The Warden’s image appears in front of her like a painful memory. It is as she remembers her consort when he was a dashing and brave commander, streaking through hyperspace nodes and knitting the Federation together with his strength.
The Warden is only a simulation, though, intangible and far away. But that would not be much different from their original romance, with her consort flitting off through the Galaxy for three-quarters of the year while she held the reins of government at home. She had rarely held him anyway; but they had spoken often through the private subspace link.
They greet each other in the same breath and then the widowed Praesidentrix begins catching up on all the things she has wanted to say to him, repeating all the things she did tell him while he writhed in delirium from his withdrawal, while she had concocted a false story about his fatal “accident” in order to avert a scandal.
But first she must say how proud she is of their son.
DIFFERENT DAY
K. TEMPEST BRADFORD
K. Tempest Bradford’s fiction has appeared in or is forthcoming from Electric Velocipede, Podcastle, and Strange Horizons. In addition to writing, she’s worked in the editorial trenches of several magazines, and is currently the managing editor for Fantasy Magazine.
Bradford says that she’s an “un-fan” of how SF on television and film often depicts each alien race as a monoculture. “When characters go to alien planets, they generally deal with one government, one group of people, one culture, as if that planet is made up of one huge, happy group who work together and have no internal differences,” she said.
So she started thinking about what it would be like if the aliens that came here had the same problems we have—fighting between groups and cultures and such. “I also thought it would be nice to show that they wouldn’t necessarily come to America first,” she said. “Or, if they did, it wouldn’t be because they think we’re superior.”
I didn’t pay much attention to the aliens at first. Oh, if you mean like that first week, then yeah, we were scared and hiding and shit like everyone else. But once the whole thing calmed down and everything went back to normal I didn’t spend that much time thinking about them.
It’s all well and good to come down from space and promise you can fix the ozone or whatever, but any group of people—aliens, sorry—that come to this planet and start out by talking to our government have to be seriously doubted. All the countries on all the continents and they think we’re the most likely to care about cleaning up the environment? Ha ha, yeah right.
Anyway, like I said, after that first scare I didn’t pay a lot of attention to them. Not like my daughter with her t-shirts and webpages and all that. My little corner of the world wasn’t going to change.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a head-in-the-sand kind of guy. I read newspapers from all over on my Google News. I knew about how other countries were mad that those—whatchacall’em? . . . By-er-nam-yan? Yeah—them Byernamian aliens were making deals with us like America has some kind of power to decide stuff for the whole planet. Thing is, no matter how many threats they make, I live in Mason fucking Ohio. Nothing ever happens here until it’s happened somewhere else at least five times. Aliens or not, I still have to be at work on Monday and take my son to karate on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
It got really messed up when the other aliens came, though. The other ones. You know, the ah . . . Deb . . . Debachhhk—whatever. I can’t make that sound—neither can anyone on CNN. My wife and I call them the African Aliens because they have that weird head shape.
I was pulling an all-nighter here at the store—correcting the bedroom set inventory my stupid nephew screwed up—when I heard Nelson Mandela on the radio announcing that he’d been negotiating with aliens too, and that they were from the same planet as the Byerwhosits but a different tribe or somethin’. And you know that it was no mistake that shit was broadcast when it was 4 a.m. here.
Now see, that was when I started paying attention. Cuz those first aliens had promised to do something about global warming, but here the African Aliens come to tell us that they were lying. Flat out. Those Byernams don’t even have access to the technology. And here we’d given them, what, half of the global soy crop already? For nothing?
I tell you though, even though they freak me out a little, I gotta respect those African Aliens. They deal with Mandela and the Dalai Lama and only them two. They did their homework before showing up here. Mandela and the Lama are the only two guys on the planet I would trust not to screw everybody else over. Of course, my wife is pissed that they don’t have a woman in there, too. Knowing her, she’d probably want it to be Oprah.
Hey look, all I’m sayin’ is that if the African Aliens are as powerful as they say they are, then I want someone with a little global perspective negotiating with them. This new President, he’s got his head on straight, yeah. But he has enough to deal with, cleaning up after the last administration. A messed up economy, the Constitution used for toilet paper, all that crap about torture—you know, almost every other country hated us before President Dipshit made that bad deal, now they all do. Maybe Mandela and the Lama can fix the mess he made without starting another damn war.
Then again, if the Byernamers hadn’t made such a big show of making first contact in the middle of the Super Bowl halftime show, the government probably wouldn’t have ever told us about them or the soy deal. We’d be just as clueless as the Chinese were—and don’t tell me you weren’t floored when that bit came out about Mao being in contact with that other other tribe of aliens. 50 years ago and no one knew for all this time! I can’t believe that dude is still alive somewhere out in space.
And you notice how quick the Chinese got their asses out of Tibet after the Dalai Lama talked about it on Al Jazeera? Makes me wonder what else they don’t want us to know.
No, you know what, it makes me worry. All these different aliens showing up and putting us in the middle of their fights that’ve been going on for centuries? Something tells me we won’t come out ahead no matter what we do. We had enough problems of our own before any of them showed up. Now we have to deal with international and inter . . . space relations. Who has the right to talk to who and negotiate what and all else. And we still have global warming!
The aliens don’t care, though. They’re too busy fighting. It’s like what they came here to get out of us is secondary—they still have to learn how to get on with each other.
You know, I used to think that the best part of space travel would be getting away from folk you can’t stand. Just put all your people on a spaceship and go. What’s the use if you all just end up in the same places arguing over the same ol’ shit?
So no, I’m not letting my daughter sign up for that colony thing the African Aliens are setting up. She just turned sixteen, and thank God for that parental consent requirement. This whole “cultural exchange” thing to fix global warming, it just doesn’t sit right. What do they need with a million people? To go off to some planet and do what? For who? We won’t even be able to communicate with them for five years. I don’t think so. Not my daughter.
We should have been solving our own problems instead of counting on some damn handout from the sky. So you know what? I told her no. Don’t make the same mistakes they did, I said. It’ll just be the same shit, different planet. And if you have to deal with the same old shit no matter where you go, so you might as well stay right here and do it at home.
Yeah, she’s mad at me now, but she’ll have other chances. Won’t be long before all the other aliens out there show up. A billion stars in the sky? There’s got to be more than just three kinds.
TWILIGHT OF THE GODS
JOHN C. WRIGHT
John C. Wright is the author of nine novels including the recent Null-A Continuum, an authorized sequel to A.E. van Vogt’s World of Null-A. The first book in Wright’s Chaos Chronicles series—The Orphans of Chaos—was a finalist for the Nebula Award. His first novel, The Golden Age, was a finalist fo
r the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best SF novel of the year. He is also a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, who lives in the commonwealth of Virginia with his wife, author L. Jagi Lamplighter, and his three children Orville, Wilbur, and Just Wright.
“Twilight of the Gods” is a sequel to Wright’s short stories “Not Born a Man” and “Farthest Man From Earth,” and is his attempt to tell the story of Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelung in space. “All three tales take place in a common background or future history, where the human race has discovered the secret of immortality on 36 Ophiuchi,” Wright said. “Only an incentive such as eternal youth, in my opinion, could motivate the human race to overcome the near-infinite expense and hardship of interstellar travel.”
Tall golden doors loomed up behind the dais of the throne. Behind those doors, it was said, the Main Bridge of the Twilight of the Gods reposed, a chamber dim and vast, with many altars studded all with jeweled controls set before the dark mirrors of the Computer. But Acting Captain Weston II found the chamber oppressive, and did not like the mysterious dark mirrors of the Computer watching him, and so, since his father’s death many years ago, this white high chamber before the golden doors was used as his hall of audience.
The chamber was paved in squares of gold and white, with pillars of gold spaced along white walls. Hanging between the pillars were portraits of scenes from somewhere in the ship the Captain had never seen; fields of green plants, some taller than a man, growing, for some reason, along the deck rather than in shelves along the walls. In the pictures, the deck was buckled and broken, rising and falling in round slopes (perhaps due to damage from a Weapon of the Enemy) with major leaks running across it. The scenes took place in some hold or bay larger than any Acting Captain Weston II had seen or could imagine; the overhead bulkhead was painted light blue, some sort of white disruption like steam-clouds floating against it. In many pictures, the blue overhead was ruptured by a large yellow many-rayed circular explosion, perhaps, again, of a Weapon.
In most pictures were sheep or other animals, and young crewmen and women, out of uniform, blissfully ignoring the explosion overhead, and doing nothing to stop the huge leaks, one of which had ducks swimming in it.
Acting Captain Weston II found the pictures soothing, but disturbing. He often wondered if the artist had been trying to show how frail and foolish men are, that they will trip lightly through their little lives without a thought to the explosions and disasters all about them. Perhaps he preferred this chamber for that reason.
What the original use and name of this chamber had been in days gone past, no man of the Captain’s Court could tell, not even his withered and aged Computerman.
The chamber now was bare, except that the Computerman approached the throne and knelt to Weston. “My lord,” he said. His face was worn and haggard, his garb simple, rough, and belted with a hank of rope. The Computerman’s eyes showed red and staring, a certain sign of the many long nightwatches he had spent writhing in the grip of the holy drug, which allowed his brethren to commune with the Computer.
“Why do you come unbidden unto me?” Weston asked sternly. “I know you await another,”
The Computerman replied. “It is to warn you against that other, that I am come.”
The Acting Captain raised his hand, but the Computerman said swiftly, “Bid me not to go! Unless you would not heed the will of the Computer in this thing, the Computer which knows all, indeed, even things most secret and shameful.”
The Captain had a troubled look upon his face, and sat back with one hand clutching the front of his jeweled coat, as if to hide something behind his hand, something, perhaps, on a necklace hidden beneath his tunic. “What shame?” he said.
“Every child knows the story of the Ring of Last Command,” the Computerman said. “Of how, when the Sixth Barrage destroyed the lights and power of the second hundred decks, and Weapon of the Enemy opened the Great Chasm in the hull, reaching from the stars below almost to the thousandth deck, the first Captain, Valdemar, capitulated to the Enemy, and allowed a Boarding Party to come in from the Void Below the Hull. Decks Three Hundred through Seven Hundred Seventy rebelled, and followed bright Alverin into battle against the traitor Captain. But the Captain was not found, and his Ring of Final Command was lost. The ring, they say, can waken the Computers all again, and send the Weapons of the Twilight down into the Void.”
“Children’s fairy-tales,” the Captain said.
“Yet, I deem, they tempt you,” the Computerman said.
The Captain was silent.
“This prisoner which the giant brings; he had a ring inscribed with circuits, did he not? A ring which matches the descriptions of the Command Ring? You dream of learning the Secret Word which controls that Ring, and of conquering the world, of driving back the tall elves from decks above, where they fly and know no weight, and compelling the twisted dwarves from Engineering to obedience to your reign, and, one day, who knows? you think you will drive forth the Destroyers, and the servants of the enemy who infest the many antispinward decks, and hurl them down into the Void from whence they came. You dream a dream of vile pride; you are corrupted with temptation.”
The Captain rose angrily from his throne. “Stop! Do you think your holy office will protect you from my wrath? Were there such a ring as legends say, for certain I would seize it to my own. And who would dare deny me? You? You?”
But the Computerman bowed in all humility, and said, “My lord knows there can be no such ring. A ring to waken the computers, indeed! Our faith informs us that the Computers do not sleep, that their screens are not dark, not to eyes that keep the faith. I and my brethren commune with the computers each nightwatch, and it gives us secret knowledge.”
“My father told me the Computer screens once were bright to every eye, and a voice like a man’s voice spoke from them, every man, even the humblest, could hear that voice. Before the Fifth Barrage, in his youth, he had seen them shining, and heard the voice.”
“Men knew less sin in those days, my lord.”
At that moment came a noise at the doors before them, not the golden doors of the Bridge, but the silver doors leading to the outer part of the palace and to the corridors and warrens of the great city of Forecomcon. The silver doors swept wide; here were twenty pikemen of the Gatewatch, dressed in blue and silver, and here, garbed hugely in the gray-green of the ancient order of Marines, strode in the giant.
The giant’s shoulder was taller than a tall man’s head, but his hair and beard were white with age. For he was the last of his kind, born to serve as a Marine, created by the lost arts of the Medical House, back when the Twilight was young. His name was Carradock.
In one hand Carradock held a mighty weapon like a spear, made by ancient and forgotten arts. The weapon could shoot bullets like a musket, except that it could fire many at a time, yet the bullets were slow, and would not pierce the bulkheads, or damage the equipment, and so the weapon was lawful according to the Weapons Law.
In Carradock’s other hand was a chain. Bound by that chain, manacled and fettered, was a strange, dark man, wearing a uniform of silver-white, unlike any uniform known to Weston’s lore. The man had pale hair like an upper-deck elf, and, like them, he was tall. But he was darkened and scarred by radiation, like the dwarves of engineering, or like those who lived near the Great Chasm, the Lesser Chasm, or the Hole, or near any other place the Weapons of the Enemy had blown up through the world. He was muscled like a down-deck dwarf, with thicker muscles than Weston had ever seen, except, perhaps for those on Carradock.
The Gatewatch lieutenant spoke up out of turn, coming forward and saying, “My lord! I pray you, let not this man alone in audience with you! He has the strength of three men.”
“Then let him be bound with three men’s chains, but I will speak alone to him.”
The prisoner in silver-white stood, face calm, staring at the Captain. His face was still, his demeanor quiet. He seemed neither proud nor humb
le, but he stood like a man surrounded by a great silent open space, wherein nothing could be hidden from him, nor anything approach to harm him.
When he did not kneel, the Gatewatch pikemen struck him in the back of his knees with the butts of their spears. But the muscles of the prisoner’s legs were strong, and did not bend when struck. Three of the Gatewatch put their hands on his shoulders to force him down. The prisoner watched them calmly, but would not budge.
“Leave him stand,” the Captain ordered. The men stepped back. Then the Captain said, “Where are his wounds? He has no new scars. I ordered him put to torment. Bring forth the Apprentice Torturer.”
But the lieutenant said, “Sire, the Apprentice Torturer fled after you ordered the Master Torturer tortured to death. After, none of the lesser torturers would approach this prisoner. They refused to obey your order.”
The Computerman was still standing near the throne. He leaned forward and whispered, “Sire, why did you order the Master Torturer put to the question? I guess this: this prisoner told you that he had told the Master Torturer the Words which command the ring. The Master Torturer denied it. You conceived a jealous suspicion, and feared the Master Torturer craved the ring, and knew the Word. Do I guess aright?”
The Captain stood. “Leave me! All of you, except my giant, leave me! You, as well, Computerman!”
The lieutenant said, “Sire, shall we bring the other prisoner in now as well? The blind man we found wondering the Inner Corridor?”
“What care I for wandering beggars? Leave me, all!”
But the Computerman would not leave until the Gatewatch came to drag him away. The Computerman was shouting, “Beware the thing you covet! Beware! It is a thing accursed! All who do not possess it will crave it! It will drive you to madness; it will drive you to destroy your trusted servants, as you have destroyed your Torturer! Eschew this thing! Cast it away! The Computer cannot be controlled by it!” But by then the Gatewatch had gently pulled the old man out of the chamber and closed the door behind them.
Federations Page 13