New Writings in SF 21 - [Anthology]

by Ed By John Carnell

  There was an explosion to his right which he could have been excused for confusing with the bursting of a bomb. By some miracle the pilot stroke had sought a position some thirty metres distant. The mega-amp return stroke had literally vaporised a dozen trees in the dissipation of its energy. The sound of this barbarous event was prolonged, with the near effects arising first and apparently receding into the sky due to the limited speed of sound and the rapidly increasing distance of the ionised trail. It was a travesty of the actual speed and sequence of the pilot and return stroke.

  Kinoul knew he was lucky still to be alive. The fantastic discharge current would be distributed radially through the local terrain. If the ground resistance was even only a fraction of an ohm per metre, the voltage drop between the legs of a standing man could still accrue to several kilovolts. Especially for a person as effectively earthed as he was at this moment. Thoughtfully he kept his legs pressed even closer together, though he suspected that he owed his life more to the conductivity of the water in which he stood than he did to any survival maxim.

  Short though the period may have been, he could clearly differentiate between the pilot and the following dart leaders which accommodated themselves of most of the same ionised pathway through the skies. No less than seven dart strokes rocked the forest in the near vicinity. The roar of their explosive effects combined in a continuing cacophony of violent destruction. When his eyes had cleared of their brilliance and his ears of their thunder he was amazed to find how many surrounding trees had been destroyed. He was even more amazed to find that his own puny life had been spared.

  Half deafened and with his nostrils rebelling at the ozone and vaporised sap, he clung to the one great bole which had somehow been his saviour. But he had little doubts about his final chances of survival. The thundercell above him was only just coming to maturity. It had many times the previously spent energy still at its disposal before it fell into decay probably an hour hence. In this time it would reexamine the electrical terrain beneath it, discount what had already fallen, and concentrate its energy on new paths of favoured low resistance. One such path must certainly include the soaking wet and upstanding body of George Kinoul and the tree beneath which he sheltered.

  It was at this point that he thought he must be going mad. The whole forest seemed to come alive with movement, indistinct and impossible to identify in the dim light, but nevertheless crowded with life. His imagination painted a momentary picture of an attack by an army of giant rats. Then he rationalised his fears and decided that the fantastic gathering beneath the treetops could only consist of the giant Baban birds. Leaping, hopping and flying they came in a complete mass through the trees, like an animated wall of grey movement. Their alien mewing, soft though it was, completely drowned-out the sounds of storm.

  What their purpose was, Kinoul had no means of knowing. He did not think it was to attack him, although he was obviously the focus of their attentions. He was no physical match for one aggressive bird, let alone the thousands who filled the forest spaces. Within minutes he was completely surrounded, but he received no more harm than the occasional accidental brush with a wingtip. Then as if by some signal, the whole mass flew upwards, shattering the leafy screen above as they made their exit beneath the base of the storm. There they flew in their thousands close above the trees like a great organic whirlpool.

  Forgetting his own wretchedness, Kinoul emerged into a relatively open space and watched with open-mouthed fascination. Wider and wider spread the circle of the great wings. More and more birds flew in every minute from the distant skyline to join the marvellous roundabout, which spread like a spiral nebula right across the sky. Nor was it lost on him that the thundercell above went into rapid and impotent decay. The thunder which still growled ominously, retreated almost to the far side of the forest.

  With the sky lightening rapidly in this area, the birds wheeled and chased the darker regions to repeat their fantastic exorcism at a gradually increasing distance. With the first traces of sun beginning to break through, Kinoul watched them go regretfully. There was no doubt at all in his mind that their deliberate and incredible action had saved his life. Not only did they shepherd the maturing storms, but they also had the ability to congregate and rise up and destroy a thundercell in full maturity. Such a degree of proficiency in controlling their environment was not a gift given to many creatures—not even to Man.

  As Kinoul began to move back to his ‘cat, soaked and muddy and more than a little wearied by the experience, he realised that he was not quite alone. One of the giant birds had remained with him in the brush and was regarding him fixedly from a cautious distance. From its stance and apparent acumen he suspected that this was the same bird which had watched him at the Ecological Station. The one which Janice Howell had called the king...

  As he passed it, Kinoul saluted gravely with a mud-stained hand.

  ‘I think you’ve made your point, Mr. King. I don’t think Manneschen ever considered this sort of possibility. But that was mainly due to our own limitations in understanding what constitutes a communication. Before Rockwell, nobody ever thought to listen to what the thunder said.’

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  * * * *

  TANGLED WEB

  by H. A. Hargreaves

  Being Spiritual Advisor to a mixed group of nationalities in a closed Arctic environment was no sinecure for the newly appointed chaplain, especially when each faction was against every other and all united against him. He could not even bury the dead properly because of Union regulations...

  * * * *

  The perspective was rather surrealistic. From the edge of the apron a few yards ahead of him, an intricate web of plastic pipe, conduit and cable stretched outward across the permafrost to the perimeter of the townsite. It was bounded on one side by a finished subdivision and on the other by the two hundred foot razorback ridge thrusting up at right angles to the river. Arching overhead was a maze of temporary lattice, from which this service hardware was suspended and high above that was the infinitely more complex, invisible web of SAC, endlessly whispering to the Arctic sky. Some wag, he thought, must surely have worked out a name later to suit those initials. Supersonic Air Carapace, indeed! Well, it was a sac after all, meshed above and below to protect man from this hostile environment. Or were they still deceiving themselves? A Closed Environment set into the Arctic Protected Environment. Wasn’t it Isaiah who had said, ‘The earth lies polluted under its inhabitants?’

  He slouched against an untidy pile of wooden crating and watched while a spindly monster rolled slowly forward with high-pitched whine, trailing cable like some futuristic umbilical cord. As two men handed up bags from the side-bed, two more emptied them into the cooker and the operator lowered the long, wide-mouthed blower over the edge of the apron to lay a steady stream of foam. Three feet of Schlagge foam, the perfect insulator, shielding the permafrost, embedding the service hardware, making a grey-white, supertough floor for the last subdivision of Tundra City. Walls too, eventually, for the homes in which the final one hundred and fifty families would live. But at least the interiors would have colourful laminates, a vital addition. He looked outward from under the latticework, through the SAC shimmer, across the reach of rivermouth towards Welcome Sound and shivered slightly as his eyes strained to find where grey-white met white-grey in the fine haze of lifted snow.

  Even where he stood, a few droplets sifted on to his silver hair, indicating that the new section of SAC was not completely meshed yet. He straightened his gaunt frame slowly, forcing ageing joints to measure his full six-foot-five. Flicking spray from his lowered hood he turned away from the construction area, where already men were dismantling the first section of lattice, stopping only to pull off a gauntlet and run his hand over the wood he had leaned against. When had he last felt real wood, he wondered; even rough scrap like this ? Crating. The extravagance of it made him painfully aware again that he was an alien here. The machines had been cradled in this, carr
ied by tractor train on the ice of Hudson Bay (thus getting around the Protected Environment regulations) for hundreds of miles from the Quebec shore to this mining site, to get the construction done by break-up. The credits it had cost were too much for him to imagine. With a shrug and a pushing back of old shoulders, he moved off the growing apron and through the subdivision airscreen, into the comfortable five degrees centigrade of Tundra City’s ‘main’ street.

  Stepping out in a deceptively unhurried pace, he returned to City Center, turning huge brown eyes up to the chrono mounted on the only third storey in town. 16.20—plenty of time before his appointment with Vladmir Homynyk, and he was reluctant, as always, to go to his own quarters. He sauntered through the lobby, reading notices on the bulletin boards, passed the steps to the upstairs rec rooms and entered the barnlike gymnasium, cum cinema-theatre, cum ballroom—and church.

  At the far end, next to the left stage entrance, was a flush plastic door with a sign: ‘Benjamin Scroop, Spiritual Advisor.’ Grimacing, Scroop visualised a third line: ‘Computerised Confessions,’ which was perhaps more appropriate in view of what he had accomplished here so far. Some seven hundred and fifty souls were entrusted to his care, in three splinter congregations and a sprinkling of other sects and to an individual they seemed either engaged in insidious obstruction or totally inert. For the life of him he could not understand why he, with less than a year to mandatory retirement, should have been plucked from his parish in Greater Danbury, Connecticut, and posted to a—a mine town. All Hail the Great God Computer, he muttered mutinously. Well this time the computer had erred, and the Placement Committee was either blind or senile to have accepted its recommendation. Yet in his heart he knew his self-deception and with a soul-sick acceptance he granted the computer its dispassionate accuracy.

  He himself had spun the thread which led to this end many years ago. Schlitz, or something, he had called himself, the man who appeared one night at the Scroop ELS, asking for help which the Spiritual Advisor could not provide. The Continental Computer had somehow struck that man off as dead and so he was dead to the world, for all practical intents and purposes. Scroop had watched him go back out into the darkness, to cope alone with his dilemma, and after a sleepless night the scholarly cleric, with his earned DD, had set aside his love for religious history and begun a new study. He would acquire the proper pastoral skills.

  Now with ironic amusement he went into his ‘office’ and private quarters which, unpartitioned, had previously been used to store gym apparatus. It was part of the general conspiracy to keep him uncomfortable, to let him know he was unwelcome. It was bad enough, with its unrelieved grey-white walls, ceiling, floor, its slapped-in fixtures and furnishings. But what these independent Old Canadians didn’t realise was that he had more space here than in his Stretched Efficiency Living Space at home; vastly more than in the ELS of those many years ago, with a wife and seven children. Here, the old widower rattled like a pea in a dry pod. And he had the two vital tools of his trade hooked up and working, both the viewer-scanner and the remote access computer console. Theoretically, it should merely be a matter of time until he had this situation under control, drawing upon the resources of the Regional Computer and the library, in Winnipeg. Nevertheless, it was as if his familiar arch-enemy, the Continental Computer, while acknowledging him as a wily master technocrat; had named him for this task to show him what he had really lost on that night when he decided to meet his parishioners’ world on its own terms.

  Meanwhile, it was time to meet another master, Vladmir Homynyk, and as if on cue the Chief Steward of Local 764, Mining, Smelting, and Refining Union, appeared at Scroop’s door. ‘Come in, come in,’ Scroop said mildly, ‘take a pew.’ He rolled his own chair past the corner of the scanner, into what might be called casual space between the equipment and the door, but Homynyk refused to descend to informality. Prowling restlessly through the cramped office, from door to partition setting off the tiny bed-sitter and back again, he turned abruptly and asked ‘What is it this time? You got any more ideas that can’t be done?’ He placed a meaty hand on top of the computer console and smeared grime on to its hood from his thumb. (There had been ample time to wash and change after he left the pits.) Scroop built a steeple with long, pale fingers and looked over it with wistful brown eyes. ‘I’m afraid it’s nothing new, Vladmir,’ he murmured, ‘just the same old question. As Patriarch, when are you going to arrange for me to provide your congregation with daily religious instruction?’

  Homynyk snorted, ‘You’re wasting your time and mine. Religious instruction begins with the men, and you aren’t qualified.’

  Scroop asked innocently, ‘And just once more, why am I not qualified?’ In disgust Homynyk made as if to leave, but turned with undisguised scorn and levelled a forefinger.

  ‘I told you a dozen times, we saw all this coming before I was born. When Old Canada and the US incorporated. We ain’t just Orthodox Ukrainians—we’re unionists. The community don’t just have any old Holy Joe. He’s a priest and he’s a card holder: a chaplain of the local. I told you to read the Union’s Reformed Constitution.’ He wiped his nose with a hairy wrist, as Scroop rolled his chair back to the scanner and flipped the switch. ‘That’s one of the things we got against you CUSS men,’ the steward finished. ‘You got all the answers under your switches, except the ones you need for a man’s world.’

  ‘But I took your advice, Vladmir,’ Scroop offered quietly. “I flipped a switch and read the constitution. And I flipped it again and read the original constitution, because in some places the new one simply says “as per the old”.’ Vladmir’s eyes narrowed slightly and Scroop continued. ‘A Spiritual Advisor for the Christian United Spiritual Society is acceptable to all sects of the merged Christian faith, but he does have to meet local needs.’

  Vladmir’s voice dripped scorn as he answered, ‘And we in Old Canada never merged. Regardless of the UN ruling on our petition, you don’t belong. You don’t qualify.’

  Scroop leaned back in his chair and sighed. ‘I was up at 04.00, Vladimir,’ he replied. ‘I went down to pithead 6 during the first shift. The foreman very kindly showed me how to operate the auger and I cut two feet of face. I rode an ore car up and helped couple it at the tunnel siding.’ Vladmir opened his mouth, but Scroop held up a hand. ‘I was over at the smelter at 10.00,’ he continued, ‘for a look-in. Got a chance to pry slag out of one furnace. Hot work, even in the suit. And last,’ he smiled faintly, ‘I was over at the refinery at 14.00. A docker let me put some ingots on the robofreight with his forklift.’ Vladmir moved back into the room and sank heavily into a chair. Scroop’s smile became absolutely benign. ‘Yes, the original constitution must have had men like me in mind. And the second doesn’t revise that section on chaplains one bit. I believe I’ve qualified three times over, don’t you?’

  Not that it really changed things, Scroop thought after Homynyk had left. The Chief Steward knew that he had seriously underestimated his rival. But it would be long and hard work till Scroop gained real acceptance with the congregation. The computer had given him a group profile of astonishing cohesion and identification with the patriarchal figure. There were, however, theological points on which he could develop his own roots within the congregation. One thing was certain: they were in desperate need of spiritual renewal and guidance. From him? His own soul-sickness rose again, but he consciously thrust it down. There was more work that he was peculiarly fitted to do and he had best be about it.

  Henri LeBlanc preferred to work during the third shift and since he was the manager of the Hudson Bay Company store, no one could argue, had anyone cared. Perhaps it was because even during the early summer, when it never really got dark, there was less business than during the other two shifts, hence he could take care of the light duties created by his second job as nominal mayor of Tundra City. He was in a mood apparently as expansive as his ample middle and greeted Scroop jovially enough. ‘Which hat shall I put on. Mr. S.A. ?’ he chuckled.
‘On what business do you come to my little shop?’ Scroop glanced through the clear plastic to the main floor of the store below and lowered himself into a chair as if listening for squeaky hinges. ‘Henri, mon fils,’ he grunted, ‘it has nothing to do with your congregation—at the moment, though there are certain things which must soon cease upon pain of excommunication. Yours!’ He watched as a shadow of fear flitted across the other’s face, and then barked a short laugh. ‘Come,’ he said, ‘you were too good a student while you were at seminary to take me seriously. After a number of years one easily forgets things, or perhaps one may have left before acquiring certain knowledge. Such as who may give absolution, or extreme unction to the dying when an ordained priest is within call.’

  Henri’s normally ruddy face went quite pale and Scroop pressed while he had the storeman on the defensive. ‘No, no,’ he waved a boney hand, ‘let us not speak of this unfortunate death for the moment. I come, rather, to speak for Christian charity. The matter of the sacramental wine. Not for myself, though I would prefer to consecrate official spirits for my daily communion. For the Anglicans, Henri!’ He added just a hint of pleading to his voice. ‘They have not taken communion for years, some of them, because the congregation has not had a priest, yet now they refuse because the wine is not “official”.’