The good new stuff, p.53
The Good New Stuff, page 53
Scholes looked uncertain. “Maybe they’ve suffered massive evolutionary changes,” he said. “Changes we’re just not seeing. For example, maybe the worm parasite is the malevolent descendant of some harmless creature the starfarers brought with them.”
Dixon scratched his neck, where the suit-collar ring of dirt was prominent. “Anyway, we’ve still got the puzzle of the mercuric’s burrowing into the ice.”
“Hmm.” Scholes sipped his cooling coffee. “I’ve got a theory about that, too.”
“I thought you might,” Larionova said sourly.
Scholes said, “I wonder if the impulse to climb up to the surface is some kind of residual yearning for the stars.”
“What?”
Scholes looked embarrassed, but he pressed on: “A racial memory buried deep, prompting the mercurics to seek their lost home world … . Why not?”
Larionova snorted. “You’re a romantic, Kevin Scholes.”
A telltale flashed on the surface of the data desk. Dixon leaned over, tapped the telltale and took the call.
He looked up at Larionova, his moon-like face animated. “Irina. They’ve found another mercuric,” he said.
“Is it intact?”
“More than that.” Dixon stood and reached for his helmet. “This one isn’t dead yet … .”
The mercuric lay on Chao’s dust-coated ice. Humans stood around it, suited, their faceplates anonymously blank.
The mercuric, dying, was a cone of bruised-purple meat a yard long. Shards of shattered transparent carapace had been crushed into its crystallizing flesh. Some of the cilia, within the carapace, stretched and twitched. The cilia looked differently colored from Dixon’s reconstruction, as far as Larionova could remember: these were yellowish threads, almost golden.
Dixon spoke quickly to his team, then joined Larionova and Scholes. “We couldn’t have saved it. It was in distress as soon as our core broke through into its tunnel. I guess it couldn’t take the pressure and temperature differentials. Its internal organs seem to be massively disrupted … .”
“Just think.” Kevan Scholes stood beside Dixon, his hands clasped behind his back. “There must be millions of these animals in the ice under our feet, embedded in their pointless little chambers. Surely none of them could dig more than a hundred yards or so up from the liquid layer.”
Larionova switched their voices out of her consciousness. She knelt down, on the ice; under her knees she could feel the crisscross heating elements in her suit’s fabric.
She peered into the dulling sonar-eyes of the mercuric. The creature’s mandibles—prominent and sharp—opened and closed, in vacuum silence.
She felt an impulse to reach out her gloved hand to the battered flank of the creature: to touch this animal, this person, whose species had, perhaps, traveled across light-years-and five billion years—to reach her … .
But still, she had the nagging feeling that something was wrong with Scholes’ neat hypothesis. The mercuric’s physical design seemed crude. Could this really have been a starfaring species? The builders of the ship in Caloris must have had some form of major tool-wielding capability. And Dixon’s earlier study had shown that the creature had no trace of any limbs, even vestigially … .
Vestigial limbs, she remembered. Lethe.
Abruptly her perception of this animal—and its host parasite—began to shift; she could feel a paradigm dissolving inside her, melting like a Mercury snowflake in the Sun.
“Dr. Larionova? Are you all right?”
Larionova looked up at Scholes. “Kevan, I called you a romantic. But I think you were almost correct, after all. But not quite. Remember we’ve suggested that the parasite—the infestation—changes the mercuric’s behavior, causing it to make its climb.”
“What are you saying?”
Suddenly, Larionova saw it all. “I don’t believe this mercuric is descended from the starfarers—the builders of the ship in Caloris. I think the rise of the mercurics’ intelligence was a later development; the mercurics grew to consciousness here, on Mercury. I do think the mercurics are descended from something that came to Mercury on that ship, though. A pet, or a food animal—Lethe, even some equivalent of a stomach bacteria. Five billion years is time enough for anything. And, given the competition for space near the short-lived vents, there’s plenty of encouragement for the development of intelligence, down inside this frozen sea.”
“And the starfarers themselves?” Scholes asked. “What became of them? Did they die?”
“No,” she said. “No, I don’t think so. But they, too, suffered huge evolutionary changes. I think they did devolve, Scholes; in fact, I think they lost their awareness.
“But one thing persisted within them, across all this desert of time. And that was the starfarers’ vestigial will to return—to the surface, one day, and at last to the stars … .”
It was a will which had survived even the loss of consciousness itself, somewhere in the long, stranded aeons: a relic of awareness long since transmuted to a deeper biochemical urge—a will to return home, still embedded within a once-intelligent species reduced by time to a mere parasitic infection.
But it was a home which, surely, could no longer exist.
The mercuric’s golden cilia twitched once more, in a great wave of motion which shuddered down its ice-flecked body.
Then it was still.
Larionova stood up; her knees and calves were stiff and cold, despite the suit’s heater. “Come on,” she said to Scholes and Dixon. “You’d better get your team off the ice as soon as possible; I’ll bet the universities have their first exploratory teams down here half a day after we pass Earth the news.”
Dixon nodded. “And Thoth?”
“Thoth? I’ll call Superet. I guess I’ve an asteroid to order … .”
And then, she thought, at last I can sleep. Sleep and get back to work.
With Scholes and Dixon, she trudged across the dust-strewn ice to the bubble shelters.
She could feel the Ice under her belly … but above her there was no Ice, no water even, an infinite nothing into which the desperate pulses of her blinded eyes disappeared without echo.
Astonishingly—impossibly—she was, after all, above the Ice. How could this be? Was she in some immense upper cavern, its Ice roof too remote to see? Was this the nature of the Universe, a hierarchy of caverns within caverns?
She knew she would never understand. But it didn’t seem to matter. And, as her awareness faded, she felt the Seeker inside her subside to peace.
A final warmth spread out within her. Consciousness splintered like melting ice, flowing away through the closing tunnels of her memory.
R. Garcia y Robertson
GONE TO GLORY
R. Garcia y Robertson made his first sale in 1987, and since has become a frequent contributor to Asimov’s Science Fiction and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, as well as selling several stories to Amazing, Pulphouse, and Weird Tales, and other markets.
Robertson has made something of a specialty of adventure writing and, in fact, may be one of the very best in the business when it comes to turning out vivid, headlong, fast-paced, colorful, inventive, swashbuckling, and yet keenly intelligent adventure stories. Since adventure writing is still widely considered to be synonymous with “junk” or throwaway writing by many genre critics, stuff not really worth considering (although a really good adventure story is actually harder to write in some ways than more introspective fiction), this may help to explain why Robertson’s work, like Robert Reed’s, has been largely and undeservedly ignored, and why he’s rarely mentioned among the ranks of good new writers of the eighties and nineties—although a good case could be made that he’s delivered more pure first-rate entertainment pound for pound than almost any other new writer of the last ten years.
L. Sprague de Camp was clearly one of the major influences on Robertson (although I suspect that George MacDonald Fraser, author of the Flashman series, was a strong influence as well), and, like de Camp, even the most swashbuckling of his adventures contains a generous measure of sly humor; also like de Camp, he makes intensive use of authentic and intensively researched historical settings, and clearly has a love for obscure and little-known corners of history. He’s taken us to the bitter days of the Indian Wars on the American frontier in stories such as “The Moon of Popping Trees” and “The Other Magpie,” to San Francisco’s Chinatown during the Gold Rush days in “Four Kings and an Ace,” to the turmoil of the French Revolution in “The Great Fear,” to the Cretaceous period to stalk hungry dinosaurs in “The Virgin and the Dinosaur,” to ancient Scandinavia in “The Wagon God’s Wife,” on a trip on a Mississippi paddle wheeler with Mark Twain in “Down the River,” to London during the Blitz in “Wendy Darling, RFC,” and to Greece in the days before history to deal with a fractious Hercules in “The Moon Maid”—among many other historical milieus that he has made his own.
Some of these stories are fantasy, and so outside our purview here, but his stories about the misadventures of Jake Bento and Peg and their bumbling crew of time-traveling documentary filmmakers—which includes the aforementioned “The Virgin and the Dinosaur” and “Down the River,” as well as “On the Way to Gaugamela” and “Seven Wonders,” as well as his recent novel The Virgin and the Dinosaur—have been extremely popular with Asimov’s readers, as were his nonseries time-travel stories “Gypsy Trade” and “Not Fade Away.” He’s also written baroque and inventive Space Opera or Space Adventures of various sorts, including “The Werewolves of Luna,” “Into a Sunless Sea,” “The Siren Shoals,” “Cast on a Distant Shore,” “Fair Verona,” “Starfall,” and the exuberant picaresque adventure that follows, “Gone to Glory,” which takes us out across the boundless prairies of an exotic and dangerous alien world, in search of answers that it would be safer not to find … .
Robertson’s books include, The Spiral Dance, The Virgin and the Dinosaur, Atlantis Found, and, most recently, American Woman. His most recent book is his first short-story collection, The Moon Maid and Other Stories. Several of his recent stories, including “Gypsy Trade,” have been optioned for the movies, although none of them have made it to the screen as yet. He was born in Oakland, California, has a Ph.D. in the history of science and technology, and, before becoming a full-time writer, taught those subjects at UCLA and Villanova. He lives in Mt. Vernon, Washington.
Let’s hope that as the years to come take us into the new century, Robertson gets some of the respect and attention he deserves. In the meantime, if you’re looking for first-class adventure fiction, watch for his name—you’re unlikely to be disappointed.
THE SAD CAFE
Defoe sat at one of the Sad Cafe’s outdoor tables, soaking up gin slings and watching an energetic couple attempting to mate in midair, wearing nothing but gossamer wings and happy smiles. This pair of human mayflies had to be used to the exercise—neither showed a gram of fat or a bit of shame.
The four-hundred-year-old bistro stood in an open-air park on the Rue Sportif near Spindle’s main axis, where g forces were low and the fun never slowed. Holodomes and hanging gardens arched overhead. Beyond the mating couple, halfway up Spindle’s curve, nude bathers raised slow-motion splashes in a low-g pool. Not a shoddy spot for doing nothing. Defoe ordered his third (or maybe sixth) sloe gin sling from a roving cocktail bar, a barrel-shaped dispenser doing a lazy drunkard’s walk between the tables, happily doling out drinks. Never asking for credit or expecting a tip. Human service was rarer than saber-tooth’s teeth on Spindle.
Sipping his sloe gin, Defoe listened with mild disinterest to priority beeps coming over the comlink clipped to his ear. The first calls weren’t for him, but they were coming fast and close together. Always a sad sign. Hoping not to be dragged too deeply into other people’s troubles, he had his navmatrix decode the binary signals. The pilot’s navmatrix grafted into the back of his skull was immune to alcohol. Defoe could down a dozen gin slings and still pilot a tilt-rotor VTOL in a blinding sandstorm or rendezvous with a starship—if the need arose. Only the need never arose. Not here. Not now.
First came a distress bulletin, direct from dirtside.
Then a standby alert.
Followed by a formal AID action request.
The final call was for him. Defoe answered in his off-duty voice.
Salome, his section head, came on-line. Her parents had been ultraorthodox Satanists (who believed John the Baptist had it coming), and her strict religious upbringing made Salome controlled and precise, with barely a wayward impulse. Except for her hair, which tumbled in untamed curls and wild midnight-blue ringlets past her hips, almost to the floor. She sounded soft and winsome over the comlink, a sure sign HQ was in seconddegree alarm—Salome never courted underlings unless she needed something. “There’s an AID team down in Tuch-Dah country. They want us to send someone.”
Defoe snickered. “Who’s the lucky sucker?”
“AID wants an ‘experienced surface hand.’ Someone who knows the Tuch-Dah. You’ve been fortunate with them.”
“Fortunate? Not hardly. Incredibly lucky would be nearer the mark.” Not the sort of luck Defoe aimed to lean on.
Salome persisted. “But you have come through intact—always a plus—and saved us a lot of trouble.” And saved the Tuch-Dah a lot of trouble, thought Defoe, not that the ungrateful bastards ever seemed to notice. “Besides, you’re fresh up from the surface; it won’t be so much of a shock.”
“Right. With four months up-time coming.” Up-time as in up here—on Spindle—where it was too perfect a day to contemplate work. Defoe had just done a solid eighteen weeks on Glory. Great-aunt Tillie in Alpha C would do duty dirtside before he went back early. “Last time AID lost a team, the problem solved itself—Tuch-Dahs sent their heads back in a leather bag.”
“Marvelously considerate. But we can’t always count on it. Take a couple of weeks,” Salome suggested. “Clear this up, and we’ll make it five months.” That was double time. A rare offer. AID had to be in a fine panic.
“Make it six months,” Defoe countered. Every day in paradise is perfect—so one is as good as another. He was demanding four days of up-time for every day dirtside—a splendid deal if he was so awfully essential.
“Find the team first,” Salome told him primly. “Four weeks for going down to Glory. Four more for getting the job done.” Defoe would get the extra days only if he delivered.
Bargaining with a Satanist was like dealing with the Devil. Centuries of persecution had turned a diabolically carefree sect into overcompensating overachievers. But it was always a comfort knowing that in the bad old days decent folk would have tied his boss to a stake and had her barbecued.
“I’ll need a free hand,” Defoe told her. “No interference from AID.”
“That’s your lookout. AID will be there—it’s their team that’s down. The way to avoid them is to get going and keep going.”
“Sure thing.” Defoe was already up and moving. “See you in Hell, Salome.”
“Not unless you convert.” He could hear her wicked smile. Another sign things were serious. Normally, Salome would never kid about religion.
Sloe gin and low gravity made the sidewalk seem to float in front of him. Rooftops and tree-lined arcades curved upward, vanishing into the light streaming down the length of the rotating habitat, reflected inward from mirrors set in the spinning well of stars. Spindle could amaze even sober senses.
Kids flashed past on the sidewalk, tanned young bodies in overdrive. Defoe passed feelie spas and low-g saunas. Happy holos invited him in. No more. Not now. Sorry, guys. Got to sober up and go to work.
Temptation abounded. And it was all free, from gaming orgies to organic feasts. Free as air to anyone who set foot on Spindle. Like an ancient Greek polis, Spindle made its own laws—but without the polis’s slavery and infanticide—computers and birth lotteries took their place. No money. No credit. No theft, graft, or taxes. And like the ancient polis, Spindle had only two punishments that mattered. Death and exile. Now Defoe had to face both of these fates, for nothing except the right to return. Hardly fair, but the system lacked honest work.
At Port Orifice—the cavernous lock that let ships enter and exit—he drew emergency rations, heat caps, a thermal parka, bedroll, camp knife, folding mattock, climbing rope, canteen, and medikit. Telling the medikit to sober him up, he ticketed himself for the surface.
A call came through with his clearance. Salome’s assistant, a pretty little catamite with painted lids and pierced nipples, purred into the comlink. “Hey, big boy. Is it true the Tuch-Dahs are cannibals?”
“No such luck.” Defoe doubted Salome’s kept boy had ever seen the surface. “They only eat people.” Given conditions on Glory, Defoe thought cannibalism should at least be legal. Maybe even mandatory. If people were like hyenas, compelled to eat everything they killed, dirtside would be a safer place.
Salome’s pet laughed wickedly. “Old Battle-ax wants to talk with you.”
“Who?” The lock door dilated, cheerily welcoming Defoe aboard.
“Ellenor Battle. Boss dragon lady at AID.”
Defoe stepped through the lock into the shuttle. “Tell ’em I’ve gone to Glory.”
The oxyhydrogen shuttle lacked g-fields and cabin service; in-flight entertainment was a pair of tiny portholes. Defoe felt the backward jolt of retros. Spindle seemed to leap ahead; the sole fleck of civilization in this very outback system dwindled rapidly.
He had his navmatrix tap into the shuttle’s moronic guidance system. Nerve endings merged with avionics—sensors, astrogation, and stabilization became extensions of sight, sound, and kinesthetics. A modest thrill. Pretty dry compared to real piloting. Defoe’s previous employer had been an overprivileged idiot who wracked up a Fornax Skylark, stranding Defoe in-system. Delta Eridani was a dead end, producing nothing the wider universe needed. Traffic was all incoming. Subsidized AID shipments came in cosmic packing crates—robofreighters cannibalized at their destination.
