw our objection in Council. Our Child was in error when he attempted to kill you and the ambassador. Your debt to our line is canceled.”

The priest turned to face the Oya and the Kadisha. She began to keen softly, so deep into bass that it faded in and out of my hearing. She began to rock from side to side.

“We will be at the ceremony tomorrow,” she said. She held the bones close and stepped away from the trailer.

“Any objections?” I called out. I waited, then nodded to Oly.

“Sam’s death gift auction is now closed!” Oly shouted.

Oly glared at the crowd, as if to dare anyone to object. The lines shifted restlessly, but there were no objections.

“Does anyone have any other business to bring before Summit?” Oly asked.

“Yes,” Limbo said. He stepped forward, climbed up the steps, and stood next to Oly.

Akicita and I stepped down and went to stand in front of our lodge, next to Mother Lu and the Nacacijin.

“It’s time to vote on leaving Dakota and going to the Ship,” Limbo said. He stood stiff and straight, his expression fierce as he looked across the crowd. I followed his gaze and saw Beth, a damned stupid big grin on her face.

“To the Ship, or not?” Limbo said. “Keepers vote now. Hand up for yes. No hand is a no vote. Everyone must vote.”

The Oya raised her hand. So did Limbo and Flipper and Tinker. In the end, only two Keepers’ hands were down.

I stared at Mother Lu, and she stared at me. She glanced at the Synth priest and the Oya, at Foremost, at my brothers, and then she shrugged.

“Perhaps you do know how to keep us alive on the Ship,” Mother Lu said, grudgingly. “I still think you’ll do something stupid up there. Not everyone and everything can be trusted. We’ll watch and be ready. Just in case we’re needed.”

194

Bill Johnson

Asimov’s

“That’s how things work,” I agreed.

“We’ll release the Registry back to the Kadisha right after we finish this.”

Mother Lu raised her hand, and I raised mine, to make it unanimous. Mother Lu nodded.

“We go to the Ship!” Limbo said. The crowd roared. Oly stepped forward and waved his hands in a shushing motion.

“Everyone is invited to Sam’s Pool Hall for free beer—”

“I brought fish to drink, fresh from the still,” Flipper announced.

“—and free fish,” Oly continued, without missing a beat.

The crowd froze for an instant, then roared its approval again and began to break up and head for downtown. Mother Lu hesitated, glanced at me, smiled, knuckled her forehead, and led her lodge toward the pool hall.

Carole and I sat on the steps just outside the pool hall. Foremost sat next to us, with Dove, Hunter, the Oya, and the Synth priest a few feet away on the outside bench. Akicita and Oly and Flipper were all inside, along with the rest of the crowd, even including Mother Lu. I heard Chuck the bartender shout, and the crowd howled with laughter. Carole nudged me and pointed down Main Street.

Limbo and Beth sat together in a town car. They faced each other, Beth behind the wheel, Limbo on the passenger side. He touched her face and she turned her head to trap his hand between her cheek and her shoulder. He made no attempt to escape.

“He’s doomed,” I said. Carole laughed.

“He doesn’t seem too upset about it,” Carole said. “He looks pretty happy to me.”

“Of course he is.” Foremost sounded puzzled. “He wanted to marry Beth, didn’t he?

He got his wish for the Ship, and she agreed to partner with him. What more can he want?”

“Going to be a lot of work up there,” I said, and gestured to the sky. The Ship hung low on the southern horizon. “He’s got to figure out a way to keep us alive.”

“He’ll do it,” Carole said confidently.

“We’re not there yet,” I warned. “Mother Lu is going to be watching, ready to step in if she thinks we’re doing things the wrong way.”

“Checks and balances,” Carole said dismissively. “Someone has to keep you honest.”

“And D.C. is not going to be happy. And there are still people on the Ship’s Council who don’t want us on board when it leaves.”

“You’re not happy unless you’re worrying,” Carole scolded. She reached down and interlaced her fingers with mine. She brought my hand up and kissed it, then put it in her lap, firm in her strong grip.

In the town car we saw Limbo pull his hand away, gently. He reached into his shirt pocket and took out a small box. He held it out to Beth, then opened it. She looked at the ring for a moment, then took it out and handed it to Limbo. He took her hand and slid the ring into place. I squeezed Carole’s hand just a little tighter.

“Time to go home,” I said. “One last thing to do tomorrow.”

That night Limbo and I and Carole and Akicita talked until it was almost dawn.

We slept for a couple of hours and then met at Blue Sky Abbey, in the chapel.

Foremost and I and Akicita and Oly sat in one pew. Mother Lu and the Oya and Dove and Beth were in the pew across from us. Brother Stephanie and the Synth priest stood up front, at the altar, finishing paperwork. The dead Synth’s medicine bottle rested on the side in between them. Thin clouds dulled the outside sky, so the wall/windows looked like nothing more than pebbled, colored glass.

“The Registry is unlocked?” Foremost asked. He kept his voice low.

“Yeah,” I said. “The Nacacijin gave Tom the encryption key last night. He unlocked Bury Me in the Rainbow

195

March/April 2018
everything, made sure it was just the way it should be, and turned it back over to the Kadisha. He also went into the Registry code and took out every software back door he could find.”

“Then everything should be fine.”

I laughed, quietly, at that.

“Anything someone can build, someone can break into. It’s safe now. Until the next time.”

“So . . . ?”

“I loaned Tom to the Kadisha. He’s working out a new backup system. We might not be able to make any system perfectly secure, but at least we can make it harder for us to lose it.”

Brother Stephanie and the Synth priest put down the documents and stood to face us.

“The flesh and the bones of our companion have been returned to the Ship. The tableau—” the priest turned to Oly, who nodded “—of his death has also gone home.

I have been instructed to express approval. His kith and kin acknowledge a debt.”

Oly looked pleased.

Brother Stephanie picked up the Synth’s bottle and stepped forward. She smiled and seemed cheerful. I wondered how she always managed to pull that off. Nothing ever seemed to bother her.

“Well, the paperwork’s done,” she said briskly. The Synth priest nodded. “Now, is everything in the Registry?”

The Oya stood and handed Stephanie a small slip of paper.

“Yes. Here’s the location for the bottle.”

Stephanie checked the paper and stepped over to her rolling ladder. She pushed it along the back wall, locked the wheels, and climbed up.

She checked the number again, then slipped the bottle with the little chip of Synth bone into one of the arcs of clear bottles that framed the Rainbow. She shut the panel, locked it, and climbed down.

Suddenly, something felt funny. It was like a vibration in the air and I swore I heard a deep, low tone.

Sunlight poured through the walls, and the Rainbow snapped into place. Clear light and all the colors surrounded us and seemed to move in waves.

The Synth priest went still and I watched her eyes widen. She turned slowly, her mouth slightly open. She tilted her head back until she focused on a spot in the white light of the frame.

About where the light from the Synth bone and the medicine bottle would have shown up.

“You did this?” I whispered to Foremost.

“Synth eyes see farther into the spectrum than even mine. So I arranged a small change in the cloud cover, just in case,” Foremost admitted. He sighed. “I’m afraid, now that your governments know we can do this, it will cost me in the negotiations.”

He looked at the Synth. “But it was worth it.”

I stepped out of the pew and tugged Foremost with me. The others stayed behind in the quiet of the chapel while we slipped through the doors and out into the walkway.

“We need to talk. Last night Carole and Limbo briefed me about their trip to the Ship.”

“Ah. I wondered how long before you would have questions. About your assumptions about the Ship.”

“That’s all you’ve got to say?” I demanded. “Talk to me about this Ship that isn’t only a ship and how I’m going to explain this to Summit . . .” ❍

196

Bill Johnson

NEXT ISSUE

MAY/JUNE The May/June 2018 Asimov’s is another double issue packed ISSUE
with blockbuster novellas. David Gerrold and Ctein give us the thrilling tale of “Bubble and Squeak.” Two men must defy the odds if they have a hope of surviving the deluge once a massive tsunami hits Los Angeles. The characters are compelling, and the action is relentless in this unforgettable tale. Not to be outdone, Rick Wilber and Alan Smale combine their amazing talents to bring us “The Wandering Warriors.” This exhilarating novella tells the dire story of a hapless barnstorming baseball team suddenly transported to ancient Rome. It will be hard to put down these suspenseful tales before you reach their gripping conclusions.

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ON BOOKS

Peter Heck

THE MOON AND THE OTHER

Meanwhile, in Fowler Dome, we meet

By John Kessel

Mira, who is gaining notoriety—under a

Saga Press, $27.99 (hc)

pseudonym—as a satirical graffiti artist.

ISBN: 978-1-4814-8144-1

Also something of a rebel, she feels a de-
his ambitious science fiction novel de-
gree of resentment at being an outsider in
picts the fate of a utopian society sur-
the very clearly defined matriarchy of the
rounded by others that are threat-

Society. And she is involved with Carey, a

Tened by its founding principles—even man half the women in her circle find in-when the founders tried to create a soci-
credibly attractive—and whom most of
ety where violence would be all but un-
them have slept with.

thinkable.

At the same time, Fowler Dome is

The story takes place on the Moon, in
preparing for an election, in which for the
the mid-twenty-second century. The So-
first time a party that supports fuller
ciety of Cousins is one of a number of lu-
rights for men is making a serious bid.

nar settlements, settled by a utopian

The outcome of the election will deter-
group that traced the evils of past histo-
mine the shape of the society for some
ry to patriarchal culture. In response,
years to come, in large part because of
they have created a society controlled by
the perception in other Lunar colonies
women, but not excluding men. Instead,
that Fowler Dome has deprived half its
men hold a position much like that of
population of fundamental rights. In the
upper-class women in the Victorian age:

worst case, the election could provide a
pampered, valued for accomplishments
pretext for other colonies to intervene in
in the arts or sports, and given mini-
the Society of Cousins.

mum responsibility unless they have

Kessel jumps between the immediate
earned it.

action and various commentaries on the

The action is split between two cities:

two societies, building a complex portrait

Persepolis, a nation modeled on the cul-
of his future world much in the manner of
ture of early Persia, and the Fowler
some of John Brunner’s work. But the

Dome, home of the Society of Cousins.

stories of the individual characters are

In Persepolis, we meet Erno—an exile
also fully developed, with a complex back-
from Fowler Dome, who is working a
story connecting the characters in ways
dangerous job in a lunar water mine
that only gradually become apparent to
and spending his off hours drinking
the reader. The paradoxes in the Society
with a rowdy group of coworkers. We
of Cousins gradually come into the fore-
learn fairly early that he was exiled for
ground, building to a climax in the larger
killing his mother. After an accident
political plot.

that costs him his hand, he appears to

The utopian novel is always a chal-
have fallen upon even worse times—un-
lenge, especially in the creation of char-
til he meets the daughter of Cyrus, the
acters who are believable both as mem-
richest man on the Moon, who sees in
bers of the societies they represent and
him a way out from under her father’s
as real people with personalities that
thumb. And, as it turns out, Cyrus sees
aren’t just illustrations of the points the
possible value in Erno’s skills as an en-
author is trying to make. Kessel has suc-
vironmental engineer, learned back in
ceeded admirably in fulfilling both crite-

Fowler Dome.

ria, and his larger plot keeps the reader

198

®
turning pages. A very strong novel, a
good bet to show up on next year’s
awards lists.

THE MASSACRE OF MANKIND

SHEILA WILLIAMS

Editor

By Stephen Baxter

Crown, $27.00 (hc)

EMILY HOCKADAY

Associate Editor

ISBN: 978-1-5247-6012-0

A sequel to H.G. Wells’ tale of interplan-

DEANNA MCLAFFERTY

Editorial Assistant
etary invasion, The War of the Worlds, this

JAYNE KEISER
book takes a clear-eyed look at the impli-

Typesetting Director
cations of Wells’ conclusion, which had the

SUZANNE LEMKE
invading Martians defeated by Earth’s

Assistant Typesetting Manager
microbes, against which they had no im-

KEVIN DORIS
munity.

Senior Typesetting Coordinator

The events of the novel are told from

VICTORIA GREEN
the viewpoint of Julie Elphinstone, a

Senior Art Director
journalist and the sister of Walter Jenk-

CINDY TIBERI
ins, the narrator of Wells’s novel. She is

Production Artist
living in New York when she receives a

JENNIFER RUTH
mysterious call from her brother, hinting

Production Manager
at “grave news from the sky.” Since he,

ABIGAIL BROWNING
along with all of Earth’s astronomers,

Manager Subsidiary Rights and Marketing
have been watching the face of Mars for

CAROL DEMONT

Licensing/Digital Sales Manager
any sign that a new invasion may be im-
minent, Julie fears the worst. She boards

SANDY MARLOWE

Circulation Services
the Lusitania for a return to England,
where she and a small group of Jenkins’

ADVERTISING SALES DEPARTMENT
printadvertising@dellmagazines.com
associates learn that the invasion has in

(Display and Classified Advertising)

fact been launched—and is expected to

Subscriber Services: 203-866-6688 Option #2
arrive shortly.

PETER KANTER

The British Army has spent the four-

Publisher
teen years since the original invasion

BRUCE W. SHERBOW
preparing its forces to deal with a return

Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing
of the Martians, and it has carefully de-

CHRISTINE BEGLEY
veloped plans to counter them. At the

Vice President, Editorial and Product Development
same time, the British government has

PORTER C. MCKINNON
taken a turn toward the autocratic, in

Senior Director of Art & Production
particular by allying itself with the Ger-

ISAAC ASIMOV

Editorial Director (1977-1992)

man Empire, which has supplied military
aid in spite of the demands of an ongoing

Stories from Asimov’s have won 53 Hugos and 28
war with Russia—the unfinished cam-

Nebula Awards, and our editors have received 20
paign of a World War I in which Britain

Hugo Awards for Best Editor.

took no part, and which has left France

Please do not send us your manuscript until you’ve
under German occupation.

gotten a copy of our guidelines. Look for them
online at www.asimovs.com or send us a self-

But when the Martians arrive, they
addressed, stamped business-size (#10) envelope,
unleash new tactics and weapons, and
and a note requesting this information. Write “man-
uscript guidelines” in the bottom left-hand corner
the defending forces are quickly defeat-
of the outside envelope. We prefer electronic sub-
ed. Soon the Martian machines are rov-
missions, but the address for manual submissions
ing over England, destroying any sign of
and for all editorial correspondence is Asimov’s

Science Fiction, 44 Wall Street, Suite 904, New York, resistance. Still, an underground effort

NY 10005-2352. While we’re always looking for
continues, with help from Germany. Julie
new writers, please, in the interest of time-saving,
find out what we’re looking for, and how to pre-

On Books
pare it, before submitting your story.

March/April 2018
is recruited to undertake a critical mis-

EMPIRE GAMES
sion that may reverse the tide of battle—

By Charles Stross
a mission that takes her into the heart of

Tor, $25.99 (hc)

Martian-occupied England.

ISBN: 978-0-7653-3756-3

This gives Baxter a chance to give the

Stross picks up his “Merchant Princes”

reader a much more detailed look at the
series, featuring characters who can walk

Martians and their society than Wells of-
between alternate worlds, a couple of
fered. He also delivers a scathing critique
decades after the end of Trade of Queens,
of how ordinary English men and women
the last book in the original series.

adapt to the occupation—a view based on

The United States, having survived an
what occupied countries in World War II
episode of nuclear terrorism some twenty
and later went through. Neither the col-
years earlier, is now far more security-
laborators nor the resistance come out of
conscious than before. In a parallel world,
the experience covered in glory—and the
there is a New American Commonwealth,
power of the Martian occupation remains
created in a revolution against the Eng-
unshaken, in any case. Not surprisingly,
lish King just over a decade ago. The gov-
the Martians learned from the fate of the
ernment of the new nation includes
earlier invasion and took steps to over-
among its leaders several refugees from a
come it.

world that felt the brunt of an all-out nu-

Worse is to come—not content with oc-
clear attack after the U.S. learned how to
cupying a single island, the Martians soon
send its planes between alternate lines.

launch a follow-up invasion to gain them

As a result of that apocalyptic conclu-
a foothold in other parts of the world. We
sion to the previous book, it is a much
get reports of their arrival in parts of Eu-
harsher society. Both the new republic and
rope, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. All
the U.S. are justifiably aware of the
appears to be hopeless—but Julie is not
threats that might come their way from
yet finished with her secret mission,
cross-world travelers, and both have creat-
which, after observing the Martians up
ed extensive security organizations and
close, she knows how to complete success-
espionage operations to guard against
fully.

them. In the Commonwealth, Miriam

While there have been several sequels

Burgeson—the central figure in the Mer-
by other hands to Wells’s original, Baxter
chant Princes series—is in charge of keep-
tops them all—although he pays fond
ing an eye on the other America. Her main
tribute to several of them, including Edi-
charge is to bring her new nation as much
son’s Conquest of Mars, by Garret W. Ser-
high technology as she can steal by smug-
vice. He also incorporates the fruits of an
gling it back across the world lines. But
extensive survey of Wells scholarship,
she knows that, sooner or later, the other
both within SF circles and more tradi-

America will discover the Commonwealth,
tional academic disciplines, to enrich the
and when that happens, she and everyone
novel’s range of allusion and its resolu-
else in her world are likely to face the kind
tion of some of the plot problems in the
of preemptive strike that took out her for-
original. And, by setting the novel in the
mer home in the Grunmarkt.

early twenties, he finds a way to update

As it happens, that other America is
the style without stepping too far out of
doing everything it can to protect its na-
period.

tional security. Among its projects is re-

A very welcome—and highly read-
cruitment of the children of crossworld
able—sequel to one of the central works
travelers from the Grunmarkt, whom it
at the foundation of science fiction as we
hopes carry the gene that will allow them
know it. Anyone with any fondness for
to infiltrate any other worlds that might
the original owes it to themselves to seek
pose a threat. And among the recruits is
this one out—you won’t regret it.

a young woman named Rita—the daugh-

* * *
ter Miriam gave up for adoption before

200

Peter Heck

Asimov’s
she discovered her own ability to cross
authors, which together, in effect, add up
between worlds. In many ways this repli-
to a novel. In addition to Kushner, who
cates the pattern of Miriam’s early life—
wrote the first episode, the contributors
though Stross introduces enough differ-
are Alaya Dawn Johnson, Malinda Lo,
ences so it doesn’t feel as if it’s a recycled

Joel Derfner, Patty Bryant, Racheline
plot line.

Maltese, and Paul Witcover.

Rita has a healthy skepticism about

The story, as Kushner notes in an Af-
the security state, a skepticism nurtured
terword, is set about fifteen years before
by her adoptive grandfather, a refugee

Swordspoint, to avoid introducing incon-
whose memories of his youth in East
sistencies into her time line. It revolves

Germany have made him an enemy of at-
around several characters living in and
tempts to privilege security over free-
around Riverside, the capital city of a na-
dom. Armed with his insights and advice,
tion much like Elizabethan England—
she manages to keep her own perspective
except that, in this world, the “European”

through being trained as an agent of that
nations have not learned to navigate the
world’s equivalent of Homeland Security.

ocean separating them from a New

Stross does a good job of taking the

World whose inhabitants, equivalent per-
premises of the Merchant Princes books a
haps to the Mayans, have become suc-
step farther out. The portrait of American
cessful traders, exporting chocolate and
politics in an age where security is the jus-
other delicacies, to their great profit.

tification for every possible restriction on

In the opening chapter, we meet Di-
individual rights is frightening in its own
ane, Duchess Tremontaine, a beautiful
right—and the fact that, in this world, the
and powerful woman with a secret she
government’s paranoia is to some degree
must protect to avoid disaster. We also
founded in reality does little to reduce its
meet Ixkaab Balam, daughter of one of
impact. Likewise, the portrayal of the po-
the trading houses from the New World,
litical perils of the early years of the Com-
who has been sent to Riverside after a
monwealth—in a world where other na-
spying mission she undertook ended in
tions have developed nukes and are ready
near-disaster. Kaab is curious and a bit
to use them—is convincingly drawn.

rebellious, as becomes clear when she

The new characters nicely augment the
spends her first day in Riverside seeking
cast, and several intriguing plot elements
out someone against whom to test her
planted in the previous volumes are de-
newly acquired skills with a sword.

veloped farther here. Anyone who enjoyed

Also newly arrived in the city is Mic-
the earlier series will find this a welcome
ah, young daughter of a farming family,
continuation. If you’re new to the series,
who has come with her uncle to sell
you could probably pick it up here—but
turnips. As we soon learn, she is a math-
you’d be well advised to get hold of the
ematical prodigy, a skill her family val-
earlier volumes, all available from Tor, so
ues in bargaining with customers. But
as not to miss one of Stross’s most ambi-
when she goes into the city, disguised as
tious and provocative fictional creations.

a boy to keep away unwanted attention
from the locals, she meets a group of

TREMONTAINE
scholars—and learns that there is far

By Ellen Kushner et al
more to math that she suspected. When

Saga Press, $21.99 (tp)

one of the group, a would-be astronomer

ISBN: 978-1-4814-8558-6
named Rafe, realizes that her ability to

This shared-world adventure, set in
calculate can help him prove his novel
the world of Kushner’s Swordspoint, was
theories about the Earth and Sun, he
originally published on the website Seri-
persuades her to stay—and soon she is
al Box (serialbox.com).

working to discover the flaws in the es-

The plot is made up of a series of self-
tablished tables of planetary orbits.

contained episodes by several different

Of course, as the plot evolves, all the

On Books

201

March/April 2018
characters end up dealing with one anoth-
ta’s War” military SF series, with Ky Vatta,
er in a variety of ways. Diane, like all aris-
now an admiral, returning to her home
tocrats, is inordinately fond of chocolate—
world for the first time in years. She is
and she also has a problem that can
greeted as a hero, met by a shuttle to take
possibly be solved by striking up an al-
her to the capital where she needs to settle
liance with the American traders. Mean-
details of a major restructuring of the fam-
while, Kaab realizes that Rafe’s astronomi-
ily business.

cal theories could lead to the “Europeans”

The trouble starts almost immediate-
developing a more accurate method of nav-
ly. On the way down, the shuttle devel-
igation—which would be a disaster for her
ops mechanical problems and is forced to
family’s business. And Rafe, whose theo-
crash-land in the ocean. The nearest
ries, like Galileo’s, fly in the face of received
land is an uninhabited part of the plan-
opinion, is desperate to earn his Master’s
et that all the guidebooks write off as a
degree so he can set up his own school. But
terraforming failure. Worse yet, it’s the
to do so, he must either knuckle under to
dead of winter. And there’s excellent evi-
the establishment or find some way to pass
dence that the shuttle was sabotaged.

the qualifying exam in spite of opposition.

Ky knew she had enemies, but she didn’t

The various plot strands come together
expect them to strike her on her home-
in a maze of high politics, street brawls,
world. That really doesn’t matter as
academic intrigue, sexual hijinks, assassi-
much as surviving long enough to do
nations, and deep-held secrets—all of
something about it.

which are eventually sorted out. Adding

Moon shifts the focus back and forth
to the distinctive flavor, a large number of
between the shipwrecked party and those
the characters challenge conventional
elsewhere on and off the planet who are
gender roles. Women in this world have
trying to learn what happened to them.

skills and abilities that we associate with

For the survivors of the crash landing, the
men, and nobody blinks an eye at most of
first priority is getting to dry land. Then
it. And none of the authors is making any
the issue becomes how to survive at all
particular statement about it—it’s just a
with their limited food supplies and al-
good rip-roaring adventure. Despite the
most no local resources to exploit.

various contributors, each of whom clear-

To complicate things just that much
ly has a degree of autonomy, the book re-
more, Ky is forced to assume command
tains a consistency of style and mood suf-
of a group of military personnel who
ficient to provide a coherent whole.

were on the shuttle with her largely as

Readers who’ve enjoyed Kushner’s
an honor guard; wilderness survival
books in the Swordspoint series will find
skills are far from their strong point. A
this a great return to that world—and a
good bit of the plot involves her finding
nice extension of some of its implica-
ways to overcome the decidedly unfavor-
tions. But the book is also a good entry
able conditions.

point to the series. If you enjoy a swash-

Soon, almost everyone outside the ship-
buckling fantasy tale that goes well be-
wrecked party has already given up hope.

yond the usual models—and does so

The lack of communication and the hos-
without bringing in magical elements—
tile environment have led the authorities
this one’s likely to be right up your alley.

to what seems the obvious conclusion.

Best of all, the series will continue—

Those who do hold out hope—Ky’s family,
see the Serial Box website for details.

her close associates from her previous
campaigns—are left to follow whatever

COLD WELCOME
sparse clues they can come up with. Most

By Elizabeth Moon
of those lead them to the same conclusion

Del Rey, $28.00 (hc)

Ky has come to: that the shipwreck is the

ISBN: 978-1-101-88731-8
work of her enemies, and the first move in

Moon returns to the world of her “Vat-
a campaign to recapture power.

202

Peter Heck

Asimov’s

As Moon’s readers have come to expect,
some fixation that prevents them from
the novel combines a strong female lead
living successfully in the outside world.

with a good insight into military and po-

One is obsessed with chess, another with
litical affairs. While the book will proba-
the omnipresence of disease organisms,
bly be of most interest to those who’ve fol-
a third believes himself to be a space
lowed the “Vatta’s War” series that this
traveler, and one inmate, Ilona, believes
novel continues, it stands very well on its
herself to be the spider queen. But they
own legs. You might very well find your-
eagerly take to their painting lessons, al-
self wanting to go back and find the oth-
though each of their works is a direct
ers after reading this one. Recommended.

product of their delusions.

Meanwhile, in the outside world, war

THE ASYLUM OF DR. CALIGARI
is raging. Wyndham follows the battles

By James Morrow
through the morning papers Caligari’s

Tachyon, $14.95 (tp)

servants bring him with breakfast, and

ISBN: 978-1-91696-265-4
finds himself relieved not to be part of

Morrow’s latest is a satiric World War I
the carnage. Then he learns that Cali-
alternate history in which the title char-
gari is somehow working as a sort of psy-
acter—a mad master of psychology—
chological consultant to the armies of all
takes advantage of the onset of war to put
sides, working to increase the fervor and
his sinister theories into action.

fighting spirit of the troops. This discov-

The protagonist, a young American
ery impels him to find a way to counter-
painter named Francis Wyndham, has
act his employer’s efforts—a mission in
gone to Paris to study with the brilliant
which he ends up enlisting his art stu-
masters of the modernist movement that
dents, with predictably chaotic results.

bloomed at the beginning of the twenti-

Morrow’s use of history here, as in his
eth century. But he quickly finds that his
recent Galapagos Regained, is inventive,
talents are too modest to interest the
mixing historical figures with figures out
likes of Picasso and Braque. Running
of fiction and fantasy plus his own origi-
out of funds and desperate for some kind
nal characters to add additional depth to
of break, he jumps at the chance to teach
the novel. As a result, his portrayal of
art in the tiny nation of Weizenstaat,
the World War I era will touch many
where Dr. Caligari has established an
nerves with readers familiar with the
asylum. It is the inmates of the asylum
history and literary treatments of that
that are to be his students.

conflict. At the same time, he delivers a

Wyndham takes a train to Weizenstaat,
good story, with plenty of surprises and a
a few steps ahead of the troop trains that
satisfactory pay-off. This provocative
are beginning to carry out the mobiliza-
novella is well worth a look.

tion France has undertaken in response
to a political assassination in Sarajevo.

WITCHY EYE

War is on the horizon, and there is every

By D.J. Butler
reason to believe it will soon overrun the

Baen, $25.00 (hc)

continent. Upon his arrival, he is told that

ISBN: 978-1-4767-8211-9

Caligari allows no deviation from a strict

Butler’s debut fantasy novel is set in an
routine; in particular, no one can leave the
alternate American history where the
asylum without explicit permission from

Revolution failed, and a hodgepodge of
the director. Also, he has been warned, the
small nations has arisen instead of the
director will not tolerate any favorable

United States. The time is the early 1800s,
comment on the impostor Sigmund
and the story begins in a market town

Freud. He has his own methods, to be fol-
along the Cumberland River in Ap-
lowed without fail.

palachee territory.

As a reader might expect, the inmates

The history of this alternate America,
turn out to be a mixed bunch, each with
where magic is commonplace, is complex.

On Books

203

March/April 2018

Not only did the Revolution fail; the British
vealing unexpected depths, which makes
monarchy failed to survive the Common-
for a number of pleasant plot surprises.

wealth period. The mound-builder culture

An especially interesting first novel—
of the Mississippi Valley has survived to
it will be very interesting to see what
the present day. And the descendants of

Butler has up his sleeves for the next in

William Penn are rulers of an American
the series.

empire bent on expanding its power.

As the story opens, two agents of Penn’s

EAGLE AND EMPIRE
empire—the Right Reverend Ezekiel An-

By Alan Smale
gleton and his factotum Dogsbody—have

Del Rey, $30.00 (hc)

come to Appalachia, on a mission not im-

ISBN: 978-0-804-17727-6
mediately clear to the reader. There they

Smale’s trilogy, in which Marcellinus,
encounter a group of young people who’ve
the surviving commander of a Roman le-
come into town for market day—one of
gion, who allied himself with the Native
whom, Sarah, a young woman with a

American civilization that defeated him,

“witchy eye,” clearly has some supernat-
takes on a new twist in this third vol-
ural powers.

ume.

And, as it happens, Sarah is very much

The book begins with Marcellinus try-
a person of interest to them. The adopted
ing to balance his commitment to Rome—
child of Andrew Calhoun, she is in fact the
which he has never renounced—and his
legitimate heir of Penn’s holdings—an in-
new homeland. The Emperor Hadrianus
cipient empire stretching from the At-
has come to America at the head of his le-
lantic coast almost to the Mississippi. As
gions, and in the manner of most Ro-

Calhoun tells her, it is imperative that she
mans, he has little understanding or sym-
avoid capture by Angleton. For her protec-
pathy for other cultures. To the Emperor,
tion, he sends her—with a small group in-
indigenous peoples fall into one of two
cluding her adoptive brother Cal and a
categories: subjects or enemies, and Mar-
monk named Thalanes—south to New
cellinus will have to walk a fine line to

Orleans, where he has reason to believe
keep from betraying the Cahokian people
there is an important key to her heritage.

who have been his friends and family

Meanwhile, in New Orleans, a barroom
ever since he arrived in the new world. At
character who goes by the name of Bad
the same time, he has ample evidence

Bill has fallen afoul of the authorities by
that the Romans distrust him as a legion-
killing Someone Important in a duel. As it
naire who has gone native.

turns out, Bad Bill has a somewhat more

Marcellinus’s Native American allies
illustrious history than his current career
sense his ambivalent position, and some
as a hired gun would indicate. And it isn’t
of them are keeping their distance from
long after Sarah and her crew arrive in
him. He knows—as they do not, yet—that

New Orleans—with pursuit close on their
the Roman Emperor and his legions have
heels—that he finds himself joining
come to America because they have
forces with her.

learned that one of their most powerful

Butler brings an enormous range of
enemies is also interested in the potential
historical and mythical lore to bear in
of the western continent. Genghis Khan
his world-building. One is reminded in
and his Mongol horde have come to the
places of Orson Scott Card’s “Alvin Mak-

West Coast, and it is only a matter of time
er” series, but that would give only a par-
before the forces of the Emperor and the
tial hint of the scope of material that

Khan meet on a new field of battle.

comes into play here. The cast of charac-

Eventually, Marcellinus persuades both
ters is remarkably varied, drawn from
the emperor and his Cahokian allies to
several different cultures that are both
send him on a scouting expedition to the
historically plausible and freshly imag-

Southwest, where he hopes to find allies
ined. Better yet, the characters keep re-
in the coming clash with the Mongols.

204

Peter Heck

Asimov’s

Taking along some of his closest friends
traterrestrial civilization back in the
plus a squadron of legionnaires, they
dawn of human civilization. The con-
head up the Missouri River into the
struct—which has been named Themis—
wilderness. The trip brings in interesting
is clearly an advanced weapon, able to
echoes of the one that Lewis and Clark
withstand and defeat everything the
took in our history. It also gives the au-
armies of Earth can throw at it.

thor a chance to explore a broader swath

The plot begins a few years after the
of the continent than he has done so far,
close of the first volume. Rose is in the
looking at the cultures and habitats of the
odd position of trying to figure out why
indigenous Plains tribes as they might
she has been brought back from the
have been in his alternate world.

dead—as readers of the first novel saw in

Not surprisingly, Marcellinus discovers
its final scenes. Perhaps surprisingly, she
that the Mongols have been moving
finds herself frustrated and depressed by
rapidly since coming ashore in the Pacific
her revival. But events conspire to bring

Northwest. The inevitable meeting of
her sharply back into focus. Not surpris-

Rome and the Mongols now looms even
ingly, Themis is not one of a kind—and
closer—but the key question neither of
her awakening has served to call her
the two foreign powers is considering is
counterparts to join her. And, like Themis,
the fate of Cahokia and the other indige-
they are powerful weapons—as they soon
nous people after the dust of battle set-
demonstrate.

tles. Marcellinus himself is not quite sure

The only defense available is Themis
how to map that series of events, though
herself—but to bring her into action, Rose
he has hopes of being able to save his
must reunite the team that discovered the
adopted people’s way of life.

robot’s potential and learned to operate

Smale does a good job of orchestrating
the controls, including Kara, a helicopter
the conflict between the two great mili-
pilot, and Vincent, a linguist. To do so, she
tary powers, and he sheds light on the
needs to get them past the heavy emotion-
many cultures Marcellinus encounters
al barriers their former experience with
in his sojourn in the non-Columbian
the robot have created. And the task is ur-

America he has created for his novel.

gent—the threat of the new robots is pro-

Those who’ve read the previous books in
voking increasingly dangerous responses
the trilogy will be eager to see how the
from threatened human nations.

ultimate conflicts work out. If by some

A strong follow-up to the author’s first
chance you haven’t caught up with this
novel, which has been optioned by a film
series, you should probably seek out the
production company.

first volume, Clash of Eagles— it is one of
the most effective alternate histories in

UP THE RAINBOW
recent memory, drawing on a wealth of

The Complete Short Fiction
material that almost everyone else has

of Susan Casper
ignored. This third volume brings it to a

Edited by Gardner Dozois
most satisfactory conclusion.

Fantastic Books, $34.99 (hc), $19.99 (tp)

ISBN: 978-1-5154-1027-0 (hc)

WAKING GODS

978-1-5154-1028-7 (tp)

By Sylvain Neuvel

The late Susan Casper was not a pro-

Del Rey, $28.00 (hc)

lific writer of fiction, but what she did

ISBN: 978-1-101-88673-1
produce was highly personal and often

Neuvel’s sequel to last year’s Sleeping
quite intense.

Giants begins a few years after the con-

This volume, edited by her husband
clusion of that novel. A team of scientists

Gardner Dozois, brings together all
led by Rose Franklin has reassembled

Casper’s published fiction plus a selection
and learned how to operate a giant me-
of travel reports she wrote on various on-
chanical woman left on Earth by an ex-
line outlets. Michael Swanwick and Andy

On Books

205

March/April 2018

Duncan add perceptive appreciations.

Delany’s favorite among Casper’s stories.

When reading the anthology, don’t skip

A special bonus is “The Blessed
these as they offer a deeper insight into

Damosel,” the previously unpublished
both her personality and her art.

opening chapter of a novel Casper was

The stories here bring in a wide range of
working on when she suddenly, without
the author’s interests, as those who knew
any elaborate explanation, gave up writ-
her will recognize. There are vampires (in
ing fiction. The story concerns one of the

“Under Her Skin,” for one), Oz (the title
minor figures of the Pre-Raphaelite group
story), Sherlock Holmes (“Holmes ex
of artists and writers of the early Victori-

Machina”), and much more. She was fasci-
an era—another of the author’s interests.

nated by Jack the Ripper, who figures in

The story is strong in its own right, and it

“Spring-Fingered Jack”—and about whom
leaves you with an intriguing hint of
she and Dozois edited an anthology.

what might have been.

More importantly, the stories deliver a

Although Susan put aside fiction, her
powerful kick; Casper had the ability to
travel reports—of which a generous sam-
bring the stuff of dreams and nightmares
ple is offered at the end of this collec-
vividly into contact with everyday life—
tion—show her sharp wit and careful ob-
as in “The Cleaning Lady” and “Mama,”

servation of people, culture, and
two stories that will resonate even with
landscape. The sites include California,
readers who rarely enjoy fantasy. Other
the Grand Canyon, Europe, and Barba-
stories are more explicitly genre—often
dos—often trips taken after conventions.

horror, but there is a fair amount of light-

She and Gardner traveled extensively,
hearted fantasy, as well.

and these reports capture her enjoyment

She was particularly adept at setting
and make it come alive for the reader.

up a plot that convinces readers they

Up the Rainbow can be ordered from
know what’s coming next—and then
your local bookseller, or directly from
pulls out a surprise. That’s especially true
sales@fantasticbooks.biz. If you’re a
of “The Cleaning Lady,” which Swanwick
lover of short fiction, this is one that be-
in his introduction tells us is Samuel R.

longs on your must-read list. ❍

206

Peter Heck

SF CONVENTIONAL CALENDAR
his time, consider Life, the Universe and Everything, CapriCon, Boskone (where I’ll be), ConDFW, RadCon, PicoCon, MystiCon, HELIOsphere (me again), MidSouthCon, FogCon, Norwescon, MiniCon and RavenCon (me). Plan now for social weekends with your favorite SF authors, editors, artists, and fellow fans.

TFor an explanation of our con(vention)s, a sample of SF folksongs, and info on fanzines and clubs, send me an SASE (self-addressed, stamped #10 [business] envelope) at 10 Hill #22-L, Newark NJ 07102. The hot line is (973) 242-5999. If a machine answers (with a list of the week’s cons), leave a message and I’ll call back on my nickel. When writing cons, send an SASE. For free listings, tell me of your con five months out. Look for me at cons behind the Filthy Pierre badge, playing a musical keyboard. —Erwin S. Strauss FEBRUARY 2018

15–17—Life, the Universe and Everything. For info, write: 10 Hill St. #22-L, Newark NJ 07102. Or phone: (973) 242-5999 (10 a.m. to 10 p.m., not collect). (Web) ltue.net. (E-mail) info@ltue.net. Con will be held in: Provo UT (if city omitted, same as in address) at the Marriott. Guests will include: Todd McCaffrey, Myke Cole. A general science fiction, fantasy, and horror convention.

15–18—CapriCon. capricon.org. Westin, Wheeling (Chicago) IL. Timothy Zahn, Sarah Wilkinson. SF, fantasy, horror.

16–18—Boskone. (617) 625-2311. boskone.org. Westin Waterfront, Boston MA. Mary Robinette Kowal. SF, fantasy, horror.

16–18—ConDFW. condfw.org. Radisson, Fossil Creek (Fort Worth) TX. Charlaine Harris, John Picacio. Literary SF and fantasy.

16–18—RadCon. radcon.org. Red Lion, Pasco WA. Matt Youngmark, Echo Chernik, Dragon Dronet. A general SF/fantasy convention.

17—PicoCon. icsf.org.uk. Imperial College Student Union, London UK. Tube: Gloucester Rd. or S. Kensington. SF, fantasy & horror.

23–25—ConNooga. connooga.com. Convention Center and Chattanoogan Hotel, Chattanooga TN. Cosplay guests. Multigenre.

23–25—MystiCon. mysticon-va.com. Holiday Inn Tanglewood, Roanoke VA. Joe R. Lansdale, Amber Benson. SF, fantasy and horror.

23–25—ConCave/DeepSouthCon. concaveky.org. Greenwood and Jameson Inns, Bowling Green KY. Low-key SF/fantasy relax-a-con.

MARCH 2018

2–4—MarsCon, Box 21213, Eagan MN 55121. marscon.org. Bloomington (Minneapolis) MN. Author Maryjanice Davidson.

2–4—WhimsyCon. whimsycon.org. Hyatt Tech Center, Denver CO. Milton Davis, Kitty Krell. Steampunk and costuming.

9–11—HELIOsphere. heliosphereny.org. Doubletree by Hilton, Tarrytown NY. K. Hurley, C. Tan, M. Oshiro. SF, fantasy and horror.

9–11—MidSouthCon, c/o Box 17724, Memphis TN 38187. midsouthcon.org. Hilton, E. Memphis TN. Resnick. SF, fantasy & horror.

9–11—FogCon, c/o Box 21027, Piedmont CA 94620. fogcon.org. Marriott, Walnut Creek (San Francisco) CA. Performance in SF.

14–18—Int’l. Conf. on the Fantastic in the Arts. fantastic-arts.org. Airport Marriott, Orlando FL. Kessel. Academic conference.

15–18—DeepCon. deepcon.it. Fiuggi Italy. Adam Nimoy, Charles Stross, Lolita Fatjo, Claude Lalumière, Rich Larson.

16–18—CoastCon, Box 1423, Biloxi MS 38533. coastcon.org. Mississippi Coast Convention Center, Biloxi MS. Gaming, cosplay, fandom.

23–25—RevelCon. revelcon.com. Wyndham Houston West Energy Corridor Hotel, Houston TX. Adult (“slash”) fanzines.

23–25—Regeneration Who. regenerationwho.com. Baltimore MD. Peter Davison, Colin Baker and other Doctor Who performers.

24–26—ConBust. sophia.smith.edu/conbust. Smith College, Northampton MA. Sharyn November. Focus on female members of fandom.

29–Apr. 1—Norwescon, c/o 100 Andover Park W., #150-#165, Tukwila WA 98188. norwescon.org. Seattle WA. Liu, Barlowe.

29–Apr. 2—SwanCon. swancon.com.au. Perth Australia. The Australian national science fiction and fantasy convention for 2018.

30–Apr. 1—MiniCon, Box 8297, Minneapolis MN 55408. mnstf.org/minicon. Doubletree, St. Louis Park (Minneapolis) MN. Swirsky.

30–Apr. 2—UK Nat’l. Con, 19 Uphall Rd., Cambridge CB1 3HX, UK. follycon.org.uk. Majestic Hotel, Harrowgate, N. Yorkshire, UK.

APRIL 2018

5–7—Asia-Pacific Science Fiction Con. faa2001.com/apsf. Beijing China. The “Future Affairs Administration” is the organizer.

20–22—RavenCon, 1219-M Gaskins Rd., Henrico VA 23238. ravencon.com. Doubletree, Williamsburg VA. Chuck Wendig, Eric Wile.

20–22—JordanCon. jordancon.com. Crowne Plaza Atlanta Perimeter at Ravinia, Atlanta GA. Celebrating the works of Robert Jordan.

20–22—FILKONtario, 145 Rice Ave. #98, Hamilton ON L9C 6R3. filkontario.ca. Brampton (Toronto) ON. SF and fantasy music.

20–22—PortmeiriCon, 871 Clover Dr., N. Wales PA 19459. portmeiricon.com. Portmeirion UK. Where TV’s “The Prisoner” was shot.

AUGUST 2018

16–20—WorldCon 76, Box 61363, Sunnyvale CA 94088. (408) 905-9366. worldcon76.org. San Jose CA. WorldCon for 2018. $230.

AUGUST 2019

15–19—Dublin: An Irish WorldCon. dublin2019.com. Convention Centre, Dublin Ireland. J. Burnell, G. Buchanan. WorldCon. ⇔160.