Asimov's SF, September 2010 (14 page)

"That's the sun,” he told us as a tiny disk of light slowly swept across the window-within-a-window. He flew over and landed on the glass, like a dragonfly basking in the light of the glow-tubes.

"Very impressive,” I said, but it was actually disappointingly dim. It must look much brighter from the inner solar system. I didn't mind so much that the gondola was dark inside (I don't look my best when I'm baby-naked and covered in muck), but a little more heat would have been good.

"Can we see Earth?” Anu asked, so on the next rotation the fly told her how to search for it, covering the sun with a finger and looking on one side or the other. She thought she might have picked it out, but she couldn't be sure.

"The cradle of the species,” the fly buzzed wistfully, and I held back an urge to ask him if he meant flies or humans.

"Graveyard, you mean,” Anu said.

They started debating like academicians. It turns out that a fly can ponder cosmology, abstract morality, and the infinite. I pondered the shape of Anu's hips, silhouetted in the sunlight, and also the weighty question of whether I'd ever get another roll in the hay with her before she discovered how unworthy I was. Probably the reason it had ended so badly for Earth was that there were too many people like me, only interested in fucking like rabbits.

There was a crash. Not a very big crash, but enough to make me slip in the mud puddles that my dripping feet had made in the sepulchral dust. I yelled. Well, actually I screamed. Not a very big scream, but enough to announce to Anu, the fly, and the surrounding cosmos that I was scared.

There was a lot of hubbub from the two humans, and everything inside the gondola rattled as if the vessel was a drum. Our big
tutti
must have drowned out the fly's solo for a while, because it seemed like a long time later when I finally noticed he was repeating something over and over in English. Once Anu and I shut up, the spirit inside the gondola heard him. Everything swayed, and the percussion section reluctantly scuddered to a stop as if it hadn't noticed at first when the conductor stopped waving his stick.

"Everyone okay?” the fly asked. “I think we must have hit some micrometeorite pitting on the track.” He was back on the clean patch of the glass.

"I'm all right,” I said sheepishly.

"Me too,” Anu said. “What's micro. . . ?"

"A speck of dust is flying through outer space at very high speed, and it hits the outside of the hab and makes dents."

"'To dust you will return,’ ‘’ Anu said, “but I was hoping it wouldn't be quite so literal, and I'd rather it didn't happen today."

"This does bring up some issues,” the fly said. “Anu, I explained about collecting the sample. The plan was for me to do it, since you might be noticed and . . . apprehended if you came out through the hatch. But if I'm unable to do it, do you think you understand what's needed?"

"It should be easier for me than for you, shouldn't it? I can just pluck a whole ear of wheat. But I don't understand what this has to do with the dents. Why do you think you might not be able to do it?"

"It's not safe to run the gondola at normal speed. They've obviously been cutting corners on maintenance, the same as with your country's dead glow-tube. I think we need to do the rest of the trip at something like fifty kilometers an hour. You two will be fine. There are plenty of consumables for life-support."

"But you won't be fine?” I asked.

"I'm powered by light. The sunlight out here in the Neptune Trojans is ten thousand times dimmer than earth-normal, and the gondola's internal lamps are shot. I'm not getting any useful voltage level on my photocells. I'll stop functioning before we get there."

"So when we get there,” Anu said, “we just put you outside the hatch in the light of the glowtubes, and you'll wake back up. Will it be daytime when we arrive?"

"It doesn't work that way,” he buzzed back. “All my memory is volatile. Once my power goes out, that's it.” If he could have snapped his fingers, I think he would have. “It's not important. When someone makes a partial Kurzweil of himself, you don't expect him to keep it running forever."

"Well, I don't expect to live forever, either,” Anu retorted, “but as I said, I'd like the end to come later rather than sooner."

"And if I disappear for days and days,” I said, “the cops will be sure to put the thumbscrews on Gaithri."

"Let's just turn around and make a second attempt later,” Anu said. “We've found the hatch and gotten some of the mud off. Next time it'll be easy.” The sun came up above the edge of the clean spot on the glass and cast our unnaturally sharp shadows on the wall.

"I'm not so sure that's a good idea,” I said. “Our luck might not hold a second time."

"I'm replaceable,” the fly said.

"Rui, we can't do that. It would be murder!"

I wanted to say that it would only be murdering a fly, but of course she was right. The problem was that when I tried to imagine getting up my nerve to do the whole expedition again, I couldn't. I had a hard time believing I'd even done it the first time. If I was asked to do it again, I'd make an excuse, or just not show up for the gig. And then Anu would never want to see me again. Oh, she wouldn't hate me. I think the supply of hatred in her heart was small enough that she had to save it up for very special occasions. But she'd be disabused of the illusions she'd had about my character, and that would be enough.

"Rui is right,” the fly said, and I could tell that he wouldn't hate me either, and that made me feel even worse. “I won't allow you two to risk your lives unnecessarily."

I temporized. “Fly, regardless of what we end up deciding to do, I think you'd better teach us the magic words to start and stop the gondola, in case you're out of commission."

"He already told me how to stop and start,” Anu said, “but I wouldn't mind a refresher, and I think I'd better learn a few more commands, like how to speed up and slow down."

The fly gave us our language lesson, and while he did it I located the faint glint of the wine bottle in the murky room. After we'd learned all the commands and said them to our teacher's satisfaction, I cupped my hands over him where he sat on the window.

"Rui?” I heard him say, faintly, from inside my hands, and then I felt him on my palm. I took him in the cave of my hands and crouched down carefully over the bottle.

"What are you doing?” Anu demanded.

As gently as possible, I forced him through the mouth of the bottle and plugged it with my thumb.

"Gondola,” I said in English, “Half speed forward.” It obeyed, and before there was time for Anu to second-guess me, or for me to lose my nerve, I said, “Gondola, full speed forward.” I heard the fly protesting from inside the bottle, but the sounds were too faint to make out.

There were more sections of damaged track, but our galloping barrel got through them at half speed without breaking a bilge hoop. Anu and I huddled together in a corner for warmth, miserable and afraid. When we finally opened the hatch into trans-Viegh, there was a blast of hot, dry air. The hatch was surrounded by a cairn, and situated in a little canyon wooded with oaks, with a creek flowing through it. A cow was drinking from the stream, which I took as a good omen. We didn't want to risk getting waylaid by going out to search for a wheat field, so we negotiated a parole with the fly. He was allowed out of the bottle to find a sample, as long as he promised not to try to take back control of the hijacked gondola on the way home. If the locations of the wheat fields hadn't changed in the last forty-six years, it would take him about an hour to get back.

Anu was obviously feeling pretty good—the resilience of youth. I was feeling like a filthy villain. We bathed in the creek, and she asked me to scrub her back. I could tell where that was leading, and considering that I'd just risked three people's lives for another chance to get between her thighs, you'd think that I would have been happy to go along. Instead, I broke one of my two cardinal rules. A dedicated womanizer should never brag, and he should never confess.

"I need to tell you something,” I said.

"Yes?” She looked back over her shoulder at me, smiling, and one of her nipples came out of the water.

"I'm a fraud. Ever since the beginning of this whole thing, I've only done any of it because of this crazy damned wish to please you. I never would have tried to fish the outsiders out of the lake, or paid any attention to the fly, or..."

"Yes, my sweet.” She turned back away from me, which was a good thing, because I felt like I was about to cry. “I've always known. Now will you scrub my back? Please? I feel like I've been rolling around in a crypt."

"But don't you. . ."

She turned back around and drew me against her. “Men are so silly. Whenever men do brave things, why do you think they do it, and who do you think they do it for?"

The fly flew in through my door.

"Anu's been arrested."

"What? Why?"

"I don't know. You know they interrogated her last month, before the sampling trip."

"They did?"

"She didn't tell you? We thought it was going to be all right. She just kept telling them the whole truth, except for the part about the weapon on Hua's suit. You didn't tell them anything about the weapon, did you?"

"No,” I said, “of course not.” I pounded my fist into my palm. Anu was sure to be the least convincing liar in the hab.

"Maybe she didn't do a good enough job of covering her tracks, and they found out about the trip."

"Maybe they figured out that Szemnik was up to something, smelled yeast in his closet or something."

"Maybe. They haven't arrested him, though—haven't even questioned him."

A herd of deer browsed in the muddy meadow outside the stone wall of the prison yard. I loitered behind a big redwood, wearing a spacesuit's gauntlet on my forearm. Thirty meters back in the trees, two horses waited, with a bag of yeast in one horse's saddlebag.

The fly came around the tree and landed on the trunk. “She's there. Walking around."

"All right, I'm ready."

I started walking through the muck toward the wall, with the fly riding on top of my head. The deer scattered. A guard appeared at the battlement. To my eyesight, he looked like a fuzzy blob.

"You there, stop!"

I pointed the gauntlet at the guard. “Targeting . . .” the fly said. “. . . firing.” The guard dropped out of sight. I sprinted toward the wall.

Copyright © 2010 Benjamin Crowell

[Back to Table of Contents]

For about two weeks, two robins

Kept yelling at me

Every time I appeared outside the door

In (apparently) a cloud

Of flames and brimstone

Visible to birdseyes,

To grab the paper or the mail.

And they'd explode

Diving out of the rowan

One to the pinebush by the front step

And one to the gable on the other side

To scream their wrath,

Change places with an angry flutter

And scream some more,

Bits of twig or greenery in their beaks.

—

Must've been a nest under construction

(In the rowan?)

But I never managed to spot it

Much less attack it.

Still, I might've—

Best to frighten off the monster first.

—

One day they weren't there anymore—

Off somewhere (in the rowan?)

Taking turns at sitting on the eggs.

—

Like Alice, I have eaten eggs, certainly,

But I don't want theirs.

Birds consider only the first bit.

They don't take a human's word for the rest.

—

If the bluejays come and eat their eggs

And drop the half-shells on the lawn,

I'll fill them with wax

And stop the open ends up

With gold buttons

And put them on chains for necklaces.

—

The robins probably suspected as much.

—

"Serpent!” said Alice's bird,

"Serpent, I say!"

Copyright © 2010 Ruth Berman

[Back to Table of Contents]

Mary Robinette Kowal's short fiction has appeared in
Strange Horizons, Asimov's,
and several Year's Best anthologies. In 2008, she was the recipient of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer and she was a 2009 Hugo-Award finalist. A professional puppeteer and voice actor, Mary lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband Rob. Her debut novel,
Shades of Milk and Honey
(Tor 2010), is the fantasy novel that Jane Austen might have written. Visit her website
www.mary robinettekowal.com
for more information about her fiction and puppetry. In her new story for
Asimov's,
Mary takes a look at the hard moral choices that arise . . .

With one hand, Rava adjusted the VR interface glasses where they bit into the bridge of her nose, while she kept her other hand buried in Cordelia's innards. There was scant room to get the flexible shaft of a mono-lens and her hand through the access hatch in the AI's chassis. From the next compartment, drums and laughter bled through the plastic walls of the ship, indicating her sister's conception party was still in full swing.