The Robot's Twilight Companion

by Tony Daniel

  The Robot’s Twilight Companion

  By Tony Daniel

  ElectricStory.com, Inc.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  “Aconcagua,” copyright © 1993 by Bantam Doubleday Dell Magazines; first published inAsimov’s Science Fiction , February 1993.

  “Black Canoes,” copyright © 1997 by Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publications; first published inAsimov’s Science Fiction , July 1997.

  “Death of Reason,” copyright © 1992 by Davis Publications, Inc.; first published inIsaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine , September 1992.

  “A Dry, Quiet War,” copyright © 1996 by Dell Magazines, Inc.; first published inAsimov’s Science Fiction , June 1996.

  “Grist,” copyright © 1998 by Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publications; first published inAsimov’s Science Fiction , December 1998.

  “Life on the Moon,” copyright © 1995 by Bantam Doubleday Dell Magazines; first published inAsimov’s Science Fiction , April 1995.

  “Mystery Box,” copyright © 1999 by Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publications; first published inAsimov’s Science Fiction , April 1999.

  “Radio Praha,” copyright © 1998 by Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publications; first published inAsimov’s Science Fiction , March 1998.

  “The Robot’s Twilight Companion,” copyright © 1996 by Dell Magazines; first published inAsimov’s Science Fiction , August 1996.

  For Lucius Shepard,

  Who taught me the life of the writer

  and

  In memory of Jim Turner,

  An extraordinary editor and friend

  Introduction

  Tony and I share the same opinion of introductions, that is, that the work should speak for itself, and we agreed that this would be a fitting place, instead, to focus on the role of Jim Turner in bringing this book to print. Most of you have never heard of Jim Turner . . . and I suppose there’s no reason you should have. He was an editor, which is an under-publicized and unappreciated profession. Jim was one of the most unappreciated—and most astute—editors in the history of publishing. He lived and worked in Collinsville, Illinois, far from the literary spotlight of New York. There, unencumbered by corporate concerns, by the need to provide vast amounts of silage for the undiscerning appetites of mass-market readership, he was able to transform Arkham House from a minor-league publisher specializing in H.P. Lovecraft tributes to a respected showcase for new writing talent. He had a passion for making quality books with strong content, beautiful books that would survive as objects for generations. His Arkham books—as well as those he produced under his own imprint, Golden Gryphon (which continues today under the stewardship of his brother, Gary)—were lovingly designed and were nominated for and won innumerable awards. Jim himself was not accorded the slightest honor by the field he served so ably and devotedly until after his death when he won the World Fantasy Award in the category “Special Award, Professional.” He was never less than forthright in his opinions, and I’m certain that the notion of being recognized posthumously would have struck him as the height of hypocrisy.I believe that Jim’s greatest virtue as an editor was his ability to spot talent. Evidence of this is a phone call I received from him in late 1989, during which he raved about the first published story of a young writer named Tony Daniel. I had taught at a workshop that Tony attended the previous summer, and when I mentioned this, Jim got excited and started pumping me for information, as he was wont to do. He declared his intention of one day publishing a collection of stories by Tony—he was that sure of Tony’s potential. As usual, Jim’s judgment was borne out: Tony has since become one of the most important new-generation science fiction writers, and it’s likely that his ultimate horizon lies far beyond the shores of that genre.The Robot’s Twilight Companion is the last book that Jim Turner nurtured from conception to the printer’s shop before his untimely death. It stands as a fitting memorial to his life, constituting the record of a maturing young writer’s development, something that Jim delighted in and something that has been a signature of many of his books. From the title piece, with its Asimovian focus on a redefinition of humanity, to the Sergio Leone-flavored tour-de-force of “A Dry, Quiet War,” to the meditation upon the often contrary forces of love and social commitment in the Hugo-nominated “Life on the Moon,” these stories constitute the most idiosyncratic body of short science fiction since the early days of John Varley. In sum they clearly enunciate the fact that Tony Daniel is a supremely gifted writer whose career has just begun.

  —Lucius Shepard

  14 May 2000

  ElectricStory.com gratefully acknowledges Jim Turner’s extensive work onThe Robot’s Twilight Companionand his brother Gary’s generous cooperation with our eBook publication. Gary mentioned to us that Golden Gryphon wanted to approach Lucius about an introduction like this for the print edition but lost track of the idea while bringing the book to press, an effort that was greatly complicated by Jim’s death. We hope you’ll support Golden Gryphon in their ongoing mission to publish fine hardback volumes of the best speculative fiction (http://www.goldengryphon.com).

  Life on the Moon

  The Big Empty

  by Henry Colterman

  If I ventured into the Big Empty,

  a smaller movement between hard

  and fast stars,

  if I ventured to the moon, and the

  dust of the moon,

  and to those smooth ceramic halls,

  those lustrous and benign

  spaces, or to the evaporated surface,

  the empty mineral stretch and score,

  would I find you?

  Are you still in the valence between

  spaces? I would kiss the

  fall of your hair; I would lie

  beside you in the silence,

  and trace with my fingertip your lips’

  surge and fall.

  I would pull you gently from the

  undermass,

  the crystal and stone, like a spiderweb

  from foliage, like

  breath from a sleeper.

  If I ventured to the Big Empty,

  I would never stop looking for you, Nell

  N ell was skinny and wan. Her hair was brown, darkening to black, and her eyes were brown and sad. Henry did not understand why he loved her, for he had always considered himself a shallow man when it came down to it, with a head turned by shallow beauty and flashy teeth and eyes. Nell was a calm, dark pool. She was also probably the greatest artist of her generation, though, and when one had the extraordinary luck to claim such a woman’s regard, one made exceptions.They met at a faculty mixer in St. Louis. Henry was a visiting poet at Washington University’s graduate writing program. Nell, already quite famous in her professional circles, had given a lecture that day at the architecture school—a lecture that Henry had studiously avoided. Nell had not read any of Henry’s poetry, for that matter, but then few people had. If anything, twenty-first-century poets were more obscure and unknown than their predecessors had been.

  But both knew the other by reputation, and being the only people at the mixer who were not involved in the intricacies of academic policy skirmishes, the two of them ended up in a corner, talking about corners.

  “Why do they have to be ninety degrees?” Henry asked. He leaned against one wall, trying to appear nonchalant, and felt his drink slosh over his wrist. For the first time, Henry regretted that he was not a man brought up to be comfortable on the insides of buildings.

  “They don’t,” Nell replied. “But there are good reasons they mostly are.” At first glance, Nell’s face seemed lacking in some way, as if the muscles and tendons were strung out
and defined, but weren’t really supporting anything of importance. Odd.

  “Structural reasons?”

  “Why are there laps, when we sit down?”

  Henry knew then that he was going to like her, despite her peculiar face.

  “So we have something to do with our legs, I suppose,” he said.

  “And to hold cats and children on, too. Function and beauty.” Nell smiled, and suddenly Henry understood why her face seemed curious and incomplete. It was a superstructure waiting for that smile.

  They did not, of course, return to Henry’s place and fuck like minks, although by the end of the mixer that was all Henry had on his mind. Instead, Henry asked her to coffee the following afternoon. Nell actually had a scramjet to Berlin scheduled for the early morning, Henry later discovered, but she canceled the flight for the date. Nell understood which situations called for spontaneity, and being a careful, thoughtful woman, she always made the right moves.

  Those first moments were so abstract, urban and—formed, as Henry later recalled them. Like a dance, personifying the blind calls and pediments of nature. That was what it felt like to be alive in the houses of people you didn’t really know, of living hazy days in parks and coffee shops and the chambers of the university. Nell and he met the next day for espresso like two ballet dancers executing a maneuver. Touch lightly, exchange, touch, pass, pass, pass.

  But something sparked then and there because, of course, he had asked her to drive out to the Ozarks to see the flaming maples, and Nell had accepted. And in the Ozarks, Henry could become himself, his best self.

  Nell had found one of his books, and when they stopped to look at a particularly fine farmhouse amid crimson and vermilion foliage, she quoted, from memory, his poem about growing up in the country.

  They kissed with a careful passion.

  From: Living on the Moon

  An Essay Concerning Lunar Architectural Possibilities

  by Nell Branigan

  Lunar architecture will offer many new frontiers for artists, but the old truths must still apply if the edifices of the moon are to be places where people will want to live and work. Lunar architecture must take account of space and form above all. Art is the outward, objective expression of inner, subjective experience. It is the symbol of what it is like to be human.Consider architecture. What is the great element of architecture? It is not form alone, for that is the great element of sculpture. We live and workinsidethe architectural sculpture, as well as pondering it from outside. We inhabit its spaces. This is why I say that its greatest elements are both form and space, and the ways the two relate to one another.

  Two years later, Henry published his fifth book to sound reviews and a little more money than he’d expected. On the strength of this, he had agreed to move to Seattle for a while to be with Nell, despite the fact that he had no academic appointment there, or prospects for one. They were married in a civil ceremony in the apex of the Smith Tower, a building Nell particularly admired.And I am aman Nell particularly admired, Henry later thought. Perhaps love is not an emotion that is possible for the developed feelings. Perhaps the artist contemplates and symbolizes feeling to such an extent that he or she can’t just have one after a certain point. Maybe that’s why I’m only a good poet, and Nell was a genius. I feel too much stuff. Too much goddamn unformedstuff .

  Yet Nell had remembered his poem and by now, she had read all of his work and would quote parts of it when she was happy or animated by some idea.

  In Seattle, Nell’s earthly masterpiece was being built—the Lakebridge Edifice. “Built” was, maybe, not the word for construction these days. “Substantiated” or “Formed” seemed more correct, as the macro- and micromachines interacted with the algorithmic plans to produce a structure utterly true to the architect’s vision—down to the molecular level.

  To achieve such perfection of craft took a little over two years, during which Nell and Henry shared comfortable apartments on the Alki-Harbor Island Span, a glassy affair of a neighborhood that stretched across Elliott Bay in a flattened arch. Nell thought it crass and atrocious. Henry decided to make the best of things, and planted a garden on the thirty-foot-long catwalk that opened up from their bedroom. His new book began to take shape as a series of captured moments having to do with plants and growth and getting soil on your pants and hands.

  Production and Reproduction

  by Henry Colterman

  In the nucleus of our home,

  my wife draws buildings

  in concentrated silence, measured pace

  as daylight dapples through the walls

  and ceilings

  of our semipermeable high-arch

  living space.

  While I, raised young among the cows

  and maize,

  garden the terrace by my hand

  and hoe

  and fax her concept out to their

  next phase,

  she makes our living—and

  your living, too.

  Near twilight, I osmose from

  room to room

  feeling vague, enzymatic lust for her

  but wait, and clean, and prepensely

  consume

  my supper in the leavings of our birr.

  And then she stumbles, blinking,

  into night

  and we opaque the walls to

  greenhouse light.

  I was happy, Henry recalled. I thought I was just getting by, using my garden as a substitute for living in nature, living by nature. But I was truly happy on the span. Somehow, nature came to me there.Sex was never Nell’s strong point. She was awkward and seemed perpetually inexperienced, but she was passionate and thoughtful. Her sexuality was as well-formed, balanced, and beautiful as her buildings. But it lacked something. That something was, of course, what Nell put into her work, Henry knew. Artless ardor. Novelty and insight. The secret ingredient of genius.

  Yet Henry did not mind. For she loved him, he knew, and respected his work, his long silences, his gazing off into nowhere, his sometimes childish glee at what must have appeared to her to be nothing at all.

  And so they lived and grew together during the making of the Lakebridge Edifice. Or perhaps I grewaround Nell, Henry later considered, like wisteria around wrought iron. Nell didn’t change, but she was good support and did not mind being covered over in spots.

  From: Living on the Moon

  An Essay Concerning Lunar Architectural Possibilities

  by Nell Branigan

  So what does this tell us about a lunar architecture? Only that space and form still apply to our constructions because humansstill apply. The moon is perhaps one of the oldest constants in the making of this feeling of being alive that all art expresses. Women know this quite literally, but men know it just as well in a hundred biological rhythms that go back to our animal experience of the rise and fall of the Earth’s tide.Yet we will no longer be down on Earth, looking up at the moon. We will be on the moon, looking up at the Earth. The old movements and spaces will not apply. Or rather, they will not apply in the same ways. I imagine that this disruption of feeling will be far more upsetting to people than the change in gravity or the physical necessities of existence on the lunar surface.

  I conceive of a lunar architecture that would mitigate this disruption and yet, if it were possible, provide us withnewforms and spaces to reflect our new relationship with the mother planet. Like a child who has left the nest, lunar architecture must look back with fondness, but forward with imagination and resolve.

  What are the actualities of such an architecture? What sorts of cities ought we to build on the moon?

  When the Lakebridge Edifice was complete, it was clear that Nell was a major artist of her generation. Even Henry, who had been an intimate part of the design and construction of the structure, was stunned when he first saw it complete and revealed, one morning near sunrise.He’d been out on his terrace, weeding the tomatoes. Even with a plethora of soil emulsifiers, regula
tory agents, and hunter-killer insect robots, weeds still grew. The problem was one of recognition, for life was life, no matter how irritating the form it took. Henry had not been able to sleep the night before, while Nell had slept like a log, her labors in Seattle nearly completed. Their settled life was about to end, Henry knew, and with it the feeling of content and regularity that he hadn’t known since his days growing up on his parents’ little farm near Dalton, Georgia.

  He’d gone out onto the terrace because that was the place that smelled and felt most strongly of the old farm, particularly his father’s prized tomato garden. It should. He’d worked to get just that flavor out of the thirty feet, even sacrificing yield to do it. This was the way it had been. And, once again, he was going to leave it and lose it.

  Henry began to weed despondently, while dawn turned the black sky gray, as it did nearly every morning in Seattle. Except. Except that now there was something new that made the gray sky—not brighter—butlighter . The sun came up, and shone on the northeast corner of the Lakebridge Edifice.

  The problem wasn’t new, Nell had told him. It was the age-old renovation problem of what to do with low ceilings. In Seattle, the clouds were often low, and the sky was frequently mean. It sometimes made you feel compressed, made your life seem squat and set. Yet there was the water of lake and ocean nearby, and when the clouds would permit, mountains on all sides.

  Lakebridge was a solution to those days when the mountains didn’t come out, and the Sound and lakes were dishwater dull. It did not attempt to reverse those conditions, but to provide a new experience. It was a complex of different spaces, Nell called them. They couldn’t properly be viewed as distinct buildings. Too many connections, suggested and literal. The complex partially encompassed Lake Union, on the northeast side of downtown, and seemed to be the very evaporation and condensation of lake water into the sky—the cycle of liquid, vapor, and the solid apparitions of clouds in an ascending order that spired out at three-quarter miles. And yet this was far from all that the complex suggested. There was a colorful marina, a hoverport, residential and business sections intertwining like striated muscles. The structure was organic, alive, useful, because it was art first, because the craft was part of the makeup of its living form.