Asimov's SF, December 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Exactly so. A totally connected world is a totally dependent world. Will F. Jenkins, writing back there just a few months after the end of World War II, saw the whole thing coming, even the phenomenon called the Singularity. (A concept offered by the British-born mathematician I.J. Gold in 1965—"Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an ‘intelligence explosion,’ and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make.” It was Vernor Vinge, in 1983, who first applied the term “the Singularity” to that leap toward superhuman artificial intelligence. But Will F. Jenkins's Joe had reached Singularity level back in that 1946 issue of Astounding Science Fiction

  I didn't know Will Jenkins well—he was almost forty years my senior, after all—but I did have one memorable encounter with him in March of 1956, exactly ten years after “A Logic Named Joe” was published. I was a senior in college, but I had already begun my career as a professional writer, and that day I brought my newest story to the office of the legendary editor John W. Campbell, who had dominated the SF world since before I was old enough to read. Will Jenkins happened to be in Campbell's office that day. John introduced us, and I said something appropriately awe-stricken.

  Then, to my horror, John proceeded to read my new story right in front of both of us. After about ten minutes he looked up and said, “There's something wrong with this, but I'm not sure what it is. Will, would you mind taking a look?” And he handed my manuscript across the desk to Will Jenkins. I sat there squirming, aghast all over again, as the author of “First Contact” and “Sidewise in Time” read my story too. And at last he said, in that gentle Virginia-accented voice of his, “I think the problem is here, in the next-to-last paragraph.”

  “That's absolutely right,” Campbell said. “Get to work, Bob.” He pointed to a typewriter on a desk nearby. I revised that paragraph then and there, and sold the story on the spot. (Not one of my best, and it has never been reprinted. But what an experience for a twenty-one-year-old novice writer!)

  And what a science fiction writer Will F. Jenkins was! Most of his work is out of print now, alas. But “A Logic Named Joe” is very easy to find. Just sit down in front of your logic and key the story's name into the Google box, and any number of links will show its availability. You can have it in any of several collections of Leinster stories that are for sale in old-fashioned print format. Or, if you'd rather just download it from the Internet, simply ask. Your logic will get it for you in the twinkling of an eye.

  Copyright (c) 2008 Robert Silverberg

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  * * *

  Novelette: WAY DOWN EAST

  by Tim Sullivan

  Tim Sullivan has written seven novels and edited two anthologies. His short fiction has appeared in SF anthologies and magazines since the late eighties. Tim lives in Miami with his companion, Fiona Kelleghan. In his latest story, the author weaves together a complex tapestry of relationships among friends, parents and children, and humans and ancient aliens, in order to explore what takes place...

  “Season's starting early, eh?” Laurent said, standing on the pier and scratching his gray beard.

  “Why do you say that?” Donny asked, grunting as he hoisted a lobster trap onto the deck.

  “Look at that fella coming out of the CVS.” Laurent nodded toward Water Street. “He look local to you?”

  A blond young man in business suit and sunglasses was leaving the pharmacy with a white plastic bag in hand, walking up the hill toward the Penobscot Hotel. He was about the same age as Donny's son, early thirties, but Little Donny had seldom acted as solemn as this guy, even when he was in church.

  “He's part of the Gleezer's security detail,” Laurent said.

  “Is he?” Donny asked. “Guess I forgot all about that thing.”

  “Did you, now?”

  Donny took a momentary break. His back was hurting so much that he was beginning to think he was getting too old for this work. Too bad he didn't know how to do anything else.

  “That guy could be a tourist,” he said, ragging on Laurent, who'd repeated every rumor he'd heard since the visitor from Gliese 581c arrived on the island yesterday.

  “Wonder what they bought?” said Laurent.

  “Could be anything.”

  “They don't sell just anything in the drug store.”

  “ ‘Course not. I meant anything they sell in the CVS, wise guy.”

  “That ain't what you said.”

  “Well, I'll just have to watch myself from now on,” Donny said. “Make sure it's not too complicated for you.”

  “Wicked,” Laurent said.

  “Ain't it, though?”

  “See on TV how the Gleezer can roll around naked and get away with it?”

  “It ain't naked,” Donny said. “It's got that elastic thing on.”

  “You can see right through it.”

  “So what? What is there to see?”

  “Quite a lot, if you ask me.”

  “No reproductive organs, is what I meant.”

  “I know what you meant.”

  “Let's get these traps baited. We can't stand here all day gawking at everybody who comes out of the drug store.”

  “All day? Ain't even been two minutes,” Laurent muttered, climbing over the gunwale.

  “If we don't get to work, we'll never get this boat paid off,” Donny complained. “Leave it up to you, we'd never even get away from the pier.”

  “Maybe we should call it a day. Take a look at those clouds coming in from the east,” Laurent said. “We go out now, we'll get wet.”

  “A little rain won't melt us.”

  They finished baiting the traps, and Donny untied the painter. He wound it up and tossed it into the lazarette as Laurent started the engine. For a moment, he stared at the rainbow trail left on the water in their wake. He was glad he couldn't see it any more once they got into open water and Laurent opened up the engine to churn up some foam.

  They did run into rain on the way back, enough to make them don their slickers. But it cleared off pretty soon, and once they were moored at the pier again they busied themselves putting their catch into the live tank.

  A lot of the eggs attached to the female lobsters were orange, which meant they were dead. It was something they saw more and more every year. After they separated the berried ladies to be thrown back, and plopped the boys into the tank, they took a breather.

  “Damn, ain't this boat a beauty, though,” Donny said, patting the fiberglass transom.

  “She sure is,” Laurent said. “High bow, low topside aft, and she cuts through the water like a dream.”

  “What'll we name her, now that we finally got her?”

  “I don't know,” Laurent said. “How about ‘Swifty'?”

  “Oh, come off it. That's just plain stupid.”

  “So what's your big idea?”

  “Don't have one yet.”

  “Well, I'd say ‘Swifty’ is better than ‘Don't Have One Yet.'”

  Donny sighed. Sometimes he wondered why he even bothered.

  When they were finished at sunset, Laurent talked Donny into going to Salty's for a beer. Donny argued that he should get home, but he knew Laurent was lonely nights since June left him, except when his daughters and their husbands and kids took the ferry over from the mainland. He ended up calling Beth on the cell and told her he'd be home in an hour or two.

  They drove Laurent's truck up the hill to Salty's and found the parking lot nearly full.

  “It's Friday night, ain't it?” Donny said.

  “Good guess, Dick Tracy.”

  They parked and went in, walking past the decorative fishing nets to join the crowd. The joint was jumping. A few
summer people were already in town, and their well-heeled kids were hanging out and flirting with the locals, at least those old enough to drink or get their hands on phony IDs. The jukebox was thumping rap.

  Donny and Laurent sidled up to the bar and took a couple stools.

  Mike, the bartender, was wiping a glass. He had to shout to make himself heard over the music and the enthusiastic bellowing of the kids. “Hello, boys.”

  “What's the word, Mike?”

  “Nothin’ much.” Mike put the gleaming glass next to the other clean glasses on the shelf. “What'll you have?”

  “Two Narragensetts,” said Laurent.

  “I don't want a Nastygansett,” Donny said. “Give me a Sam Adams.”

  “Big spender.” Mike fetched two bottles and poured their drinks into two tall glasses, leaving a perfect head on each.

  “You're the master, Mike,” Laurent said, blowing a little foam off the top.

  “That's what they tell me,” Mike said. “See the Gleezer's buddies in town today?”

  “One of ‘em, not fifty yards from the boat, before we went for our last jaunt.”

  The song on the jukebox ended, and there was a lull before the next one started.

  “I hear the Gleezer wants to go out,” Mike said, his belly hanging over the cedar bar as he moved closer to speak confidentially.

  “Out where?”

  “Out around the Bay.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “One of those Secret Service fellas traveling with it,” Mike said.

  “Secret Service?” Donny said. “Is the thing running for president?”

  “Nope,” Laurent said. “It wasn't born in this country.”

  That got a laugh.

  “So how'd you meet Secret Squirrel?” Donny asked.

  “He slipped in here for a quick one last night just before closing.”

  “No kiddin'?” Donny had never thought of Secret Service agents having fun, the way they were always so serious when you saw them on TV.

  “Would I kid you?”

  Mike turned to attend to some other customers, and the music blared once again.

  Donny and Laurent nursed their beers.

  “I wonder how much they're willing to pay,” Donny hollered.

  “Huh?”

  “For the Gleezer's joy ride,” Donny said. “I wonder how much the government's willing to fork out?”

  “Secret Service probably arranged a cruise aleady.”

  “Think so?”

  “Well, they'd want a luxury boat.”

  “That might draw too much attention.”

  “Well, if Mike heard it last night....” Laurent was thinking it over.

  “Maybe we should go over to the hotel and look into it.”

  “Nah, they've already chartered a boat.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Common sense.”

  “That's something you've always been short on.”

  “Look who's talking, you red-headed dummy.”

  They each took another pull from their beers.

  “We do need to start paying off the boat,” Laurent shouted.

  “That's what I'm thinking.”

  “I guess it can't hurt to make an offer.”

  “Guess not,” Donny said. “Glad you thought of it.”

  Laurent downed the rest of his beer. “Me, too.”

  “All right, first thing in the morning, then?”

  “Why not go over there now?” Laurent said. “It ain't even supper time yet.”

  “I gotta get home.”

  “Shouldn't take too long,” Laurent said, up for an adventure now. “Frank Dunsmore's workin’ the night shift.”

  “Ain't that just ducky?”

  “Well, we know him. Now's the time to go over to the hotel and ask him who the boss is.”

  “Maybe the Gleezer's the boss.”

  “Let's hope it talks our language then.”

  Donny threw a few dollars on the bar and finished his beer. They rose from their stools.

  “See you, Mike,” Donny said.

  Mike waved at them, and they elbowed their way through the noisy crowd and out the door.

  “Sure you're okay drivin'?” Donny asked, glad to be away from the racket.

  “I only had one beer.”

  They got into the truck. “I'm thinking about the night you hit that bridge abutment in Rockland.”

  “Thirty-five years ago, and you're still talking about it.”

  “You only had one before that little fender bender, as I recall.”

  “I had more than one that night—'less you mean one six-pack.”

  The two men laughed.

  It didn't take long to get to the hotel. In fact, it didn't take long to get anywhere on the island. Donny didn't mind, because he always felt lost when he went to Boston or Portland, or even Bangor. He was an island boy at heart, and he liked it that way.

  The Penobscot Hotel had been built in 1896, with new wings added in the fifties and the eighties. It was elegant and expensive. Except for delivering lobsters to the kitchen loading dock, the only time Donny had been inside was his senior prom in 1973. He remembered smoking a joint in the men's room with Laurent and some other boys with shag hairdos who were all long gone from the island now, except for one who taught at a nearby high school on the mainland ... and Frank, the man they were going to see.

  Laurent pulled into the parking lot. There were a few cars, an AIV, and some trailers and a TV van at the back of the lot, but nothing much. The public had gradually stopped paying attention since the initial buzz when the Gleezer splashed down, or the media would have been out in force. Only the likes of Laurent had kept up with the story until the Gleezer showed up on the island. Most people didn't care all that much about it anymore, since the Gleezer had nothing to say and was kept out of sight most of the time. You could only look at the same two or three clips of it so many times.

  Donny and Laurent got out without bothering to lock the truck. Nobody was going to steal from them here, because everybody either had money or were people they knew, including the Costa Rican chambermaids.

  “We should have worn our tuxedos,” Laurent said as they approached the glass lobby door.

  “Why, are we going to a costume party?” Donny asked, opening the door for his old buddy. “After you, Alphonse.”

  “Merci, garcon.” Laurent went through his pockets as if searching in vain for a coin. “Quel dommage! J'ommet tous mes argent en l'autre pantalon!”

  “You damn cheapskate frog.”

  The olive green carpet was so spotless that Donny was almost afraid to walk on it. A couple of well-dressed people sat on well-upholstered chairs in the lobby, and he was pretty sure from their watchful attitude that they weren't tourists.

  The balding night manager was looking at a laptop as they walked up to him.

  “Hello, Frank,” said Laurent.

  Frank Dunsmore looked up and greeted them with the superior air Donny had always found so annoying. “Hello, Laurent. Long time no see. How are you, Don?”

  “All right.”

  “You two want a room?”

  “Funny fella,” said Laurent. “No, we just want to talk to whoever's in charge of the Gleezer's bunch.”

  Frank looked amused, and Donny wanted to smack him. He saw Frank as a smarmy local boy who'd always sucked up to rich people so he wouldn't have to earn an honest living as a lobsterman.

  “I can't just send you up to their floor,” Frank said with his customary self-importance. “They've got it cordoned off.”

  “Can't you talk to somebody up there?”

  “Why? What do you want with ‘em?”

  “We got a business proposition to make.”

  “Now, what kind of business would you two have with our distinguished guest?”

  Laurent glanced at Donny, who shrugged in return. “We hear the Gleezer wants to go for a boat ride, and we're willin’ to take it out.”


  “Oh,” said Frank. “Who told you that?”

  “Grapevine,” Donny said, before Laurent could answer.

  “Have you two jokers seen our penthouse guest?”

  “Only online and on TV,” Laurent admitted.

  “Well, it's one thing to see a picture of it, and it's another thing seeing it live.”

  “I guess so.”

  “This is a very special time for the Penobscot,” Frank said, looking impressed with himself. “And for our island.”

  “God bless America and the state of Maine, too,” Donny said. “Does that mean you ain't gonna call up there, or are you planning to mess with us the rest of the night?” He was fed up with Frank's superciliousness. “We got better things to do.”

  Frank was taken aback. “All right, Don, don't get your shorts in a bunch. I'll call ‘em, but don't say I didn't warn you.”

  He got on the house phone and spoke to somebody.

  “Couple of lobstermen have a boat to charter,” he said, among other things, including their names, which he repeated twice. He hung up after a minute and said, “You can go on up.”

  “Thanks,” Laurent said.

  “Just a minute,” Frank said. “I gotta go key the elevator, or it won't take you to the penthouse.”

  Frank came out from behind the desk and led them to the elevator. He got inside with them and set it with a card, and then slipped out.

  “Good luck, fellas,” he said as the door slid shut.

  “What a jerk,” Donny said on the way up.

  “Oh, he ain't so bad,” Laurent said.

  Donny watched the LED display, 1, 2, 3, and he was feeling pretty tense by the time they reached the penthouse.

  “Here we go,” Laurent said, waiting for the door to open.

  The delay made it seem like an awfully long time. At last it opened, loudly and irrevocably. A woman stood right in front of the door. She was dark and had short raven hair. She was very good-looking.