The good new stuff, p.21
The Good New Stuff, page 21
“Ravna lied when she said the Blab is dead. I forgive her: she wants you off our ship, with no more questions, no more hassle. But the Blabber isn’t dead. She was rescued … from being an animal the rest of her life. And her rescue saved the pack. I feel so … happy. Better even than when I was seven. I can understand things that have been puzzles for years. Your Blab is far more language-oriented than any of my other selves. I could never talk like this without her.”
Ravna had drifted toward the pack. Now she had her feet planted on the floor beneath them. Her head brushed the shoulder of one, was even with the eyes of another. “Imagine the Blabber as the verbal hemisphere of a human brain,” she said to Hamid.
“Not quite,” Tines said. “A human hemisphere can almost carry on by itself. The Blab by itself could never be a person.”
Hamid remembered how the Blab’s greatest desire had often seemed just to be a real person. And listening to this creature, he heard echoes of the Blab. It would be easy to accept what they were saying … . Yet if you turned the words just a little, you had enslavement and rape—the slug’s theory with frosting.
Hamid turned away from all the eyes and looked across the star clouds. How much should I believe? How much should I seem to believe? “One of the Tourists wanted to sell us a gadget, an ‘ftl radio.’ Did you know that we used it to ask about the tines? Do you know what we found?” He told them about the horrors Larry had found around the galactic rim.
Ravna exchanged a glance with the tines by her head. For a moment the only sound was the twittering and hissing. Then Tines spoke. “Imagine the most ghastly villains of Earth’s history. Whatever they are, whatever holocausts they set, I assure you much worse has happened elsewhere … . Now imagine that this regime was so vast, so effectively evil that no honest historians survived. What stories do you suppose would be spread about the races they exterminated?”
“Okay. So—”
“Tines are not monsters. On average, we are no more bloodthirsty than you humans. But we are descended from packs of wolf-like creatures. We are deadly warriors. Given reasonable equipment and numbers, we can outfight most anything in the Slow Zone.” Hamid remembered the shark pack of attack boats. With one animal in each, and radio communication … no team of human pilots could match their coordination. “We were once a great power in our part of the Slow Zone. We had enemies, even when there was no war. Would you trust creatures who live indefinitely, but whose personalities may drift from friendly to indifferent—even to inimical—as their components die and are replaced?”
“And you’re such a peach of a guy because you’ve got the Blab?”
“Yes! Though you liked … I know you would have liked me when I was seven. But the Blab has a lovely outlook; she makes it fun to be alive.”
Hamid looked at Ravna and the pack who surrounded her. So the tines had been great fighters. That he believed. So they were now virtually extinct, having run into something even deadlier. That he could believe, too. Beyond that … he’d be a fool to believe anything. He could imagine Tines as a friend, he wanted Ravna as one. But all the talk, all the seeming argument—it could just as well be manipulation. One thing was sure: if he returned to Middle America, he would never know the truth. He might live the rest of his life safe and cozy, but he wouldn’t have the Blab, and he would never know what had really happened to her.
He gave Ravna a lopsided smile. “Back to square one then. I want passage to the Beyond with you.”
“Out of the question. I-I made that clear from the beginning.”
Hamid pushed nearer, stopped a meter in front of her. “Why won’t you look at me?” he said softly. “Why do you hate me so much?”
For a full second, her eyes looked straight into his. “I don’t hate you!” Her face clouded, as if she were about to weep. “It’s just that you’re such a God damned disappointment!” She pushed back abruptly, knocking the tines out of her way.
He followed her slowly back to the conference table. She “stood” there, talking to herself in some unknown language. “She’s swearing to her ancestors,” murmured a tines that drifted close by Hamid’s head. “Her kind is big on that sort of thing.”
Hamid anchored himself across from her. He looked at her face. Young, no older than twenty it looked. But Outsiders had some control over aging. Besides, Ravna had spent at least the last ten years in relativistic flight. “You hired my—you hired Hussein Thompson to adopt me, didn’t you?”
She nodded.
“Why?”
She looked back at him for a moment, this time not flinching away. Finally she sighed. “Okay, I will try but … there are many things you from the Slow Zone do not understand. Middle America is close to the Beyond, but you see out through a tiny hole. You can have even less concept of what lies beyond the Beyond, in the Transhuman reaches.” She was beginning to sound like Lazy Larry.
“I’m willing to start with the version for five-year-olds.”
“Okay.” The faintest of smiles crossed her face. It was everything he’d guessed it would be. He wondered how he could make her do it again. “‘Once upon a time,’”—the smile again, a little wider!—“there was a very wise and good man, as wise and good as any mere human or human equivalent can ever be: a mathematical genius, a great general, an even greater peacemaker. He lived five hundred years subjective, and half that time he was fighting a very great evil.”
The Tines put in, “Just a part of that evil chewed up my race for breakfast.”
Ravna nodded. “Eventually it chewed our hero, too. He’s been dead almost a century objective. The enemy has been very alert to keep him dead. Tines and I may be the last people trying to bring him back … . How much do you know about cloning, Mr. Thompson?”
Hamid couldn’t answer for a moment; it was too clear where all this was going. “The Tourists claim they can build a viable zygote from almost any body cell. They say it’s easy, but that what you get is no more than an identical twin of the original.”
“That is about right. In fact, the clone is often much less than an identical twin. The uterine environment determines much of an individual’s adult characteristics. Consider mathematical ability. There is a genetic component—but part of mathematical genius comes from the fetus getting just the right testosterone overdose. A little too much and you have a dummy.
“Tines and I have been running for a long time. Fifty years ago we reached Lothlrimarre—the back end of nowhere if there ever was one. We had a clonable cell from the great man. We did our best with the humaniform medical equipment that was available. The newborn looked healthy enough … .”
Rustle, hiss.
“But why not just raise the—child—yourself?” Hamid said. “Why hire someone to take him into the Slow Zone?”
Ravna bit her lip and looked away. It was Tines who replied: “Two reasons. The enemy wants you permanently dead. Raising you in the Slow Zone was the best way to keep you out of sight. The other reason is more subtle. We don’t have records of your original memories; we can’t make a perfect copy. But if we could give you an upbringing that mimicked the original’s … then we’d have someone with the same outlook.”
“Like having the original back, with a bad case of amnesia.”
Tines chuckled. “Right. And things went very well at first. It was great good luck to run into Hussein Thompson at Lothlrimarre. He seemed a bright fellow, willing to work for his money. He brought the newborn in suspended animation back to Middle America, and married a woman equally bright, to be your mother.
“We had everything figured, the original’s background imitated better than we had ever hoped. I even gave up one of my selves, a newborn, to be with you.”
“I guess I know most of the rest,” said Hamid. “Everything went fine for the first eight years,” the happy years of a loving family, “till it became clear that I wasn’t a math genius. Then your hired hand didn’t know what to do, and your plan fell apart.”
“It didn’t have to!” Ravna slapped the table. The motion pulled her body up, almost free of the foot anchors. “The math ability was a big part, but there was still a chance—if Thompson hadn’t welshed on us.” She glared at Hamid, and then at the pack. “The original’s parents died when he was ten years old. Hussein and his woman were supposed to disappear when the clone was ten, in a faked air crash. That was the agreement! Instead—” she swallowed. “We talked to him. He wouldn’t meet in person. He was full of excuses, the clever bastard. ‘I didn’t see what good it would do to hurt the boy any more,’ he said. ‘He’s no superman, just a good kid. I wanted him to be happy!’” She choked on her own indignation. “Happy! If he knew what we have been through, what the stakes are—”
Hamid’s face felt numb, frozen. He wondered what it would be like to throw up in zero gee. “What—what about my mother?” he said in a very small voice.
Ravna gave her head a quick shake. “She tried to persuade Thompson. When that didn’t work, she left you. By then it was too late; besides, that sort of abandonment is not the trauma the original experienced. But she did her part of the bargain; we paid her most of what we promised … . We came to Middle America expecting to find someone very wonderful, living again. Instead, we found—”
“—a piece of trash?” He couldn’t get any anger into the question.
She gave a shaky sigh. “ … No, I don’t really think that. Hussein Thompson probably did raise a good person, and that’s more than most can claim. But if you were the one we had hoped, you would be known all over Middle America by now, the greatest inventor, the greatest mover since the colony began. And that would be just the beginning.” She seemed to be looking through him … remembering?
Tines made a diffident throat-clearing sound. “Not a piece of trash at all. And not just a ‘good kid,’ either. A part of me lived with Hamid for twenty years; the Blabber’s memories are about as clear as a tines fragment’s can be. Hamid is not just a failed dream to me, Rav. He’s different, but I like to be around him almost as much as with … the other one. And when the crunch came—well, I saw him fight back. Given his background, even the original couldn’t have done better. Hitching a ride on a raw agrav was the sort of daring that—”
“Okay, Tiny, the boy is daring and quick. But there’s a difference between suicidal foolishness and calculated risk-taking. This late in life, there’s no way he’ll become more than a ‘good man.’” Sarcasm lilted in the words.
“We could do worse, Rav.”
“We must do far better, and you know it! See here. It’s two years subjective to get out of the Zone, and our suspension gear is failed. I will not accept seeing his face every day for two years. He goes back to Middle America.” She kicked off, drifted toward the tines that hung over Hamid.
“I think not,” said Tines. “If he doesn’t want to go, I won’t fly him back.”
Anger and—strangely—panic played on Ravna’s face. “This isn’t how you were talking last week.”
“Heh heh heh.” Lazy Larry’s cackle. “I’ve changed. Haven’t you noticed?”
She grabbed a piece of ceiling and looked down at Hamid, calculating. “Boy. I don’t think you understand. We’re in a hurry; we won’t be stopping any place like Lothlrimarre. There is one last way we might bring the original back to life—perhaps even with his own memories. You’ll end up in Transhuman space if you come with us. The chances are that none of us will surv—” She stopped, and a slow smile spread across her face. Not a friendly smile. “Have you not thought what use your body might still be to us? You know nothing of what we plan. We may find ways of using you like a—like a blank data cartridge.”
Hamid looked back at her, hoping no doubts showed on his face. “Maybe. But I’ll have two years to prepare, won’t I?”
They glared at each other for a long moment, the greatest eye contact yet. “So be it,” she said at last. She drifted a little closer. “Some advice. We’ll be two years cooped up here. It’s a big ship. Stay out of my way.” She drew back and pulled herself across the ceiling, faster and faster. She arrowed into the hallway beyond, and out of sight.
Hamid Thompson had his ticket to the Outside. Some tickets cost more than others. What much would he pay for his?
Eight hours later, the ship was under ram drive, outward bound. Hamid sat in the bridge, alone. The “windows” on one side of the room showed the view aft. Middle America’s sun cast daylight across the room.
Invisible ahead of them, the interplanetary medium was being scooped in, fuel for the ram. The acceleration was barely perceptible, perhaps a fiftieth of a gee. The ram drive was for the long haul. That acceleration would continue indefinitely, eventually rising to almost half a gravity—and bringing them near light speed.
Middle America was a fleck of blue, trailing a white dot and a yellow one. It would be many hours before his world and its moons were lost from sight—and many days before they were lost to telescopic view.
Hamid had been here an hour—two?—since shortly after Tines showed him his quarters.
The inside of his head felt like an abandoned battlefield. A monster had become his good buddy. The man he hated turned out to be the father he had wanted … and his mother now seemed an uncaring manipulator. And now I can never go back and ask you truly what you were, truly if you loved me.
He felt something wet on his face. One good thing about gravity, even a fiftieth of a gee: it cleared the tears from your eyes.
He must be very careful these next two years. There was much to learn, and even more to guess at. What was lie and what was truth? There were things about the story that … how could one human being be as important as Ravna and Tines claimed? Next to the Transhumans, no human equivalent could count for much.
It might well be that these two believed the story they told him—and that could be the most frightening possibility of all. They talked about the Great Man as though he were some sort of messiah. Hamid had read of similar things in Earth history: twentieth-century Nazis longing for Hitler, the fanatics of the Afghan Jihad scheming to bring back their Imam. The story Larry got from the ansible could be true, and the Great Man might have been accomplice to the murder of a thousand worlds.
Hamid found himself laughing. Where does that put me? Could the clone of a monster rise above the original?
“What’s funny, Hamid?” Tines had entered the bridge quietly. Now he settled himself on the table and posts around Hamid. The one that had been the Blab sat just a meter away.
“Nothing. Just thinking.”
They sat for several minutes in silence, watching the sky. There was a wavering there—like hot air over a stove—the tiniest evidence of the fields that formed the ram around them. He glanced at the tines. Four of them were looking out the windows. The other two looked back at him, their eyes as dark and soft as the Blab’s had ever been.
“Please don’t think badly of Ravna,” Tines said. “She had a real thing going with the almost-you of before … . They loved each other very much.”
“I guessed.”
The two heads turned back to the sky. These next two years he must watch this creature, try to decide … . But suspicions aside, the more he saw of Tines, the more he liked him. Hamid could almost imagine that he had not lost the Blab, but gained five of her siblings. And the bigmouth had finally become a real person.
The companionable silence stretched on. After a moment, the one that had been the Blab edged across the table and bumped her head against his shoulder. Hamid hesitated, then stroked her neck. They watched the sun and the fleck of blue a moment more. “You know,” said Tines, but in the femvoice that was the Blab’s favorite, “I will miss that place. And most of all … I will miss the cats and the dogs.”
Janet Kagan
THE RETURN OF THE KANGAROO REX
Janet Kagan made her first short fiction sale in 1989, but has rapidly built a large and enthusiastic audience for her work, and has become a figure of note in the nineties. Although her debt to earlier writers of the offworld adventure tale, particularly James H. Schmitz (on whose work she is something of an authority, having contributed the introduction for the collection The Best of James H. Schmitz), is clear, she quickly developed a characteristic and flavorful voice of her own, and always brings her own quirky and individual perspective to whatever she’s writing about, here breathing new life into the Exploring-a-Frontier-Planet story, a subgenre most commentators would have thought to be played out decades before. In fact, her linked series of stories about Mama Jason, of which “The Return of the Kangaroo Rex” is an example, later collected in book form as Mirabile, has proved to be one of the most popular series to run in Asimov’s Science Fiction in recent years, with several of the stories winning the Asimov’s Reader’s Award Poll by large margins. Her first novel, a Star Trek novel called Uhura’s Song was a nationwide bestseller, and her second novel Hellspark (not a Star Trek novel) was also widely acclaimed, and has been recently reissued. She is a frequent contributor to Asimov’s Science Fiction, and has also sold to Analog, Pulphouse, and Absolute Magnitude. Her story “The Nutcracker Coup” won her a Hugo Award in 1993. She lives in Lincoln Park, New Jersey, with her husband, Ricky, several computers, and lots of cats, and is at work on a new novel.
In the wry and suspenseful story that follows, she takes us along to the frontier planet Mirabile to meet a woman whose job it is to cope with some very dangerous and very odd creatures, and follows her as she unravels a compelling biological mystery.
I’d been staring at the monitor so long all the genes were beginning to look alike to me. They shouldn’t have, of course—this gene-read was native Mirabilan, so it was a whole new kettle of fish.
That’s an American Guild expression, but it’s the right one. At a casual look, had the critter been Earth-based, we’d have classed it as fish and left it at that. The problem was that it had taken a liking to our rice crop, and, if we didn’t do something quick, nobody on Mirabile’d see a chow fun noodle ever again. So I went back to staring, trying to force those genes into patterns the team and I could cope with.
