Analog SFF, September 2006

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Himself glowered at the wickedness of men. “D'ye think you'll ever get him?"

  Sam drank the rest of his martini and placed the glass on the bar. He smiled coldly.

  “Probably."

  Copyright © 2006 Michael F. Flynn

  * * *

  A MILLION YEARS AND COUNTING

  by RAJNAR VAJRA

  * * * *

  Illustrated by John Allemand

  * * * *

  The tendency to forget why you came into a room may increase with age, but few have experienced it quite like this!

  I was walking across Lincoln Center's Josie Robertson Plaza the first time my head fell off.

  Something inside my neck clicked, my body froze in place, the world and sky circled each other, and my cranium clanged against hard tiles. Twice. The second due to a minor bounce.

  Strange.

  If my head were as spherical as it had been when I'd been found, and no one was thoughtful enough to put out a blocking foot, it might've rolled all the way to 9th Avenue—surely a world record of some kind. Instead, my extruded nose, chin, ears, and imitation cheekbones insured a wobbling course, which made it tricky to calculate where my head would come to rest.

  The resulting estimate was worrisome. My need had summoned protocols for handling such a crisis—which was strange in itself since the event seemed so improbable—but no assurance these protocols would work with my cranium between nine and ten meters from my body. Further calculations started me extending my nose and expanding my ears.

  The Metropolitan Opera House, some gushing waters, Avery Fisher Hall, and the New York State Theater revolved around me at creative angles and I fancied the scene would be dramatic as viewed from above: an oversized humanoid noggin in tasteful sheens of gold and silver careening over the tiled spider-web surrounding Revson Fountain.

  I hoped someone was enjoying my situation; it added no luster to my day. And certainly, I had no shortage of audience. At ten to eight on a cloudless morning in early March, Lincoln Center wasn't crowded, but it was hardly uninhabited. Dozens of voices gasped, yelled, muttered, or swore. After the initial surprise, the most popular phrase was “Moon Robot,” including one youngster's screech: “Hey, Dad! That's the Moon Robot! How come its head popped off?” I knew the Plaza was crackling, even more than usual, with patterned microwaves doubtless image-messaging my predicament.

  If anyone, I thought, would manually re-place my crown, the gesture would be deeply appreciated. I blinked a similar message ten times in Morse code but with humble expectations. How many people in this decade of megapatches and exoplanetary enclaves on Mars and Titan have even heard of Samuel Morse or Alfred Vail? I worked on that problem until it proved unsolvable with my current information.

  “Can't be Dan the Can, JJ,” a man's voice announced. “Probably one of those Toshiba-Disney knockoffs made to look like Disney characters. But with a bad weld. See that face? Dan doesn't have Pinocchio's nose or Dumbo's ears. Besides, something that's lasted a million years wouldn't just fall apart."

  I had the perfect retort at hand, but no voice available. Or hand, for that matter. And by the time I was reassembled, the opportunity would surely be long passed. Such, I have noticed, is life—or in my case, existence.

  An interesting question arose. Although my primary sense organs are attached to my cranium and therefore my identity feels similarly attached, no one on Earth knew if whatever I used for a brain was in my head or placed, say, in my left leg. If so, was I technically out of my mind right now? Or was it the other way round?

  With a little luck and a lot of nose, my head stopped spinning with one eye adequately positioned to see the rest of me—a convenient arrangement since I could only migrate my eyes a few inches and without visual guidance, I'd have no way to know if someone were standing in my body's way. The thought of trampling little JJ was upsetting.

  Perhaps Professor Norhaart is right about me having a subconscious because the exact telemetric etiquette was already waiting for me as I reached for it. While I pondered what kind of signal my body could receive since most forms of electromagnetic radiation bounce off me, the bulky thing stirred, the crowd gasped, and a headless giant lurched across the Plaza. Couldn't feel a thing until, a moment later, my head clicked back into place with enough authority to almost convince me the join was permanent.

  I shrank my expanded features and bowed to my audience—taking due care to keep my skull balanced!—as if I'd completed a circus trick. Then I hurried toward 9th Avenue with an eye out, figuratively this time, for the nearest full-size taxi. I'd only recently learned to fold myself to fit into a cab's back seat.

  A ride appeared quickly, but the wait while New York's Energy Authority got the gyros up to speed while feeding off my cred-disk seemed to last as long as my stay on the Moon. Subjectively, much longer, since I couldn't actually remember my Moon visit. Embarrassment made me anxious to leave, and my relatively newfound ability—only two weeks old—to feel embarrassment made me more anxious. And I'd already been plenty anxious before my decapitation.

  Boiling it down, I had to talk to Jon Norhaart immediately. Obviously, something within me was going horribly wrong.

  On the bright side, I now grasped a concept that had eluded me for years: irony. I'd come to Lincoln Center this morning because it's so infused with art and culture, which inspires me when I face particularly difficult problems. And those problems had made me determined to avoid one particular person today: Jon Norhaart.

  * * * *

  “Your head came off? Just by itself?” These questions sounded as if I were talking to myself because here was the model I'd used for my voice and speech mannerisms.

  I ran an image comparison series to confirm that I'd never seen Professor Jon No-Middle-Name Norhaart, my mentor and friend, wearing such a surprised expression. His raised eyebrows quilted his normally baby-smooth forehead, which was higher than male norm due to innate physiology and encroaching baldness. His blond-and-gray moustache made a fuzzy lintel shadowing an open mouth. He didn't wait for my response but leapt out from behind his desk, scrutinized my neck from eyelash-tickling range, and gently palpated the area with both hands.

  I thought it best not to nod. “Just by itself."

  “Huh. No structural flaws I can see or feel."

  Indeed, in the bathroom mirror down the hall, my neck had appeared perfect. I had noticed, for the first time, how much my face resembled Jack Haley's Tin Man from TheWizardofOz.

  “You'd have mentioned it, I'm sure,” Jon's voice was wry, “if this had happened before?"

  “I've no memory of such an event."

  He rubbed his eyes and leaned back against his desk, not quite sitting. When he looked up at me, his autocontacts visibly adjusted to the new viewing distance and it crossed my mind that human technology was already on track to produce something like me. But not soon. The Toshiba-Disney household robots based on me were nearly useless toys for the ultra-wealthy.

  “Daniel,” he asked, “have you any idea how peculiar this is?"

  “Yes, but no. For me, reality is always full of surprises. I found this one more shameful than strange."

  “Shameful?"

  “The visual symbolism was disturbing. Your culture has so many telling phrases. Having your head on straight, a good head on your shoulders, losing your—"

  “Dan.” He waved a hand as if discouraging flies. “Do you remember being in the Army's custody?"

  “Impressions only. I couldn't understand what was happening around me."

  He nodded, frowning. “For more than two decades, scientists tried like hell to tear you apart."

  I warped the corners of my mouth to make my own frown. “I don't recall that although I've dreamed about being ... tugged at. And something about shears, perhaps. I know they didn't succeed."

  “Right, and believe me, they tried everything from pry bars to acetylene torches. Everything short of burst-lasers and micro-nukes, which wouldn't have left much
to study."

  “Ah."

  “You're made of tough stuff, whatever it is."

  The thought of blowtorch fire on my skin, which I keep sensitive enough to detect a crawling ant, made me feel weak at the knee joints. Maybe I don't feel pain as humans do, but too much sensation is highly unpleasant. I lowered myself into the armless chair my mentor kept here for my use. “What were they looking for?"

  “Everything. A clue as to who or what built you. How a material usually harder than steel could so quickly mold itself into varying shapes. Most of all, maybe, the nature of your power supply. From analysis of regolithic dust, we know you were in that cave for atleast a million years before we found you. And here you are. Still ticking."

  This story was old news to me, but I was hearing it differently today. “Doesn't twenty years seem a long time to keep me isolated? Scientists outside the military must've resented being shut out."

  He frowned again and a fingertip wiggled on the desk. “I'm getting worried about you, Dan. You don't sound like yourself. Uh, I mean—"

  “I know what you mean. But you haven't answered my question."

  “Right.” He sighed. “There was another factor. The government was afraid you might be a—well, a Trojan horse of some sort.” His face flushed a bit.

  I took a millisecond to reread two stored versions of the Iliad, one in Greek. “Why?"

  “Why would aliens abandon a piece of such advanced technology on the Moon for eons? And why leave an intermittent radio beacon to advertise your presence? So they could find you again? Or were they planning for someone like us to find you? See what I mean? It's the government's job to consider all possible security risks."

  “Still, twenty years?"

  “Does seem extreme. But try to imagine being responsible for the safety of the entire human race."

  I tried. “Wouldn't it have been more sensible to leave me on the Moon?"

  He shrugged. “And throw away a priceless opportunity? Quite a decision! I'm just glad the Army finally decided you were harmless. Hang on a minute."

  He tapped one side of his head: tap, pause, tap-tap-tap; then his throat muscles began to twitch slightly and likewise his lips. I felt my usual frustration at being opaque to microwaves and incapable of using a telicell system myself. And I was upset with other limitations. Evidently, some people can throat-read, but despite superhuman vision, the skill was beyond me.

  “Sorry to interrupt our conversation, Dan. I wanted the physics lab to send up a pair of eye-queues if they had any free. Wanted to see if your neck was radiating anything in the UV or infrared range."

  “Any luck?"

  “One pair of six-ways available."

  “Why don't I go downstairs and pick them up myself?"

  He grinned. “You just want an excuse to bask in the Guru's radiance. Sorry, his assistant's already on the way."

  “That's the story of my non-life. Anyway, what do you expect to see?"

  “Always a mistake to expect.” He chewed his moustache and twisted the CPU he was wearing around his right pinky. “While we're waiting—aside from your head coming loose, anything else unusual happen to you lately? Done anything new and different?"

  Uh-oh. “We received quite a collection of shards at the museum on Tuesday,” I said to delay the inevitable. “One urn came in 5,422 pieces! Can't wait to put it together."

  “You must be a godsend to archeology. But I meant unusual."

  I felt myself wanting to shift in the chair like a nervous child, but forced myself into stillness. “I rescued a toddler yesterday. Never done that before."

  “What?"

  “I may have saved a little girl's life."

  One of his eyes gleamed a brighter blue in a stray shaft of sunlight and my conscience turned it into a gleam of suspicion. But all he asked was, “What happened?"

  Given any assurance my head would stay put, I would've attempted a new wrinkle on my latest skills and imitated his shrug from fifty-six seconds ago. Humans have such expressive gestures. “I suppose the mother got distracted. Her child made it partway across 5th and one truck driver didn't see her. Someone caught the event on celivision and the upload made it on to last night's webcasts. Now I'm famous,” I added, trying out my grasp on irony.

  Perhaps I needed a firmer grip because he didn't laugh. “I'll have to replay one of those ‘casts—wasn't in the mood to watch the usual bad news last night. Huh. Good thing you were there and that you can move so fast when you want to. But why do I feel you're holding something back? Anything else new and different?"

  The unknown lubricants in my mouth seemed to have dried up. I'd run out of decoys and seriously considered lying, but I'd never tried the technique and doubted I could pull it off. “Spent four hours last night with your daughter. Talking."

  “Oh? Well, Linda always liked you."

  “Not Linda. Alison."

  “Alison!” His voice rose by a minor third as his jaw tightened. Now we didn't sound identical. “Since when do you know Alison?” His entire personality seemed to harden—emotional scar tissue, I thought, which wasn't at all my usual sort of thought....

  “Met her for the first time last night.” I decided not to inform him she'd stayed at my apartment overnight and was likely still there.

  “Really? What the hell did she want?"

  “She wants you to forgive her."

  He stared at me for a second. “Her judgment hasn't improved any. And, Daniel, this really isn't your business."

  I reread twenty books on human psychology and learned nothing applicable. “She's pregnant."

  It wasn't so much a bombshell as the explosion itself. His eyes widened, his lips tried to push past each other, and his jaw worked as if chewing. “What?"

  “She's pregnant."

  After a polite tap on the door, Todd White, the Guru's senior work-study assistant from the physics lab below, pushed into the room bearing a smile, a small box, and some bulky goggles. He took one look at my mentor's face, lost the smile, deposited his burdens on the desk, and left without saying a word. He had the right idea. I suppose working for the Guru might boost one's sensitivities.

  “She needed someone,” I said softly as the door closed behind him, “to speak with you. On her behalf."

  Jon opened his mouth, but clacked it shut and shoved the goggles on his head as if to hide his eyes. As the lenses stared at me they changed color six times, constantly reflecting light like a tapetum lucidum.

  He remained silent, not like him at all. I searched for protocols for this situation and came up empty.

  “I hadn't meant to upset you,” I finally said.

  “These damn lenses are filthy and everything's blurred. Got to clean them. Stay right there.” He practically ran from the room, still wearing the goggles, and his hands shook.

  I stared at the back of the picture he always kept on his desk. I'd seen it from the display side on six hundred and thirty-nine occasions and from this side almost daily for five years. It showed a slightly plump woman with brown hair and green eyes, smiling: the professor's dead wife.

  As I'd learned last night, Danielle Norhaart had been killed six years ago when her car swerved off the road and into a tree. This wasn't her fault. She'd been in labor and had asked someone else to take her to the hospital. And because her due date had been nearly a month away, her husband had been at a conference out of state. So she'd asked her daughter Alison, who was pregnant herself, to drive.

  She hadn't known about Alison's drug problem.

  * * * *

  Walking to my apartment, I heard the honking from fifteen blocks away.

  Four minutes later, the cause came into view and assorted shouting clarified the cause of the cause. Thanks to a dispute concerning right-of-way, two delivery trucks had gotten too jammed together for either to get clear without damaging city property. Then enough traffic had piled around them to force police officers to leave their vehicles to reach the epicenter. The truck drivers were st
anding in the street yelling at each other, cops were yelling at the truck drivers, and various people in stuck cars were just plain yelling and jabbing their horns.

  I jumped over hoods and stomped on bumpers to get to the biggest truck. There, I lifted one end and carried it over a few feet, far enough to start the un-jamming process. All honking ceased. Instead of setting the truck down gently, I just let it fall. From within the van came crashes, bangs, thuds, and sad little tinkles.

  Everyone stared. Perhaps they were as shocked as me that I'd performed my first deliberately rude act. Good and bad deeds for the day done, I resumed walking.

  * * * *

  On paper, the lease on my four-room apartment is 350,000 dollars per year, somewhat over my budget since the university pays me about ten thousand, before withholding, for my part-time services. And the American Museum of Natural History only supplies another five.

  I lived in luxury's lap gratis.

  The owners of the high-priced high-rise, or rather their lawyers, had approached me at the museum, where I'd had an acting job, playing myself in a diorama of the lunar cave where I'd been found. Dan the Can, tourist magnet. This job had provided a small income and, more importantly, a place to stay during those hours I wasn't working with Professor Norhaart or harvesting the Guru's wisdom. But after three years, I'd felt a growing need for some privacy.

  So when the lawyers offered me an apartment on the thirty-eighth floor, rent-free and all utilities paid, where windows revealed the intricacies of Manhattan rather than staring faces, I accepted. Apparently, the high-rise owners assumed my presence would generate continual publicity, which would attract more renters, which would allow them to boost rates.

  Besides, at that point I'd found a more enjoyable way to earn money and it didn't involve being on display. The museum had received a shipment of Albertosaurus bones, mostly small fragments. After observing the staff paleontologists struggling to assemble pieces for an hour, I'd succumbed to temptation and begun pointing out which piece went where. This got me one job and led to a similar one in the university's Archeology department.