Something lashed out of the dark and swathed itself around his ankles. He stumbled disastrously, his outstretched hand plunging through air where wall should have been. His temple and cheek-bone jarred dazingly against a door frame. He saved himself from falling, but felt as if he had been battle-axed.
Clare’s voice came hoarse and scared: “What happened? Are you hurt?”
He kept his tone cheerful, if shaky: “Just tripped over the bedspread turned back on the floor here. I’ll throw it over you till I get the blanket.”
Easier said than done. The topologists’ puzzle of the inner tube that can’t be turned insideout through a hole in the side, though infinitely elastic, seemed elementary compared with flattening that eight-by-six rectangle of fluffy chenille. In the end, he gave up trying to do a perfect job, and bundled it over the shivering girl any old way, so he could be free to get that blanket.
The bathroom was utterly black; he could see only the dial of his wristwatch moving. With a sudden giddy feeling that the solid fixtures had shifted, he picked his way from sink to tub and along to the linen-closet over the tub’s end. His exploring fingers felt painted wood and brass knob, cold and hostile. He opened the door. Folded sheets and shaggy towels seemed somehow a little friendlier. Sanity began to steal back as he carefully disengaged a blanket, giving it no opportunity to emulate the unruliness of the bedspread. As it came into his arms, a compact, well-folded mass, he let out a breath he had not known he was holding . . .
Something hit the bottom of the bathtub with an ear-stunning smash – a big bottle of some kind that had bided its time up there.
Oh, well – that particular mess could wait till morning, safely localized inside the tub. He edged back toward the door, calling, “Okay, honey, just a bottle. Be right with you.” And he felt something hard under his foot, and then a sharp sting.
His rational brain began parroting, “. . . The first impression is of contact, carried by fast, Group A fibers, followed by one of pain, carried by slow, Group C fibers. Pain is of two types: first pain, bright, stinging, well localized . . .”
But a deeper level of his mind cut in with, “How did that hunk of glass know exactly where I was going to put my foot?”
He got the blanket around Clare, angrily unconcerned that he was soaking the good carpet with gore. Nothing mattered except beating off this peril to Clare, whose teeth were now chattering in the darkness. Now . . . hot water bottles . . .
Eureka! The gas stove would heat the place, and give a little light too . . . why hadn’t he thought of that at first? Why, for that matter, hadn’t he thought of using the blankets off his couchbed? They surely did exploit your stupidity!
The hot water bottles were in the kitchen. He began to explore his way through the living room.
The darkness was clammy. Windows were dim presences, hardly revealing their own positions. A radiator, when he touched it, was cold as drowned bones. For an endless moment he was groping through a subterranean passage, the weight of ancient rocks pressing down in a sentient and malignant desire to blot out his tiny flicker of life. This was a Thing with which one could have no compromise, because its very being was the sucking down of human aspiration and dream. Its only communication was hate and recognition that he was a special focus of danger, because he knew It for what It was and might rally resistance to It. It was attacking him through Clare; he stood alone between her and faceless Chaos. The bright, somewhat shoddy little apartment had melted like a fragile surface to show an abyss of death.
What would that Presence be like if It once organized and gained the upper hand?
He must not pause, or It would gain the upper hand . . .
His touch found the stove where it should be. It had no pilot burner, and he had to locate the match holder. With grim deliberation he struck a match. The instant, blinding flare was no friendly light. He angled it till it burned steadily, then turned on the gas. The gust of air that always precedes the flow from a long-disused burner blew out the match. With the same measured restraint, he got another. But tension and vexation made him strike it a little too petulantly. As the head plumed into flame, it snapped off and vaulted into a far corner.
For a terrifying instant, he thought it had gone into the trash basket full of waxed wrappings and other tinder . . . he dove after it, and struck his bruised cheek sickeningly against a table-corner . . . the match-head died impotently.
He found himself exulting aloud: “Failed, you little bastard!”
On the third try, he got the burner lit, and its eldritch, blue glare made it easier to light the others and get on a kettleful of water. He looked at the flame and admitted he was afraid to bundle Clare out here where it would soon be warm. If he didn’t break his neck, or hers, he would probably pitch the two of them into the stove.
While the water was heating, he impulsively went to inspect the fire escape. The window showed nothing but reflections of the burners and his own shadowy image. He raised the sash, and looked out . . .
No wonder the power was off! The street lamps still shone, far below; but they revealed sleet falling like molten drops in Inferno; the trees were deep-sea corals and the windowpane was opaque as a sheet of paraffin.
Queer nausea and faintness swamped him . . . He gripped the sill, and his fingers slipped on the sheath of ice. For a moment he thought he had lost balance and was toppling in the grip of gravity, Their master-force, over the low sill . . . Even as he recovered, he could imagine his own nightmare howl as he plunged past scared neighbors’ windows to silence on the icy concrete.
He grunted, stepped back, closed the window. He still felt giddy . . .
Then he saw the dark smears on the floor. It took an exploring finger to explain them. He grunted again, a sour sound. Who wouldn’t feel giddy if they’d been bleeding like a stuck pig! It took twice as long as it should have to put on a pressure bandage with a napkin.
The water was too hot, now. He hung the bottles on a hook over the sink while he poured the scalding fluid into them. As he balanced the clumsy kettle, he slipped just a little on a smear of blood and swung the spout where his wrist might have been. But that was a waning threat, he realized – a mere parting shot by a repulsed enemy. The knives, glassware, electrical gadgets, bulks of furniture, all glinted in the blue light, demons and imps ready to frustrate and harass; but the deeper Power had withdrawn – temporarily.
He got the bottles snuggled beside Clare, who murmured gratification.
At that juncture, the lights went on . . .
Next morning, the paper said: EIGHTEEN DIE IN FREAK STORM. There were accounts of linemen slipping to death, highway crashes, frozen tramps, fractured skulls.
Just a skirmish, thought Carl. Imagine that situation spread over the whole country – millions of situations like mine last night, year after year . . .
Driving back to the Institute, he tried to keep his mind on the streets, so that last night could fall into perspective. Soon it began to . . . soon he was smiling a little. But, said his semi-conscious, one thing was sure: Whatever the final verdict on the Major’s theory – even if he’s wrong – he’s wrong with a damn good case!
Carl flung himself into his duties till Matt Loftus came around, about mid-afternoon, flourishing a crisp, folded document. “This is it, son!” said Matt. “We lose the Major, and the Major regains his right to life, liberty and the rebuttal of the inanimate. Want to join the Liberation Committee?”
The Major listened to Matt’s announcement with his usual courtesy, but with such reserve that that normally self-assured medico ended rather lamely: “Maybe we should have told you this was coming along, sir. But I figured it as a sort of Christmas surprise. Anyway, we just need your signature . . .”
The Major scanned the paper and then laid it on his work-bench, smiling a little sadly. He said, “I appreciate your efforts, Doctor, and even more I appreciate your motives. But you don’t quite understand.”
“I – what? What don’t I unders
tand?”
The Major seated himself and caressed his mustache for a long moment. Then: “Outside I’d be a target for a concerted attack. They know I’m the greatest menace to Them on Earth, and They’d even risk unmasking Themselves – knowing most people would simply gawk at the most fantastic series of accidents and never draw an inference. I wouldn’t last a month. Here, I’m safe, with everything under control.”
Matt’s face was a study: “But . . . what about alerting other people? Don’t you have a duty to preach your theory and so on?”
Carl glanced sharply at his friend. That was humoring a patient!
“Why, Doctor,” said the Major. “I have the best possible audience right here, funny as it sounds. You of the staff are the people best equipped to appreciate my theory – scientists, but not convention-bound theorists. You’re not only medical men, used to dealing with things as they are: you’re psychiatrists, whose job is distinguishing between the rational and the irrational. You can analyze vital phenomena better than an engineer such as myself. And you’re the people most likely to be listened to in turn, and best able to defend yourselves from the inevitable attacks by the enemy.”
His mild but steady gray eyes considered the young men, and the corners of his mustache quirked: “What better converts could I have than you two?”
Carl turned and stared at Matt, eyes questioning.
Matt set his jaw: “Yes, I’m going to – to follow it up. To see where it goes. And I wouldn’t say so till I was sure of at least one competent associate . . . you are with me, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” said Carl, with sudden complete conviction.
The Major leaned back triumphantly. “You see! Of course, this place does put a certain stigma on my ideas. But with the safety factor, and now with grade-A channels, why should I leave? Do you think I’m crazy?”
The Very Pulse of The Machine
Michael Swanwick
Michael Swanwick (b. 1950) has been selling science fiction since 1980, including such complex high-tech novels as Vacuum Flowers (1987), Griffin’s Egg (1991) and the award-winning Stations of the Tide (1991). You’ll find the best of his early short fiction in Gravity’s Angels (1991) and the best of his recent work in Tales of Old Earth (2000) including the following award-winning story.
Click.
The radio came on.
“Hell.”
Martha kept her eyes forward, concentrated on walking. Jupiter to one shoulder, Daedalus’s plume to the other. Nothing to it. Just trudge, drag, trudge, drag. Piece of cake.
“Oh.”
She chinned the radio off.
Click.
“Hell. Oh. Kiv. El. Sen.”
“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” Martha gave the rope an angry jerk, making the sledge carrying Burton’s body jump and bounce on the sulfur hardpan. “You’re dead, Burton, I’ve checked, there’s a hole in your faceplate big enough to stick a fist through, and I really don’t want to crack up. I’m in kind of a tight spot here and I can’t afford it, okay? So be nice and just shut the fuck up.”
“Not. Bur. Ton.”
“Do it anyway.”
She chinned the radio off again.
Jupiter loomed low on the western horizon, big and bright and beautiful and, after two weeks on Io, easy to ignore. To her left, Daedalus was spewing sulfur and sulfur dioxide in a fan two hundred kilometers high. The plume caught the chill light from an unseen sun and her visor rendered it a pale and lovely blue. Most spectacular view in the universe, and she was in no mood to enjoy it.
Click.
Before the voice could speak again, Martha said, “I am not going crazy, you’re just the voice of my subconscious, I don’t have the time to waste trying to figure out what unresolved psychological conflicts gave rise to all this, and I am not going to listen to anything you have to say.”
Silence.
The moonrover had flipped over at least five times before crashing sideways against a boulder the size of the Sydney Opera House. Martha Kivelsen, timid groundling that she was, was strapped into her seat so tightly that when the universe stopped tumbling, she’d had a hard time unlatching the restraints. Juliet Burton, tall and athletic, so sure of her own luck and agility that she hadn’t bothered, had been thrown into a strut.
The vent-blizzard of sulfur dioxide snow was blinding, though. It was only when Martha had finally crawled out from under its raging whiteness that she was able to look at the suited body she’d dragged free of the wreckage.
She immediately turned away.
Whatever knob or flange had punched the hole in Burton’s helmet had been equally ruthless with her head.
Where a fraction of the vent-blizzard – “lateral plumes” the planetary geologists called them – had been deflected by the boulder, a bank of sulfur dioxide snow had built up. Automatically, without thinking, Martha scooped up double-handfuls and packed them into the helmet. Really, it was a nonsensical thing to do; in a vacuum, the body wasn’t about to rot. On the other hand, it hid that face.
Then Martha did some serious thinking.
For all the fury of the blizzard, there was no turbulence. Because there was no atmosphere to have turbulence in. The sulfur dioxide gushed out straight from the sudden crack that had opened in the rock, falling to the surface miles away in strict obedience to the laws of ballistics. Most of what struck the boulder they’d crashed against would simply stick to it, and the rest would be bounced down to the ground at its feet. So that – this was how she’d gotten out in the first place – it was possible to crawl under the near-horizontal spray and back to the ruins of the moon-rover. If she went slowly, the helmet light and her sense of feel ought to be sufficient for a little judicious salvage.
Martha got down on her hands and knees. And as she did, just as quickly as the blizzard had begun – it stopped.
She stood, feeling strangely foolish.
Still, she couldn’t rely on the blizzard staying quiescent. Better hurry, she admonished herself. It might be an intermittent.
Quickly, almost fearfully, picking through the rich litter of wreckage, Martha discovered that the mother tank they used to replenish their airpacks had ruptured. Terrific. That left her own pack, which was one-third empty, two fully charged backup packs, and Burton’s, also one-third empty. It was a ghoulish thing to strip Burton’s suit of her airpack, but it had to be done. Sorry, Julie. That gave her enough oxygen to last, let’s see, almost forty hours.
Then she took a curved section of what had been the moonrover’s hull and a coil of nylon rope, and with two pieces of scrap for makeshift hammer and punch, fashioned a sledge for Burton’s body.
She’d be damned if she was going to leave it behind.
Click.
“This is. Better.”
“Says you.”
Ahead of her stretched the hard, cold sulfur plain. Smooth as glass. Brittle as frozen toffee. Cold as hell. She called up a visor-map and checked her progress. Only forty-five miles of mixed terrain to cross and she’d reach the lander. Then she’d be home free. No sweat, she thought. Io was in tidal lock with Jupiter. So the Father of Planets would stay glued to one fixed spot in the sky. That was as good as a navigation beacon. Just keep Jupiter to your right shoulder, and Daedalus to your left. You’ll come out fine.
“Sulfur is. Triboelectric.”
“Don’t hold it in. What are you really trying to say?”
“And now I see. With eye serene. The very. Pulse. Of the machine.” A pause. “Wordsworth.”
Which, except for the halting delivery, was so much like Burton, with her classical education and love of classical poets like Spenser and Ginsberg and Plath, that for a second Martha was taken aback. Burton was a terrible poetry bore, but her enthusiasm had been genuine, and now Martha was sorry for every time she’d met those quotations with rolled eyes or a flip remark. But there’d be time enough for grieving later. Right now she had to concentrate on the task at hand.
The colors of the plain w
ere dim and brownish. With a few quick chintaps, she cranked up their intensity. Her vision filled with yellows, oranges, reds – intense wax crayon colors. Martha decided she liked them best that way.
For all its Crayola vividness, this was the most desolate landscape in the universe. She was on her own here, small and weak in a harsh and unforgiving world. Burton was dead. There was nobody else on all of Io. Nobody to rely on but herself. Nobody to blame if she fucked up. Out of nowhere, she was filled with an elation as cold and bleak as the distant mountains. It was shameful how happy she felt.
After a minute, she said, “Know any songs?”
Oh the bear went over the mountain. The bear went over the mountain. The bear went over the mountain. To see what he could see.
“Wake. Up. Wake. Up.”
To see what he could –
“Wake. Up. Wake. Up. Wake.”
“Hah? What?”
“Crystal sulfur is orthorhombic.”
She was in a field of sulfur flowers. They stretched as far as the eye could see, crystalline formations the size of her hand. Like the poppies of Flanders field. Or the ones in The Wizard of Oz. Behind her was a trail of broken flowers, some crushed by her feet or under the weight of the sledge, others simply exploded by exposure to her suit’s waste heat. It was far from being a straight path. She had been walking on autopilot, and stumbled and turned and wandered upon striking the crystals.
Martha remembered how excited she and Burton had been when they first saw the fields of crystals. They had piled out of the moonrover with laughter and bounding leaps, and Burton had seized her by the waist and waltzed her around in a dance of jubilation. This was the big one, they’d thought, their chance at the history books. And even when they’d radioed Hols back in the orbiter and were somewhat condescendingly informed that there was no chance of this being a new life-form, but only sulfide formations such as could be found in any mineralogy text . . . even that had not killed their joy. It was still their first big discovery. They’d looked forward to many more.
The Mammoth Book Of Science Fiction Page 38