by Jerry
XIII
Maybe Leidi had been drinking to give herself courage. The advantage of a knife wasn’t definitive against Sink-Tooth. Padovani decided to take advantage of being in the restroom to empty his bladder. He lifted up the toilet seat and stood there, still, confused, until he realized that there was nothing that his hand could grab and point with. He sighed. There are worse things in life, he thought, while he sat and peed.
After that, he washed his face again. Leidi’s smile was beautiful, much better in real life than in the photo in her file. He felt good to see it. On the way back to the table he rehearsed it. Now he had to entertain his dinner partner until the FarmaCom people appeared. Ringo looked at his telephone with a worried expression as if it wasn’t working properly.
“You took too long.”
“You won’t believe what happened to me in the restroom.”
He looked around for the girl in the short dress and fortunately didn’t find her. The Indian blinked exaggeratedly, sat down without pulling in his chair, and crossed his legs.
“The girl from before. She fondled my breasts and we kissed.”
Ringo stopped looking at the phone. Padovani stretched his back and stuck out his chest. If he was going to spend the rest of his life as a woman in a foreign country, he’d have to get used to it. At least he had first-hand experience about what heterosexual men liked. He began to invent a story about what could have happened in the bathroom.
“Wow,” Ringo repeated. From time to time he glanced at his mobile, but he didn’t pay as much attention to it as he had before.
A new waiter came, one that hadn’t been seen before, and offered them a nightcap of liquor.
“On the house.”
The waiter winked, and Padovani knew he could finish his story.
XIV
Ringo lay halfway over the table, unconscious. The rest of the diners had been asked to leave, with the excuse of a kitchen fire.
Just as he had agreed with the director, they put an inhibitor in his nose right there in the restaurant. To make it faster, he asked them to do it without anesthesia, since it was well known that women could bear pain better.
Then he saw that the FarmaCom men had begun to search Ringo’s body.
“I doubt he carried the papers on him.”
The waiter, the same one who had served them the nightcap, smiled at him. Padovani returned the smile, delighted to see how friendly everyone was toward him now that he was a pretty young woman. Who knows? he said to himself.
Maybe life was giving him another opportunity to bring up children.
WHAT JERRY KNOWS
Shane D. Rhinewald
Jerry sits in his favorite chair—the one with the red, plastic back. He says the others just don’t feel right. His eyes dart around the room with boyish wonder, but they’re a man’s eyes, milky with cataracts, edged with wrinkles. He looks at the black and white pictures on the wall depicting historic events and gives me the date (down to the time of day in some cases) for everything from the Kennedy assassination to the shooting at Columbine.
“Jerry, how do you feel today?” I ask, tapping my pen. Every session starts with a similar line of questioning; Jerry likes the routine. “Do you know how you feel?”
“No,” he says. His eyes return to the pictures on the walls, and he launches into a lecture about the Cuban Missile Crisis. He likes to say Khrushchev.
I let him finish. “Do you know what a savant is, Jerry?”
His tongue flicks across his lips. He recites, “A person with a developmental disorder that has one or more areas of expertise, ability, or brilliance that contrasts with the individual’s overall limitations.”
“And do you know any savants?”
“No,” Jerry says. He sounds disappointed, but a picture of Dwight Eisenhower delivering the presidential farewell address distracts him.
“Think about my question again. Do you know any savants, Jerry? Do you know someone really good at something, someone really smart?”
He ignores my question and tells me that Eisenhower was the 34th president and died on March 28, 1969. It was a Friday.
“OK. A new question then, Jerry. Do you know what planet we’re on?”
That gets his attention. He points at a picture of an astronaut putting a flag in a green field.
“It’s not a planet. It’s Baglioni VIII, the smallest moon of the gas giant Telious III, which revolves around a sun half the size of the one Earth does. We’re 8.2724 light years from Earth, or 8.27243 if you want me to take it out another decimal. Or—”
“That’s good enough, Jerry,” I say. “Do you know why we left Earth?”
He shakes his head and demands juice. I tell him he’ll have to wait until we’re done talking, and after promising him both apple and cranberry, he agrees to continue answering questions.
“Tell me about the Third World War,” I say, pointing to a picture on the wall showing a torn American flag being raised by two bloodied soldiers.
“The Third World War started in 2107 AD as a proxy war between Israel and Iran, through which the United States and Russia reignited the Cold War,” he says. He adds with a laugh, “Khrushchev. Khrushchev.”
“And what happened to the oceans after?”
He pauses. “The fallout from the war ate a hole in the ozone layer that caused the icecaps to melt more quickly, and the oceans rose 20.45 centimeters a year.”
“And what did that mean for humanity? What did people fear? What was the feeling at the time?”
Jerry shrugs. He’d rather point out more pictures and fire off the dates of key events in the Third World War, ending with the Truce of Earth on May 2, 2121. When he finishes, he shouts that he wants his juice now, so I put my notepad aside and go ask an aide to fetch it for him. While she’s gone, I resume my line of questioning.
“Jerry, do you know the formula that made anti-matter propulsion possible?”
He tells me, and I understand none of it. It’s just strange names and numbers that sound like mindless ramblings.
“And do you know it’s your formula? You came up with it, Jerry. You created that.”
Jerry just fiddles with the sides of his chair. The aide returns, and he sips his juice while I tell him how he helped get some people off Earth with his scientific breakthroughs. I tell him that without the advances in technology his mind helped unlock, we’d still be stuck in our own solar system. He complains that the cranberry juice tastes like a different brand than last week.
“Do you know a lot about spaceships, Jerry?”
He smiles—or at least I like to think he does. He goes on to tell me all about how they work, down to the individual lines of code in their navigating software. Ships are his favorite, he tells me, because of all the numbers involved. Everything in the universe works because of numbers. Lots and lots of them. He sees them in his head and considers them his only friends.
When he finishes, I ask, “Do you know that you’re a special man, Jerry?”
He knows that the Milky Way Galaxy is 7.85 trillion cubic light years in volume. He knows that the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded on January 28, 1986. He knows that a uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which six are valence electrons. But he doesn’t know that mankind owes him a debt of gratitude—and he probably never will.
“Well, you are a special man, Jerry,” I say, smiling. I touch his arm. “And not just because you helped save humanity.”
He sips his juice.
FROM OUT OF THE SUN, ENDLESSLY SINGING
Simon R. Green
THIS IS THE story. It is an old, old story, and most of the true details are lost to us. But this is how the story has always been told, down the many years. Of our greatest loss and our greatest triumph; of three who were sent down into Hell for ever, that the rest of Humanity might know safety, and revenge. This is the story of the Weeping Woman, the Man With the Golden Voice, and the Rogue Mind. If the story upsets you, pretend it never happened.
It was a very long time ago, after all.
This goes back to the days of the Great Up and Out, when we left our mother world to go out into the stars; to explore the Galaxy and take her fertile planets for our own. All those silver ships, dancing through the dark, blazing bright in the jungle of the night. We met no opposition we couldn’t handle, colonized every suitable world we came to and terraformed the rest, remaking them in our image. It was a glorious time, by all accounts, building our glittering cities and proud civilizations, in defiance of all that endless empty Space. We should have known better. We should have sent ahead, to say we were coming. Because it turned out we were trespassing, and not at all welcome.
They came to us from out of the Deep, from out of the darkest part of Deep Space, from far beyond the realms we knew, or could ever hope to comprehend. Without warning they came, aliens as big as starships, bigger than anything we had ever built, and far more powerful. Endless numbers of them, a hoard, a swarm, deadly things of horrid shape and terrible intent, blocking out the stars where they passed. They were each of them huge and awful, unknown and unknowable, utterly alien things moving inexorably through open Space on great shimmering wings. They came from where nothing comes from, and they thrived in conditions where nothing should live. Their shapes made no sense to human eyes, to human aesthetics. They were nightmares given shape and form, our darkest fears made flesh. We called them the Medusae, because wherever they looked, things died.
They destroyed the first colonized planets they came to, without hesitation, without warning. They paused in orbit just long enough to look down on the civilizations we had built there, and just their terrible gaze was enough to kill everything that lived. We still have recorded images from that time, of the dead worlds. Cities full of corpses, towns where nothing moved. Wildlife lying unmoving, rotting in the open, and fish of all kinds bobbing unseeing on the surfaces of the oceans. The Medusae moved on, from planet to planet, system to system, leaving only dead worlds in their wake.
We sent the Fleet out to meet them, hundreds and hundreds of our marvellous and mighty Dreadnaughts, armed to the teeth with disrupters and force shields, planet-buster bombs and reality invertors. The Fleet closed with the Medusae, singing our songs of glory, ravening energies flashing across open Space, and all of it was for nothing. We could not touch the Medusae. They passed over the Fleet like a storm in the night, and left behind them mile-long starships cracked open from stem to stern, with streams of dead bodies issuing out of broken hulls, scattering slowly across the dark. Occasionally some would tumble down through the atmosphere of a dead world, like so many shooting stars with no one to see them.
The Medusae moved on through the colonized systems, wiping clean every world we’d colonized or changed, as though just our presence on their planets had contaminated those beyond saving. One by one, the planetary comm systems fell silent, voices crying out for help that never came, fading into static ghosts. Some colonists got away, fleeing ahead of the Medusae on desperate, overcrowded ships; most didn’t. There is no number big enough that the human mind can accept to sum up our losses. All the men, women and children lost in those long months of silent slaughter. All the proudly named cities, all the wonders and marvels we built out of nothing; gone, all gone. And finally, when they’d run out of planets to cleanse, and people to kill, the Medusae came looking for us. All that great swarm, hideous beyond bearing, complex beyond our comprehension, beyond reason or reasoning with . . . they followed the fleeing ships back to us, back to the home of Mankind.
Back to Old Earth.
We sent up every ship we had, everything that would fly, loaded with every weapon we had, and we met the Medusae at the very edge of our solar system. And there, we stopped them. The aliens looked upon our worlds, but came no closer. And for a while we rejoiced, because we thought we had won a great victory. We should have known better. The Medusae had stopped because they didn’t need to come any closer. Hanging there in open Space, silent and huge and monstrous, out beyond the great gas-giant planets, they looked on Old Earth, and reached out with their incomprehensible energies to touch our world. They poisoned our planet. Changed her essential nature, so that our world would no longer support human life. They turned our home against Humanity. A fitting punishment, from the Medusae; they terraformed us.
And that . . . that was when we got really angry, and contemplated revenge.
The Lords and Ladies of Old Earth came together in Convocation, for the first time in centuries. They met at Siege Perilous, that wonderful ancient monument to past glories, shaped like a massive hourglass, towering high and high over the bustling starport of New Damascus. Immortal and powerful, relentless and implacable, the Lords and Ladies represented Concepts, not Countries. They spoke for all the various aspects of Humanity, and their word was Law. Made immortal, so that they could take the long view. Denied peace or rest, because they were needed. Cursed with conscience and damned with duty, because that’s how we always reward the best of us.
Only the Lords and Ladies knew the secret truth of our poisoned estate; that we would have to leave Old Earth and find a new home somewhere else. The continuance of Humanity itself was at threat, but only the Lords and Ladies knew. Because only they could be trusted to know everything. The Lords and Ladies of Old Earth were given dominion to do anything and everything necessary to serve and preserve Humanity. In an acknowledged Emergency, the Lords and Ladies were authorized and enjoined to call upon any human being, anyone anywhere, for any necessary purpose. Humanity gave them this power, and trusted them to use it well and wisely. Because only they could take the truly long view; and because everyone else was just too busy.
There were checks and balances in place, of course. And truly terrible punishments.
They came to Convocation in the last hours of evening, their personal ships drifting down like so many falling leaves, settling easily onto the crystal landing pads set out on top of Siege Perilous. And then they made their way down to the single reserved meeting hall, a bare and sparse chamber, isolated from the world. They had no use for seats of state, for the trappings of power or the comforts of privilege. Exactly one hundred Lords and Ladies stood in a great circle, looking openly upon each other, in their traditional peacock robes of vivid colours. Their faces were naked and unmasked, so that everyone could see and be seen. Outside, combat androids programmed with the deposited memories of rabid wolves patrolled the perimeter, ready and eager to kill any living thing they encountered.
There were other, less noticeable protections in place, of course.
The Lord Ravensguard spoke for War, so he spoke first. Tall and grave he was, with cool, thoughtful eyes. He spoke of the horrors the Medusae had committed, of what they had done and might do yet. And then he spoke of possible responses and tactics.
“There are always the Forbidden Weapons,” he said calmly. “Those ancient and detestable devices locked away for centuries, because they were deemed too terrible for Man to use upon Man. I speak of the Time Hammer, and the Despicable Childe. The Nightmare Engines and the Hour From Beyond.”
“Could we use such things, and still call ourselves human?” said the Lord Zodiac, representing Culture. “You cannot defeat evil with evil methods. You cannot stop monsters by becoming monsters.”
“The enemy we face has no understanding of such concepts,” the Lord Ravensguard said firmly. “They do not seek to destroy us because they are Good or Evil. They do not think like us. They see us only as . . . an infestation.”
“Have we exhausted all means of communicating with them?” said the Lady Benefice, who spoke for Communications.
“We have tried everything, from all the many forms of technology, to the most extreme reaches of psi,” said the Lord Ravensguard. “They do not hear us. Or, more likely, they choose not to.”
“Weapons are not the answer,” said the Lady Subtle, who represented Security. Small she was, compact, determined. “We have tried weapons, and they have failed us. We mus
t sink lower than that. We shall fight the Medusae with guile and betrayal, and they will not see it coming. Because they would never stoop so low.”
“You have a plan?” said the Lord Ravensguard.
And everyone smiled, politely. Because the Lady Subtle always had a plan. She spoke to them at length, of a trap, and a punishment, and Humanity’s final revenge. The Convocation then deliberated. They did not have the luxury of being shocked, or offended; their duty demanded. Only was this awful plan practical? There was much discussion, which ended when the Lord DeMeter, who spoke for the soul of Humanity, raised the only question that mattered.
“Do we have the right,” he asked, “to make such a sacrifice, and place such a stain upon the collective conscience of Humanity?”
“We can do this; we must do this,” said the Lady Shard, who represented Duty. Vivacious, she was, full of life, and deadly in her focused malice. “We will do this because we have no other choice. Humanity will be saved, and avenged, and that is all that matters.”
And so the decision was made, and the order given. The Lord Ravensguard and the Ladies Subtle and Shard went out from Convocation to cross the world and acquire the three necessary elements for Humanity’s last blow at the Medusae.
The Lord Ravensguard went to the Grand Old Opera House, set among the gleaming spires and shimmering towers of the city Sydney, in Australia. Samuel DeClare was singing there that night. There was no greater singer among all Humanity at that time. They called him the Man With the Golden Voice. When he sang, everyone listened. He could break your heart and mend it, all in a single song. Make you cry and make you cheer; weigh you down and lift you up; and make you love every moment of it. His audiences adored him, and beat their hands bloody in applause at the end of every concert. And this night was his greatest appearance, before his biggest audience. Afterwards, everyone there said it was his finest moment. They were wrong, but they couldn’t know that. The Lord Ravensguard stood at the very back of the massive concert hall, and listened, and was moved like everyone else. Perhaps more so, because he alone knew what Samuel DeClare’s final performance would entail.