A Large Anthology of Science Fiction

by Jerry

  “We’re one of the first. When did you leave?”

  “About thirty years ago.”

  “The Cluster’s grown a lot since then. Getting too civilized for us. We’re on the move to greener pastures, to use an old expression.”

  “Have you ever considered what will happen when there are no more greener pastures?”

  “Not really. It’s not going to happen in my time, or my children’s. It’s been estimated that there are enough habitable planets to last another 1,200 years.”

  “And what happens after that?”

  “Population control is already in effect on some of the older planets. We’ll manage.”

  “But what about people like you? People who like the wilds?”

  “I don’t know. Intergalactic exploration?”

  “Bah! Don’t count on it. Trips would take too long. Do you know what the Galaxy will be like? It’ll be tame! No virgin planets! Think about it. No unexplored places. No wilderness, only a few small parks. All other land will be needed for farming. Do you want your descendents to inherit a Galaxy like that?

  “Have you ever seen Earth—or at least pictures of it? I left three hundred, maybe four hundred years ago, but even then it was almost half city. All the rest was under cultivation—all of it! Soon after your 1,200 years, the entire Galaxy will be similar. Save this planet and the rest of this system. The Mittzer system is only a couple hundred parsecs away, and it’s supposed to be nice. Go back to Mittzer. There’s plenty of room there. This world is one in a thousand. If you spare it, future generations will thank you. This world could someday become a park, the first and greatest in a series of Galactic parks.”

  “We have filed a claim for this planet,” Smith said quietly. “We did not file for Mittzer—”

  “A technicality!” Zarken exploded. “Out here there are no patrols. No one would notice for years, much less care. By the time it mattered, you’d be firmly established. You’d have no trouble getting the Bureau to shift your claim.”

  “No.” Smith shook his head firmly. “We’ve spent a lot of time and money coming here. We aren’t going to change our plans.”

  “I’d be glad to reimburse you.”

  Smith snorted. “That would do a whole lot of good way out here in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Please don’t close your mind. Think of posterity.”

  Smith didn’t respond.

  “Sleep on it, then. For your children’s sake. For your own sake.”

  An hour later, Sonja Nikolius and several other members of the dinner party were gathered in the Starbird’s rec room, which they had commandeered for an informal conference. “I’m glad I wasn’t there,” said Ian Goldman, the ship’s first mate. “I don’t like fanatics, and I’d have probably have told him so to his face.” Goldman’s duties had kept him aboard ship, and Sonja and her companions were bringing him up to date on the evening’s events. “That last remark certainly sounded like a threat,” he added. “I don’t trust him.”

  “So what do you think we should do?” asked Sonja. “Charge out there with hunting rifles and gun him down?” Technically, she was the expedition’s soil biologist, a role that wouldn’t become important until after the Starbird‘s crew was firmly entrenched dirtside, bioforming the native soils for efficient growth of Earth-normal crops. But she was also the farming crew’s consensus pick for Agricultural Chief, in which capacity she’d been one of Zarken’s dinner guests.

  “Why not put some distance between us and him—now,” said Kirk Michaels. Michaels’ current role was as ship’s engineer, a task that would shift to habitat construction once a colony site was selected. He hadn’t liked what he’d seen about Zarken’s “humble dwelling,” and had been vocal about it from the moment he and Sonja were back aboard ship. “That guy’s got a lot of technology in the hands of those robots,” he said for about the tenth time in as many minutes.

  Smith appeared in the rec room doorway, just in time to hear the last remark. “I’ve already posted a guard,” he said, sliding into a lounge chair. Sonja watched her companions swivel to face him, their body language converting his chair into the head of an imaginary table. “I told them to warn once, then fire.”

  Michaels was anything but mollified. “But sir, we don’t know how many of those robots he has. He could have dozens, maybe hundreds. And he’s got to have blasting supplies. What if he loads the robots down with explosives and turns them into walking bombs? Even if hunting rifles can stop them—and we have no guarantee they would—he could get creative and hide them behind a bulldozer or something.” He didn’t have to add that the Starbird had no hope of stopping even that simple an assault. Colonizing expeditions were lightly armed: capable of defending themselves against predators but not military aggressors. The people of the Cluster had learned the hard way that heavy weapons were dangerous for small, isolated parties. Expeditions were like marriages: occasionally they split up, and when they did, it could get vicious. It didn’t pay to have too much firepower lying around. For each legitimate case of self-defense, there’d been a dozen coups, tin-pot dictators, and civil wars.

  “We’re definitely vulnerable as long as we’re on the ground,” Goldman chimed in. “It would be nice to be able to use the meteor shielding.” That had been Michaels’ second-favorite topic in the past few minutes. Even a small bomb could sufficiently disable the ship to require repair crews to go outside, where the robots could pick them off with Zarken’s own hunting rifles. The repulsor shields would prevent this, but Starbird couldn’t turn them on while in contact with the ground. If she did, she’d simply blow herself up, along with a sizeable chunk of the surrounding real estate. To bring the shields on line, the ship had to be airborne.

  “I agree,” said Smith. “But there’s no sense in lifting off tonight. It would take too long to prep for launch. Zarken couldn’t help but notice what we’re doing, and it’s a pretty significant breach of etiquette to slip away like that, without a good explanation. We’d just be forcing his hand—while we’re still on the ground and still vulnerable. Right now, he’s either not planning anything or hoping he’s talked us into going somewhere else.”

  Sonja cleared her throat, and all eyes shifted to her, making her feel like one of her microbes, under a microscope. She wasn’t quite sure why she’d accepted the role of Ag Chief, and one thing she was sure of was that she wouldn’t seek higher office. “We’ve not talked about another option,” she forced herself to say into the awkward silence.

  “I’m all ears,” Smith said.

  “What if we just gave him what he wanted?”

  “You mean, turn tail and run home?” Goldberg’s shocked tone was worse than the scorn he was too-carefully avoiding.

  “Not all the way, but Zarken’s right about Mittzer—or anywhere else in its vicinity, for that matter. Those colonies would probably be happy to see us.”

  Michaels made no effort to conceal his disgust. “No way,” he said. “I signed on to help build a new world, not play second fiddle on someone else’s. If I’d wanted that, I could have stayed in the Cluster.” He didn’t have to add that Mittzer, while indeed close, was back in the direction they’d come from. As long as they were this far out on the frontier, retreating was the last thing he’d want to do.

  “What do you think of his ‘galactic park’ idea?” Smith asked. His voice was modulated to a tone of perfect neutrality, but Sonja had long ago realized that this was a sign that she must proceed with caution. Still, she owed the captain an honest answer. “It’s not without merit,” she said after a pause to find exactly the right words. “But it’s impractical. Parks are afterthoughts, created from land that was unwanted during the first waves of settlement. Right now, nobody’s going to listen to the idea, even if a thousand years from now, our descendents wind up wishing someone had.” She hesitated again. “But I was thinking about something simpler. Do we really want to share a planet with this guy? I don’t trust him, either—more, I think, than I ha
te the thought of spending more time aboard this ship. And I myself don’t mind playing ‘second fiddle.’ Wherever we go will have plenty of worthwhile things for everyone to do.”

  “Speak for yourself,” growled Michaels.

  Smith rose from his chair, cutting off further discussion. “Enough,” he said. “As long as we’re still aboard ship, I’m captain, and this isn’t yet a democracy. But even if it were, Sonja, I think you’re outvoted. We’re not about to go on to Mittzer or anywhere else.” A chorus of nods confirmed the statement. “So, try to get a good night’s sleep. By this time tomorrow, we’ll have the whole planet between us and him, with a couple of satellites up there to keep an eye on him. He won’t like it, but he’ll just have to live with it. Eventually, he’ll have no choice but to get used to us.”

  But Sonja wasn’t so sure. Long after the others departed, she lingered in the rec room. Like most of the Ag crew, she’d had a lot of time on her hands during the outbound journey. Most of the others had occupied themselves reading technical journals, looking for arcane bits of information that might aid their specialties. She’d been more interested in sociology, psychology, and political science—topics that might help the colonists interact as smoothly as possible once they spilled from the Starbird‘s artificial environment into the free-for-all spaciousness of a new world.

  In the process, she’d read a lot of history, and Zarken gave her the shivers.

  Many of the worst deeds in history had been done by people who were sure they were right: people who were heroes in their own eyes. And she was convinced of one thing. Zarken was absolutely certain that he was right. He was even working toward a goal that wasn’t totally absurd. Sonja shivered again. Smith was wrong. Zarken would never get used to them.

  The next morning, Zarken bid the colonists a strained farewell and watched their ship lift off the meadow on which it had landed. As soon as it was airborne, he hurried to a sparsely furnished room on the lowermost level of his residence. There, a scanner was already plotting the ship’s course.

  “Computer,” he barked. The tension that had been building inside him ever since Smith’s ship had been spotted was coming to a head now, and he found it difficult to maintain the unemotional tone needed to control a computer effectively. “What is the destination of the colonizing ship?”

  “Indefinite. It appears to be leaving this planet.”

  “Good.” Zarken allowed himself a sigh of relief. Maybe Smith had reconsidered. Maybe—

  “The colonizing ship is changing course,” the computer announced. “It is now in a descending trajectory. It has also activated its meteor defenses.”

  “Fools!” They were going to land. Smith had ignored his request. He’d followed his original course only to mislead Zarken, and had held it only until he’d thought Zarken could do nothing to intervene.

  “Transfer coordinates of intruder to laser control,” Zarken commanded. He’d done this once before, and he’d do it again and again if he had to. Why wouldn’t anybody listen?!

  “Coordinates transferred.”

  “Prepare to fire.”

  Deep in a mountain forest, an immense laser amplifier rose from its subterranean armory. Zarken imagined he could feel the vibrations.

  “Incoming message,” the computer announced.

  Zarken was caught off guard, but he supposed that it was inevitable that the colonists would still be scrutinizing his compound, however confident they might be that they were safe from anything he might be able to do. He considered ignoring the message, but one thing Zarken had never failed to be was polite.

  “Put it through,” he said.

  Smith’s voice was instantly on line, sounding as though the ship captain was in the room with him, only a few feet away. Zarken might have cut himself off from civilization, but he had a pair of drone ships that shuttled to and from the Cluster for transshipments of the highest-grade technologies money could buy, purchased directly and untraceably from old-system suppliers. Even though he’d rather not need it, there was no reason not to have good communication equipment.

  “What the Hell is that thing?” Smith demanded. Zarken smiled tightly to himself, glad that he was using voice-only monitors so his expression would not be misinterpreted. His pleasure came solely from the fact that Smith had finally allowed a crack in his so-cautious composure. In the chess game of politics, Zarken would have scored an important point. Unfortunately, this wasn’t a debate. Left to themselves, the colonists would destroy the serenity of this planet. They would cut trees, plant crops, build houses. Traders would follow. At first, the impact would be minor, but within a few generations the entire world would be civilized. And it would be as much Zarken’s fault as the colonists’, for it was Zarken’s family who’d given humanity the frightening ability to expand across the Galaxy, faster than light.

  “What does it look like it is?” he said, pleased to note that his tone of voice was flatter and more emotionless than when he’d been talking only to his computer.

  “Whoa,” said Smith. “Let’s talk about this.”

  “We already have,” Zarken said. “Two minutes ago, you gave me your answer.” If only he could have used the family fortune to purchase the worlds he wanted to protect—he was rich enough to buy an entire frontier sector. But the Colonial officials had been very firm in their foreclosure of that option. Some things, it seemed, just couldn’t be bought. Some things had to be done. And there was only one thing Zarken could do now to continue to protect this, his favorite world.

  “Maybe we can find a compromise.” Smith was fighting to retain his composure, and in an abstract way, Zarken admired him for it. But it wasn’t the admiration of one human for another. It was the admiration of a superior being for a lesser one that knew nothing better than to keep trying—the admiration of a child watching an inverted beetle struggle to right itself, not knowing the task was hopeless.

  “There do not seem to be many options,” Zarken said. “I offered you a chance to help save this planet, but you preferred to exploit it. I cannot imagine how you could now convince me that you are sincere.”

  As he’d been talking, Zarken had been watching the computer running through the laser’s power-up routine. Now, the final status light flicked green. “Laser system operational,” the computer announced.

  There was a hiss of Smith’s indrawn breath, and a babble of voices in the background. One was female, and Zarken had an image of a quiet young woman—a biologist of some kind—who’d seemed the most attentive at his party. In a different reality, they might have been allies. But some decisions are irrevocable, and she’d thrown in her lot with the planet’s enemies.

  “Wait—” Smith was saying again, but Zarken was no longer viewing him or Sonja or Michaels or any of the others as distinct beings, separate from the Starbird itself. He borrowed a centering ritual from his daily meditations, using it to blank his mind of the scraps of humanity that had fluttered into it with his unwelcome guests. Emotions had become alien to him—even useful ones like anger—and he knew it would be weeks before he regained his normal routine. For the moment, though, the centering ritual was sufficient.

  “Fire,” he said in a level voice.

  An intense beam of X-rays shot into the sky. Being only electromagnetic radiation, it easily penetrated the force fields protecting the colonizing ship. Within seconds, thousands of tons of metal, and one hundred and two colonists were vaporized.

  Loren Zarken was absolute ruler of an entire solar system. He was again its sole occupant, dwelling in solitude, attended by automatons—and as slavish to his duty as any of his mechanical servants. He was not a hermit by nature, but he no longer had difficulty being one.

  SMALL MOMENTS IN TIME

  John G. Hemry

  Given godlike powers, you must decide whether to use them—and either choice has huge consequences.

  The odd truth of working as a Temporal Interventionist is that some there and thens are better than others. History
books make the past sound like one thrilling event after another. But for every Shoot Out at the OK Corral moment of excitement, there’s days, weeks, months and years of people just doing the things that people have to do. Things important enough to keep them alive and their society functioning. Plenty of the all-too-usual human drama, but not the stuff of great historical drama. Most people don’t believe that when I tell them, though.

  I leaned against the window frame, squinting against a dry, hot wind blowing across the Kansas prairie and into my face, bringing the gritty taste of fine dust into my mouth whenever I licked my lips. Sometimes I think about the fact that the dust might literally have once been part of someone I knew in another long ago there and then. Usually, I try not to think about that, but something about the apparently endless prairie and the seemingly endless wind brought it to mind now, along with memories of the Earps and their brief moment in another western town where the wind had always seemed to be blowing hard.

  The thin curtain drawn back from the hotel window fluttered in that wind. From my second story room, I could see down the main drag of Junction City, Kansas circa July, 1918 A.D. Such as it was. Lots of wood structures, some brick and some sandstone block construction, primitive internal combustion-driven automobiles contending for space on the road with horse-drawn wagons, and a few clouds in a faded blue sky as yet contaminated mainly only by that damned dust.

  A cluster of men wearing drab military uniforms came around a corner, offering a small reminder of the hosts currently grinding each other into the bloody mud of Europe, just as they’d been doing for the last four years here and now. I knew that particular war was finally drawing to a close. If I wanted to, I could find out the names of the soldiers I saw and learn which of them would die before the end of the war. I didn’t want to.

  Instead, I gathered up the coat local fashion demanded I wear despite the weather, wished I could do without the neck-tie local fashion likewise demanded, took a drink of the lukewarm water remaining in the pitcher the room boasted instead of a sink, and headed for one of the local grain suppliers.