Strange new worlds v, p.1
Strange New Worlds V, page 1
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Contents
Introduction
John J. Ordover
Disappearance on 21st Street [GRAND PRIZE]
Mary Scott-Wiecek
The Trouble with Borg Tribbles [THIRD PRIZE]
William Leisner
Legal Action
Alan L. Lickiss
Yeoman Figgs
Mark Murata
The Shoulders of Giants
Robert T. Jeschonek
Bluff [SECOND PRIZE]
Steven Scott Ripley
The Peacemakers
Alan James Garbers
Efflorescence
Julie A. Hyzy
Kristin’s Conundrum
Jeff D. Jacques and Michelle A. Bottrall
The Monkey Puzzle Box
Kevin Killiany
The Farewell Gift
Tonya D. Price
Dementia in D Minor
Mary Sweeney
Fear, Itself
Robert J. Mendenhall
Final Entry
Cynthia K. Deatherage
The Difficulties of Being Evil
Craig Gibb
Restoration
Penny A. Proctor
On the Rocks
TG Theodore
Witness
Diana Kornfeld
Fragment
Catherine E. Pike
Who Cries for Prometheus?
Phaedra M. Weldon
Remnant
James J. and Louisa M. Swann
A Girl for Every Star
John Takis
Hoshi’s Gift
Kelle Vozka
Afterword
Dean Wesley Smith
About the Contributors
Introduction
Welcome to Strange New Worlds V. It feels wonderful to write those words. When we first started doing these contest anthologies, there was no way to know that the idea would work. Lots of things seem like they are destined for success and then turn out not to be.
The thing that has made the Strange New Worlds anthologies work, I think, is that they are a labor of love from all sides, from the thousands of fans who write and send in the stories (whether their stories are to be found in this volume or not), to the publisher and editors, who are all writers as well, and who understand the drive to get your story down the way you want to write it, to tell the Star Trek story that won’t get out of your head.
Perhaps the most impressive thing, and a lesson to us all, is the number of stories about the cast of the brand-new show Enterprise that were submitted. With only days between the airing of the first episode and the closing deadline for this anthology, fans ignored all the voices telling them that there wasn’t enough time, sat down and wrote their story, then—and this is often the hardest part—put their story in an envelope and mailed it in.
Because if you want to know the secret of how to be a professional writer, there it is: write the story, put it in an envelope, and send it to someone who can buy it and publish it. That’s what the people in this anthology did, and you can do it too.
Best,
John J. Ordover
[GRAND PRIZE]
Disappearance on 21st Street
Mary Scott-Wiecek
His mother, God rest her soul, once told him that everyone mattered—that every life was important. Now in his middle age, he’s come to realize that she was either naïve or lying, and he strongly suspects the latter. He knows now that some people don’t matter at all. That there are people who could disappear off the face of the earth and not a single living soul would mourn them, or even notice they were gone.
Everyone calls him Rodent. He can’t remember who started it, but it stuck. They say it’s because he looks like a rat, with his rheumy eyes and his pinched features, but he doesn’t think so. More likely it’s because he’s a bum—because he sleeps on the streets and picks through trash cans—because sometimes, in a drunken stupor, he pisses on himself. In any case, he doesn’t really care. It’s as good a name as any. The name his mother gave him certainly doesn’t fit anymore. That name belonged to another person—a boy with big dreams and his whole life ahead of him.
He sleeps in a doorway on 21st Street. It’s a business, some kind of advertising agency. He likes it because the doorway’s only big enough for one, and he prefers to keep to himself. The door is bright red, with a diamond on it. It’s different. The color stands out in this world of brown and gray. It’s a good location—close to the mission and not too dangerous. He’s had to fight for it, more than once. Now the others recognize it’s his. He has to clear out every morning by seven, though. That’s when the cleaning ladies come, and they don’t like to find him there. One of them hit him with a broom once, like he was a stray dog or something.
During the day, he wanders around aimlessly, looking for handouts, looking for a drink. It’s been at least ten years since he held a job, even a bad one. He doesn’t bother to look for work anymore. Who would hire him? Sometimes he sits at the park watching the world go by, or he sleeps on a bench. No one speaks to him or looks him in the eye. He’s as good as invisible, and most of the time that suits him just fine.
Today he has lunch at the mission. The bread is halfway fresh and the soup is thicker than usual. Heartened, he tries to strike up a conversation with the guys next to him at the table. They’re new to the streets—he can always tell. One of them looks like a Chinee, only he’s too tall, and he has no accent. The other is a younger man, with an intensity about him that Rodent finds exhausting just to look at—a starry-eyed idealist, just like Miss Goody Twoshoes over there. No matter, though—a few weeks of living on handouts will knock that out of him.
Anyway, he tries to talk to the guy—give him a few pointers, maybe. He starts with a little harmless shoptalk about Miss Goody Twoshoes, the woman who runs the mission, but the guy just tells him to shut up. Typical. Story of his life. He shrugs and hunches back over his soup. Let him listen, for all the good it’ll do. All she does is blather on about sadness and hard times and spaceships. The broad is nuts, really. He can’t stand listening to her, only he has to if he wants the soup.
* * *
A couple of days later, he wakes up under a paper in his doorway, badly hungover. His head is pounding, and the sun is reflecting strong off the bright red door. He groans and rolls over on the hard cement and tries to figure out about what time it is. Since the sun is up, the cleaning ladies will be around soon. A gust of wind knocks up the trash on the street and sends it fluttering. Broken glass on the sidewalk directs piercing sunlight right into his face. This doesn’t help his throbbing head any, so he shuts his eyes tightly. He lies there for several minutes in a dazed fog before he notices the sound. It’s been there all along—it must have been what woke him up. It’s the high-pitched sound of a child crying.
He squints into the sun to find the source of the irritation. A little girl is sitting on the curb not ten feet away from him, bawling her head off. His first instinct is to roll over and wish she’d go away. She’s not his problem. But then she stands up, and he sees her looking around desperately. She’s obviously lost, and she looks the way kids sometimes do—like she might suddenly dart off in any direction. He’s a little afraid she’s going to go headlong into the traffic on 21st Street with its barreling trucks.
“Hey, kid,” he croaks, sitting up abruptly. “What’s the matter with you?”
She turns, her face streaked with tears. “I’ve lost my mama,” she says, sniveling. “I turned around and she was gone.” She walks over and stands in front of him, her lower lip trembling.
He’s surprised to see that although she’s afraid, she’s not afraid of him. That’s what he loves about little kids. The big kids taunt him and sometimes throw things—pebbles, or even trash—but the little kids, when they look at him, just see a person like any other person. No big deal to them. They don’t seem to notice, or care about, the filth on his skin and clothes, or the vague odor of vomit that seems to hover around him.
He sighs, then staggers to his feet, coughing. His stomach lurches slightly at the sudden movement, and the sun, still low in the sky, is just killing his head, but he’s got to move on anyway. “Well, you can’t cross that street yourself,” he tells her. “Let me help.”
She nods solemnly and reaches for his hand as they get to the curb. He glances around, nervously, sure that someone is going to think he’s kidnapping her or something, but no one takes any notice of them. The city is waking up, and everyone’s in a hurry. Looking around, he spots a uniformed copper across the street. He usually avoids the cops, but in this case, it seems like the best thing.
He waits for a break in the traffic, then runs the kid across the street. The copper scowls at him suspiciously as he approaches, the snuffling kid in tow. “What’s going on here?” he barks, tapping his jimmy stick behind his back. Rodent, thinking he should have known better than to get involved, almost flees, but the little girl, frightened by the copper’s tone and angry look, clings to his hand and moves closer to him. At once, the copper’s face softens, and he glances at Rodent, finally understanding.
“She’s lost,” Rodent sa
“Is that so?” the copper says, kneeling down and looking kindly at the girl. “Well, you just come with me. We’ll find your mother.”
The kid looks up at Rodent, and he nods. Satisfied, she releases his hand and takes the copper’s. Rodent turns and starts to walk away.
“Hey buddy,” the copper calls after him. He reaches into his uniform pocket and fishes out a dime, which he tosses at Rodent. “Get yourself a sandwich.”
Rodent looks down at the dime, surprised, then back up at the cop.
“No booze, now. You hear?” the cop adds, gruffly. “Get yourself some food.”
Rodent grumbles and waves him off dismissively, but even as he walks away, he’s decided to take the advice. A sandwich sounds like a pretty good idea, at that.
* * *
Twenty minutes later, he comes out of the diner, feeling full for the first time in weeks. Halfway down the block, he sees the copper, and beside him, the little girl, reunited with her mother. The mother is crying, and clutching the girl tightly. Rodent blinks hard—the damned sun bothers his eyes, that’s all—but unbidden, some of Goody Twoshoes’ words come into his head.
“It is possible to find peace in the night, knowing that you have lived another day, and hurt no one in doing it.”
* * *
Late that night, Rodent leans up against the brick wall next to his doorway and rubs his hands together, shivering. It’s still hours until dawn. He carefully avoids looking at the milkman, who’s just pulled up with his cart to make a delivery at a building across the alley. The milkman ignores him as well, of course. What does he care what happens to the milk after he leaves? He’s done his job.
As the horse-drawn cart clops away, Rodent shuffles across the alley and picks up the bottle of milk. It’s not usually his drink of choice, but he finds himself anticipating the cold smoothness of it. He’s thinking, as he has been all day, about the kid he helped across the street, and her reunion with her mother.
He’s just about to pull the cap off the bottle when he hears a shout.
“Assassins! Murderers!”
He looks up to find that a strange, wild man has appeared out of nowhere in the middle of 21st Street. He’s dressed in a peculiar way; he’s wearing a blue shirt and black pants that are too short—they almost look like kids’ pajamas. The man is completely out of his head, too, screaming like that in the middle of the night. This is one time when Rodent would be more than happy to be invisible, but—just his luck—the strange man has spotted him.
“You!” he shouts, pointing. “What planet is this?”
God, what a nutcase! Rodent freezes in place, hoping he’ll go bug someone else, but instead, the man begins running toward him.
The bottle of milk, cold and slippery with condensation, slips out of his grasp and shatters on the ground at his feet. The sound of the crash brings him to his senses, and he turns and flees down the alley. The man chases after him, shouting, “Don’t run! I won’t kill you! It’s they who do the killing!” Rodent doesn’t find that comforting at all.
The guy is surprisingly fast for a drunk, though, and when Rodent stumbles rounding a corner, the maniac grabs him from behind. Up close, he’s terrifying. He’s sweating like a pig, and he has red blotches all over his face. His eyes are all bugged out—he looks like he just broke out of the loony bin. Rodent tries to pull away—you never know what someone this messed up will do.
Oddly enough, the strange man grins and nearly embraces him. “I’m glad you got away, too,” he says, fervently. “Why do you think they want to kill us?”
Rodent has no idea what to do. He’s as frightened as he’s ever been in his life. He just wants to get away from this guy.
“Look, fella,” he stammers, “you take a sip too much of that old wood alky and almost anything seems like it . . . it . . .”
The man’s mood changes abruptly—something that tends to happen with madmen, as Rodent recalls. His face darkens, and his eyes narrow, and he scowls at Rodent suspiciously.
“Where are we—Earth?” he demands. He looks up at the stars. “The constellations seem right . . .”
Rodent tries to jerk away again, and the wild man focuses his full attention on him for the first time. “Explain!” he barks. “Explain this trick!”
Rodent tries to speak, but no sound comes out. The wild man starts patting him down, like he’s looking for a wallet or something, and Rodent wishes, not for the first time, that he carried a knife. But the man’s crazy mutterings are not about money. “Biped, small . . .” He pulls Rodent’s cap off and tosses it away, then grabs his head. “Good cranial development, no doubt of considerable human ancestry . . . Is that how you’re able to fake all this?” the man asks, but he doesn’t seem to expect an answer. He’s mostly talking to himself now, which is just as well, since Rodent doesn’t have any idea what he’s going on about.
The wild man finally releases him, but now that he’s free to run, Rodent stays put. The man looks around at the alley, then staggers over to lean against a beam. He doesn’t seem like much of a threat anymore, so Rodent listens to his ramblings just for the hell of it.
“Very good,” the man says, approvingly. “Modern museum perfection, right down to the cement beams.”
The man’s intensity is unsettling. His lunatic ravings don’t mean anything, but he seems to believe every word he’s saying. His demons are catching up with him, though, and Rodent watches as he begins to slide down the beam, moaning about hospitals and needles and sutures. Finally, with one last anguished “Oh, the pain!” the wild man slumps to the ground and passes out at Rodent’s feet.
Rodent shakes his head sympathetically, but it’s just as well. If ever a guy needed to sleep it off . . .
He picks up his cap, then looks down the alley, furtively, but there’s no one around. What he’s about to do makes him feel a little guilty, but times are tough and it’s every man for himself. He stoops over and checks for money, or a wallet. He finds neither, of course—in fact, there aren’t even any pockets in the man’s odd clothes. There is something attached to his belt, though. There’s a slight ripping sound as Rodent tugs it off.
He moves beneath the streetlight and studies the object. It’s like nothing he’s ever seen before—a small, metallic black rectangle with two buttons. Curious, he pushes the one on the left.
An unearthly high-pitched noise pierces the silence in the alley. He turns the device around, alarmed, but still can’t make any sense of it. He thinks maybe he should press the other button to stop the sound, but by then it’s too late.
There is no pain at all, just a tingling sensation and one split second where he understands that he’s done something terrible and irrevocable—and then his life ends in a blinding flash of blue.
In the alley, the strange madman still lies unconscious in the gutter. A gust of wind kicks up, blowing some litter over the spot where Rodent was standing, but he’s gone. He has disappeared off the face of the earth.
* * *
It seemed Rodent was right, at first. No one even noticed that he was gone. Oh, Edith surely would have. The woman Rodent knew as Miss Goody Twoshoes knew more about the men she served than they realized. She would have noticed his absence, but she was distracted that day by a new arrival at the mission—a man wearing peculiar clothes who went by the name of Leonard McCoy and tended to say things that didn’t make any sense. By the next day, she, too, was gone, another victim of fate and circumstance.
Otherwise, life on 21st Street went on without him. His usual table at the mission was filled by other unfortunates. Other nameless and faceless bums slept on the park benches that day, and by the end of the week, someone else had moved into Rodent’s doorway. The cleaning ladies didn’t even realize it wasn’t the same bum.
About a week later, however, a harried-looking woman walked quickly down the street with her young daughter in tow. While they waited to cross at the corner, the child stared at the red door with the diamond on it, tilting her head quizzically.
“Where is he? Where is he, Mama?” she asked.
“Where is who?” the distracted woman replied.
