Analog SFF, September 2006

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Gwu polled: power, propulsion, comm, navigation, trim and spin, ecosystems, logistics. Everyone was ready. Art and Eva settled into human chairs to one side of her. Swee took his place on her other side.

  “We did it, you know,” Swee said. “Nothing happened as we expected, and too many were taken from us—yet we did everything and more that we set out to accomplish. The technology is proven. We leave behind our first colony. We return home with new friends."

  “The birth of an era,” Art agreed. “We've been privileged to see the beginning of a true interstellar civilization, so much more than an interstellar comm network. A new order of things."

  Gwu had one final check to make. “System integration, what is our overall status?"

  T'bck Ra's synthesized voice was loud and clear. “Everything is operational and ready."

  “I ask everyone to observe a moment of silence for those who fell along the way.” As so many had, across so many light-years. Then, with a single joyous word, Gwu began their journey.

  “Engage."

  * * * *

  CHAPTER 47

  Arblen Ems Firh Glithwah, Foremost, as she always did before leaving her office, took a moment to study the desolate topography outside the well-insulated windows. While she had labored, a bit more of the ancient crater had been disturbed in the never-ending quest for metallic ores. A little more of the moon's icy surface had been strip-mined for precious volatiles. Another new edifice had begun to emerge in the distance, much of its structure made of the fused tailings from continuous tunneling and mining. We are prospering here, she thought, and the humans do not understand the consequences of that prosperity. They lack the long view.

  Times were hard when Glithwah was little. Her parents worked two of three shifts to survive, leaving her often in Great-Grandfather's charge. Few of those early memories were happy, but there were exceptions. One exception was Great-Grandfather patiently introducing her to b'tok. “The game of Foremosts,” he often called it.

  Had she finally attained Great-Grandpa's standard? She would never know. He had died with most of her family, in a far-off crash into what would become known as Victorious.

  Fifteen standard years ago Victorious had been abandoned, making today yet again a day of interviews. She picked up the black queen, which stood forlornly on a corner of her desk. She restored the piece to its accustomed place of show, blink-blinking. Chess was all about constraints. Everything in chess was bounded by sixty-four squares, the prescribed capabilities of thirty-two predefined pieces, a time limit. Despite all the vitality of their civilization, all their expanding wealth, all the upheaval wrought by the arrival of Victorious, human thinking remained, if not static, almost always short-term.

  Mashkith had never shared his long-term plans with her. Perhaps Uncle had disclosed them to no one. Anyone to whom he might have communicated them had surely outranked her—and was doubtless among the dead. But she knew her uncle—and she, like he, knew to plan for the long run.

  Many questions had been posed to her today. As always, a few topics were uncomfortable. As always, the humans missed the crucial point. Perhaps the matter was obvious only to those who thought dynamically: What if, during the long absence of Victorious, an at-home clan obtained antimatter technology? It might have been independently developed, or stolen anew from a second herd starship, or purchased over InterstellarNet, or even transmitted freely and vengefully to K'vith by those thirsting for retribution against Arblen Ems.

  That risk alone precluded a return home.

  The clan dared not go—and dared not remain—anyplace where vastly superior numbers held, or might obtain, technological near-parity. As certain as Glithwah was about anything in this universe, their initial course towards K'vith was misdirection. Mashkith would have changed course soon after Victorious receded beyond human observation.

  InterstellarNet was a yellow-sun club; K'rath was the single red-dwarf star home to a member species. Mashkith had surely planned to take them to another nearby red dwarf. She guessed the star known to the humans as Lacaille 9352, more distant from herd, human, and Hunter suns than all those stars from each other. And if not Lacaille 9352, other red dwarf suns had been within their cruising range.

  Thereafter, even if their new colony were prematurely observed, who would invest the decades and treasure necessary to pursue them?

  Exploiting the uncontested resources of an entire solar system, the secrets of antimatter and the interstellar drive, and time, there was no limit to what the reborn Arblen Ems might have accomplished. Perhaps, in a few generations, even a triumphant return to K'vith....

  A scoopship passed overhead, delivering essential energy supplies. A human scoopship. Only in her thoughts did Glithwah bare her teeth and growl. She could be under observation at all times. She acted accordingly.

  Someday, the well-behaved, increasingly prosperous survivors of the Himalia Incident—or if need be, their descendants—would have the humans’ trust. Someday, the spaceships that frequented Ariel would be controlled and flown by Hunters. Someday, the clan would freely roam this solar system. And someday, another starship would come within their grasp.

  Arblen Ems was twice before a Great Clan. It will be a Great Clan again.

  Copyright © 2006 Edward M. Lerner

  * * *

  THE REFERENCE LIBRARY

  by Tom Easton

  The Clan Corporate, Charles Stross, Tor, $24.95, 320 pp. (ISBN: 0-765-30930-0).

  The Baby Merchant, Kit Reed, Tor, $24.95, 334 pp. (ISBN: 0-765-31550-5).

  Skybreaker, Kenneth Oppel, Eos, $16.99, 369 pp. (ISBN: 0-06-053227-0).

  Crystal Rain, Tobias Buckell, Tor, 352 pp. (ISBN: 0-765-31227-1).

  Gift from the Stars, James Gunn, BenBella Books, $14.95, 154 pp. (ISBN: 1-932100-65-2).

  One Million A.D., Gardner Dozois, ed., Science Fiction Book Club, $13.99, 399 pp. (ISBN: 0-7394-6273-3).

  Trilobite Dreams or, The Autodidact's Tale, A Romance of Autobiography, Robert Reginald, Ariadne, $14.95, 128 pp. (ISBN: 1-57241-133-3).

  Intelligent Thought: Science versus the Intelligent Design Movement, John Brockman, ed., Vintage, $14, 256 pp. (ISBN: 0-307-27722-4).

  Kiddography: The Art and Life of Tom Kidd, Tom Kidd, Paper Tiger, $29.95, 128 pp. (ISBN: 1-84340-201-7)

  * * * *

  Charles Stross's Family Trade series continues strong with The Clan Corporate, but though ace investigative reporter Miriam Beckwith, now revealed as heiress to a world-walking transdimensional Mafia clan, continues to leap from frying pan to broiler to fire, the tale is no longer quite what it was.

  What was it? The world-walker Clan has grown wealthy and powerful by carrying high-value, small-volume goods such as drugs around borders by ducking in and out of their parallel world. Miriam is a woman of modern Western culture. She is tough-minded, independent, and competent, and when she sees an opportunity to revamp an economically unstable enterprise (drug-running collapses if anyone wises up enough to put drugs on a legal prescription basis) by importing modern inventions (such as brake pads) into a primitive world, she grabs it. But the Clan is highly hierarchical, part of a very traditional culture where women just aren't independent beings. She must be brought to heel, married off, and set to making Clan babies. She ran head on into the situation in Book 2, The Hidden Family (reviewed here last January-February), but until near the end of that book she seemed to have things well in hand. But then treachery was revealed. Matthias, a highly placed aide who had been conniving with an estranged branch of the Clan, vanished.

  She doesn't have anything in hand at all, now. The political situation is messy, people tell Miriam. That's why you're being kept close to home. But the situation is a lot messier than the Clan thinks. Matthias vanished to our world, where he promptly started talking to cops, who as promptly started raiding Clan depots and catching drug-runners. What's this? screeched Homeland Security, FBI, CIA, NSA, et al. World-walkers? Who can pop out of nothing anywhere they like? Even inside th
e White House? And now the feds are looking for ways to invade the Clan's world and put a stop to a major national security threat. They're not playing nice about it, either. While the research boffins are working on a techy way to hop the worldlines, the troops are making do, forcing captured Clan members to carry soldiers across on their backs. Infiltration is under way.

  Meanwhile, the marital machinations have progressed to where Miriam is about to be betrothed to the King's brain-damaged younger son. The morals-damaged elder son is cooking up a coup. And it all comes to a head in Clan Corporate's crash-bang finale.

  But as I said, every time Pauline—oops, Miriam, though she seems to face as many perils as ever did the famed melodrama heroine—jumps out of a hot pan she lands in another hot spot. The pattern holds, and the next volume has to be a “Now what?” installment. If I may be allowed to guess, Miriam has had a run-in or two with the local representative of the estranged branch of the Clan, one James Lee. She has even flirted with him, so—unless Stross is being just too subtle—there is now a great excuse for him to come to her rescue.

  Watch for it.

  * * * *

  In the future America of Kit Reed's The Baby Merchant, it is difficult to be a mother. Fertility has fallen, and the supply of babies waiting to be adopted is much reduced. In fact, there are baby mills (much like puppy mills!) and even clone farms. What's more, the U.S. government has passed laws requiring that babies be implanted with ID chips without which access to higher education, airports, and decent jobs is denied.

  The situation provides an obvious opportunity to Tom Starbird. Rejected if not neglected as a child, he has a strong drive to rescue other such kids. He therefore looks for “unwanted” babies—with “unwanted” defined as unchipped, neglected, yelled at, abused—kidnaps them, and delivers them to childless couples he thinks will make good parents. He vets his “product” (the kids), the “suppliers” (their parents), and his customers quite carefully. He is doing good, he tells himself, doing major favors for all concerned, and if he charges his customers major bucks, well, he has major expenses.

  Now meet Sasha Egan, unwed mother, ready to give up the baby as soon as it's born, at least until the cad who knocked her up tracks her down and demands his parental rights. Why, he'll even marry her, and they can live off her rich grandmother for the rest of their days! But Sasha doesn't want anything to do with either him or “Grand.” She runs.

  Meet a Boston couple, Jake Zorn the muckraking journalist and his wife Maury. They want a kid bad, but though they have plenty of money, they're a bit old for the adoption agencies and Maury has spent a bit of time in the rubber ward. They're desperate, and then Jake finds out about Tom, digs into his past, and threatens him with exposure of his rejecting mother unless he comes through.

  Tom's pretty sure this customer is not a good choice, but what's he to do. He should just cut and run. There's plenty of money in his Swiss bank accounts. He has the plane tickets. But what about Mom? Sure, she was rejecting, but parenting is a major life-stress, and besides, she's Mom!

  Speaking of stress, there's plenty to go around. Sasha is hurting, but please don't anyone dare get between her and her baby! Maury Zorn had a breakdown. So did Tom's Mom. Now Tom has to come face-to-face with the pain he causes and the conflict between that and the delusion that he's been doing good all these years. Can he make it all right? How?

  Reed has taken the angst that we can see surrounding parenting in today's world, exaggerated it with the aid of market demand, and produced a starkly obsessive denouncement of all those who would exploit mothers, children, and the desire for children. She is an extraordinarily skillful writer, and The Baby Merchant is very much worth your attention and the awards it is bound to win. But be warned, it's not an easy read. It may even make you wish for a dose of Prozac.

  * * * *

  Kenneth Oppel's Skybreaker (sequel to Airborn) is a young-adult novel that quite nicely echoes the tone of Jules Verne. The basic idea is that the age of zeppelins never died, the airplane never got off the ground, and 15-year-old Matt Cruse can make himself a hero by fighting off air pirates and then, despite poverty and lack of schooling, enroll in the Airship Academy of Paris. Skybreaker opens with Matt on a training cruise aboard a decrepit airship, the Flotsam, trying to get around the Devil's Fist, the near-permanent typhoon over the Indian Ocean, when they spot an ancient derelict far above them. It's the Hyperion, famed for the wealth it carried, and when the captain plunges madly toward its 20,000-foot altitude, the crew quickly succumbs to anoxia. Matt barely makes it home alive, bearing with him the memory of the Hyperion's coordinates.

  Folks are interested in those coordinates. Kate, his feisty, wealthy, young companion in the previous adventure (whom he moons after like any love-struck teen) wants to go salvage the treasure and knows of a “skybreaker” ship that can function at extreme altitude. But she's not alone. Matt is lured to a hotel room by desperadoes who try to talk him out of the coordinates. When he refuses and flees, they pursue him across the rooftops of Paris until the fair young gypsy lass, Nadira, helps him escape. She, of course, has the key any salvagers will need to salvage anything at all, and soon Matt, Kate, Nadira, and Hal Slater, the suave captain of the Sagarmatha in whom Kate seems far too interested (while Nadira seems rather interested in Matt), are off. Alas, there are monsters in the sky—squidlike creatures with electrocuting tentacles (this is Earth?). But they prevail and reach the Hyperion. Unfortunately, the desperadoes are hot on their heels and an insanely dramatic finale is essential to bring all safely home again.

  If you have a teen who's been enjoying Verne and might like a bit more retro tech, unlikely zoology, and thorough melodrama, get this one. If the teen's a budding feminist, it might not go over quite so well, for the major hero is the boy and the girls do tend to get sidelined at crucial moments. But then, that's part of the classic mode, isn't it?

  * * * *

  Tobias Buckell grew up in Grenada, the US, and the British Virgin Islands. He lives in Ohio now, but his background has given him a sense of the Caribbean ambience that is serving him well as he begins a promising career as a novelist. His first novel, Crystal Rain, is the sort of thing that will have readers watching for more.

  The back-story is perhaps as crucial to the novel as the tale itself. According to Buckell, when Earth reached for the stars, it found folks already there. The ensuing debacle sent human refugees hunting desperately for worlds without aliens. One group—a mixed bag of Caribbeans, Aztec wannabes, French-speakers, and others—succeeded. But hot on their heels came the Teotl. The ensuing war destroyed the wormhole through which all arrived, as well as technological civilization, and in the centuries since the Teotl have cultivated Azteca bloodlust and prowess. Now they're coming across the mountains to the land of Nanagada to capture, enslave, and sacrifice all the rest of the planet's human population. And the wormhole, once damaged to prevent the onslaught of Teotl hordes, appears to be healing. Soon, in a century or so, it will be a doorway to horror once more.

  There seems little hope. But a mysterious fellow named Pepper has appeared. He has superhuman abilities, and he is looking for an old friend who never misses carnival. Meanwhile John deBrun, who washed up on shore years before with no memories of his past, is preparing to go to carnival with his wife and son. One of the dread Teotl is ordering an abject spy, Oaxyctl, to hunt down deBrun and get from him the codes to the Ma Wi Jung, apparently a superweapon left from the old days.

  After his wife and son are off to town for carnival, John lingers at home to pack. He knows the Azteca are coming and they must leave. But before he can do so, they arrive. He is a prisoner, and the priest is waving a bloody knife in the air. Fortunately, Oaxyctl shows up.

  Meanwhile, at Capitol City, folks are desperately trying to prepare defenses. They are helpless before the hordes coming their way, plagued by traitors within the city's walls, and sure that they cannot spare the resources to hunt for the Ma Wi Jung they have discovered lies hi
dden in the icy waste that now covers what was once known as Starport. But here come John and Oaxyctl, the latter awaiting his chance to torture and interrogate. Here comes Pepper, knowing what John has forgotten. Here come the Azteca hordes. And finally Capitol City must face the fact that the desperate chance is their only chance. John and Oaxyctl—and only the reader knows what other traitors—and Pepper are on their way.

  Starport? The reader may well suspect that the Ma Wi Jung is a spaceship. If it is armed, it could well be just the superweapon needed to defeat the Azteca and the Teotl. Even if it is not armed, though, it should be quite useful, for its drives could vaporize airships, its weight could crush armies, and perhaps it could even ferry refugees out of harm's way. But the exact nature and powers of the Ma Wi Jung are not revealed till late in the tale. As for the codes that John supposedly knows, he has lost his memory, remember? How can he give up those codes, or use them? And never mind that he is progressively more damaged, wounded, gangrenous, delirious, and near death.

  The reader patiently awaits the inevitable climax when all is revealed and the chestnuts emerge from the fire. Buckell does not, however, make the mistake of saying everyone will live happily ever after. The Azteca are defeated (for now), and that wormhole is healing. A nasty future awaits. But the people of Nanagada must deal with that when it comes.

  Will there be a sequel? The package gives no hints, but there's room, and the back-story has the potential for prequels. Buckell has displayed a gift for imagination much greater than one book can hold. Sequels would surely please many readers, but if he imagines as thoroughly in new and unconnected novels, they too will please.

  * * * *

  Over the last few years, James Gunn published a string of novelettes in this magazine. The basic idea (see “The Giftie,” September 1999) was that a rocket scientist found in a remainder bin a UFO-nut book that had in its back pages diagrams that seemed to describe a genuine, workable starship. After suitable investigation and negotiations, the starship became real and the intrepid crew was off to visit the aliens who had sent the designs. The tale is now in book form as Gift from the Stars, with the last two sections, “Uncreated Night” and “Strange Shadows,” somewhat different from what appeared in the January/February 2005 Analog.