as he dozed. There wasn’t much time. The
Helma chuckled with relief. “Not bad for a
scratchers were safely caged and the cages
grunt.”
were safely in the barn but, due to the dying-in-
“And you’re not bad for a captain’s daugh-
captivity issue, how could they protect them
ter.”
overnight? Jadey shook her head, still feeling
Helma snorted, then cocked her head. “Oh,
like she couldn’t breathe from the near-anoxia
wait.” She hopped off the porch and headed
or maybe just queasy from her failure.
for the storage shed. Bemused, Jadey listened
The porch door banged, and Helma silently
to further thumping and banging. The last rays
handed Jadey a beer from her special stash.
of the sun angled across the pasture, and
Her knuckles were still blue-tinged.
Jadey noted the brillo was no longer quite so
Jadey hesitantly reached out. “Thanks?”
brown. Green shoots were thrusting through
HOME ON THE FREE RANGE
117
ANALOG
the wiry strands of last year’s grasses.
plenty of caterpillars to eat next cycle?” She
The sound of a pleased “Ta da!” was fol-
crossed the yard to the porch. Behind her the
lowed by Helma dragging out a section of
sun began to lose its glimmer at the horizon.
fencing. “Good thing I bought twenty rolls at
“So that’s why the caterpillars were crawling
that auction! Let’s make a larger lean-to beside
toward their predators? Because of an instinct
the barn to put the scratchers in. And also let’s
to pupate underground?”
put a fence around it in a huge circle. Talpids
“Yup. A sure sign that spring is coming. But
don’t dig that fast, right?”
it’s not in precise lockstep—phases will over-
“Right, they’re too big. Not like moles back
lap with each other. Some of the pods are al-
on Terra.” The fencing might work, for a day
ready hatching.” The grub she held seemed to
or so. Jadey stroked Cole’s dirty fur with an
be opening translucent wings but in the
equally dirty hand and wrenched off the last
gloaming it was hard to be sure.
few pods. She held one up close, squeezing it.
“So what d’you want these for?” Helma ges-
It popped open and a grub fell out. A bright
tured at the floodlights.
blue grub.
“If we extend the daylight hours by string-
“Helma.”
ing up the lights, we can sort of bypass spring
“What?” Helma called back over her shoul-
here in the pasture. The talpids will think sum-
der, heading into the shed. “We need to hustle
mer has come already. That should mean
on the fencing—”
they’ll stop taking our scratchers.”
“Didn’t we also get some f loodlights from
“For all three years of springtime? That’s a
the auction? Get ’em out.” Jadey sipped beer,
helluva—”
thinking hard.
“Nope. We only have to do it for the next
A crashing noise, a curse, then Helma
two standard months—until we sell back the
dragged forth a dozen or so large floodlights.
herd. Skale hasn’t beaten us yet.” Off the side
Cole got up and circled the activities warily.
of the porch, an insect f luttered. Something
Jadey drained her mug. “Listen. See if this
large and blue with an unfamiliar shape.
makes sense. The caterpillars are all morphing
Helma waved her hand, scattering several
into pupae. Like this.” She held up the wag-
more f lying bugs. “And when they hatch,
gling contents of the pod. “They need a place
what’ll they eat? By rescuing the scratchers,
underground to pupate—safe from the hawks
we’ve taken away their underground food sup-
and such—so I’m guessing they’ve evolved,
ply—” She clapped a hand against her arm.
over millennia, to head for the talpids’ warrens.
“Ow! Something stung me!”
The pupae will need lots of food when they
Jadey batted a couple away from her face.
wake up, like first-class colonists coming out of
Some kind of butterf ly, maybe. No, a sort of
stasis sleep, right? Hungry little buggers. Now,
stub-winged dragonfly. The grub on her palm
think of the talpids as a food delivery system.
stretched its f ilmy new wings out wide. Was
The talpids instinctively gather the scratchers,
that a stinger on its tail?
doping them into submission. The talpids must
She quickly chucked it onto the porch floor
have been thrilled there were so many scratch-
and whistled for Cole. “Get inside, Helma.”
ers on this plot of land this winter. See?”
Dozens of dragonf lies began to batter them-
Helma stopped in her tracks, letting a light
selves against the railing and walls. “Spring
f ixture dangle from her hand. “The talpids
just arrived. In earnest.” ■
know that taking scratchers would give them
118
HOLLY SCHOFIELD
Endless
City
David Gerrold
NOTE : This story contains content
“And the Sun will rise tomorrow.”
that some readers may find disturbing.
“Have you seen the map?”
I nodded.
he was beautiful.
The city was going to expand, a dozen
Of course.
klicks south and east. The disruption would
They almost always are. Nobody
be one of the biggest in history but going to
Spicks ugly. At least, not the people I 128-bit granularity would create a vast new deal with.
range of terrain. Bad news for some, great
My off ice is on the second f loor of a run-
news for others. If the disruption index went
down building in a shabby mid-century neigh-
high enough, there would be a lot of murders.
borhood. Last centur y. It’s part of the
It wouldn’t solve anything, but a lot of people
mystique. Either you get it or you don’t. She
would feel vindicated—not satisfied, but vin-
got it. She was dressed to the forties. Muted
dicated. The difference is profound. It’s what
red dress, fox stole, auburn hair piled forward
keeps me in business.
in perfectly sculpted waves.
I took my time studying her. The view was
I waved a chair at her. She sat, crossing her
magnificent. Finally, “What is it you want from
perfect legs perfectly. I caught a whiff of her
me? Prevention? Detection? Revenge? I have to
perfume. The Rose of Time. Nice. And very
tell you up front, I’m out of the murder-for-hire
expensive.
business—it makes me a target. And besides, I
“There’s going to be a murder,” she said.<
br />
make more money this side of the law.”
“On average, there’s one every seventeen
She didn’t answer. Instead, she lit a ciga-
minutes,” I replied. “The most recent one was
rette. She fixed it in a long black holder, then
two minutes ago.” I had a display on the wall
waved it curtly to light. She took a puff and
behind her. She couldn’t see it, of course, but
stared at me. Cigarettes are great props. Espe-
it was already reading out her statistics for me,
cially if you look like Marlene Dietrich. Or a
at least the ones she was willing to share.
young Tallulah Bankhead. Her appearance
“No, this is serious. The expansion is going
was somewhere between the two, a nice
to be approved.”
morph-job.
ENDLESS CITY
119
ANALOG
She took another puff. “Well . . . I don’t
Shit.
need a murderer. Not now anyway. But I do
need someone who knows how to find a mur-
The problem goes back to the founding. No-
derer.”
body expected the city to get this big. But it
“Any particular murderer?”
did.
“Yes,” she said. “Because it’s a very particu-
Endless City is semispherical. It’s a three-di-
lar murder.”
mensional rectangular grid that curves around
I leaned back in my chair. It gave me a bet-
on itself in all directions—pick one, if you
ter view up her skirt. “That might be worth
travel far enough, long enough, you’ll end up
my time. Is it a clever murder?”
back where you started. Convenient, but self-
“The murder . . . ? Not clever, just nasty. But
limiting when it comes to expansion.
the murderer—? That’ll be the hard part.”
That’s why the sysops can’t just drop in a
“And after I find this person . . . ?”
block of new addresses wherever they want.
“You’ll know what to do.” She leaned for-
They have to add X, Y, and Z—the row, the
ward, giving me a spectacular view down the
column, the depth. That splits any settlement
grand canyon of her cleavage. “You’re my last
that spans any affected part of the grid.
hope.”
Nobody cares if a lake gets stretched or an
She was impossible to refuse. “Who’s the
ocean gets wider—but if your view suddenly
victim?”
retreats, if your access to a desirable neighbor-
Another puff. She exhaled golden smoke. “I
hood is compromised, if your sky-haven is sud-
am.” She pinned me with steel-blue eyes.
denly on the ground or in the stratosphere, or
I took a moment to consider that. “Why?”
if your private community is abruptly sliced in
“I’ve done bad things. I’ve made enemies.”
half, it matters.
“Who hasn’t? See that f iling cabinet over
Already the petitions were piling up, re-
there—?”
quests to have the addresses reassigned—so
“I’m not interested in your problems. Are
that sections on one side or the other of the
you interested in mine?”
split would remain adjacent to their most de-
“It’ll be expensive—”
sirable neighbors. Most of those would be
She had a tiny purse on her lap. She opened
granted, except where it might conflict with a
it now, dipped delicate fingers into it, pulled
travel corridor.
out an envelope larger than the purse itself,
The new space would start as a vast empty
passed it across to me.
plain, several orders of magnitude larger than
“You’ll find a retainer in there. There’s more
the current size of the city. The city would be-
in the escrow account. You’ll have the right to
come a gigantic oasis in the middle of near-in-
draw on it for billable hours and expenses. My
f inite blankness. But just in case it f illed up
banker will audit.”
anyway, there would now be delineated verti-
I opened the envelope. I would have raised
cal and horizontal equators where additional
my eyebrows, but I had facial expressions
addresses could be installed in the future with
turned off. It’s more in character.
minimal further disruption.
“There will be a bonus, of course, if you
Meanwhile, a lot of people were about to
solve the case quickly. If not . . . well, the
be very unhappy. And some of them already
amount in the escrow account should be suf-
were.
f icient for an extended investigation. The
numbers are based on a performance analysis
She was right. The murder was serious—
of your last six years of investigations.”
more serious than I had expected. This was
I closed the envelope. “You’ve done your
not a death she was going to recover from. It
homework.” I put the envelope down on my
had occurred in meatspace.
desk. “But let me ask you something. Why
Her name was Edward Ferguson, Cobie to
don’t we work on preventing the murder—?”
his friends. He was found collapsed in his
“That’s no longer possible—”
holosphere, one of the newer models. Death
“Why?”
had been slow, moderately painful. The mur-
“Because the murder is happening now—”
der weapon—oh, she’d been right. It was
She finished the last word and winked out.
nasty. And a bit sloppy too.
120
DAVID GERROLD
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2018
Cobie’s holosphere had included a multi-
cell-tower where the Oompah had begun—
function sextable, again one of the newer
most likely the wi-fi in a public library.
models. It was a horizontal array of vibration
No, this was not an ordinary cyber-murder.
pads, with a matching frame above. You lay
This was carefully planned—and it was delib-
down on it, you put your face in the audio-
erately vicious. An online persona could be re-
video display, and the pads would massage
booted, but wetware termination was
and manipulate, rub and stroke and titillate to
permanent.
match any fantasy you could create.
Okay, go back to the victim. Start from
A variety of programs were available, from
there.
gentle snuggling to rough trade. Male or fe-
Damn, but Cobie had been one beautiful
male simulations were programmable, top or
woman. He knew how to work it. He was
bottom, or both at the same time. The experi-
good. So good, I’d have hooked up with her.
ence was generally better than the real thing
I wasn’t the f irst to discover this; it was
because the programs monitored and re-
commo
n knowledge—a woman designed by
sponded to the physical reactions of the con-
a man knows exactly how to please another
sumer.
man, usually better than a woman. Sorry,
Illicit programs, rape simulators, were also
ladies, but there are all those peer-reviewed
available. That’s how Cobie had been mur-
studies. Of course, the reverse is true too—
dered—raped to death. There was blood and
and the male ego is unlikely to ever recover.
gore everywhere.
So . . . Cobie had been playing female for
I did not visit the crime scene, no need. The
years. He knew what he was doing. Start with
forensics team had been very thorough. And
that.
Cobie’s death insurance covered the cost of
So . . . who would want to murder a cross-
unlimited access to all pertinent investiga-
player? No. Wrong question. Who would be
tions. Cobie had seen to that, so that suggest-
enraged by a crossplayer? Or why? Crossplay-
ed he knew he was in danger for quite some
ing was so common it wasn’t an issue for most
time. But if he knew he was in danger, then
people—only a few religious fanatics might be
why didn’t he identify the source of the
offended, and they weren’t likely to visit End-
threat?
less City. That left a cliché so obvious even fan-
That was a good question. There wasn’t a
f ic wouldn’t go there—a man had fallen for
lot of other evidence. The only tangible cor-
Cobie’s female avatar and then become en-
roboration was the sextable. Someone had re-
raged when he discovered Cobie had a meat-
placed Cobie’s copy of “Frat Boy Shenanigans”
space penis. Nope. Only a studio producer
with “Death by Oompah!” Cobie wouldn’t
would buy a storyline that shallow.
have done it himself—not deliberately. Only
The not quite so obvious answer—could it
by mistake.
have been a TERF, a Trans-Exclusionary Radi-
Backtracking the channels wasn’t a dead-
cal Freak? Some of them were online violent—
end, but it was an infinite labyrinth. The mal-
they made excellent assassins if they approved
ware had been routed through several
of the target—but there weren’t many meat-
hundred thousand ephemeral nodes created
space incidents. This didn’t fit their pattern.
on the fly to pass on the code, then erased im-
Everybody in Endless City was an avatar—a
mediately after. Most of those nodes had
performance. Even if you were a puristan and
Analog Science Fiction and Fact Page 33