New Writings in SF 29 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Keith Bulmer

  ‘And the plant reacted.’

  ‘Yes. But the plant didn’t stop him. It rejected him.’

  Simde was relieved. He looked at Enomice and Nekk. He had to tell them.

  The healer said, ‘I know what you’re thinking, Simde Yorea. Let me tell them. You are too emotionally involved. Perhaps you’d better see the other crew members. Emphasize that the psycho-food plant was not to blame.’

  ‘Yes. Thank you.’ Simde’s thoughts had been drifting away and there were visions in his mind about his own cubs.

  ‘I’m going to bond with the plant,’ Neri said and they went out together. ‘I suggest that we suspend the remainder of the bonding for today?’

  Simde agreed. Atira had remained with Enomice, and Simde had an uncomfortable meeting in the common room. No one was hostile; but their questions were incisive. Thankfully, he was able to get away and be alone. His belief in himself and the project was weakened. However, he knew that he would go on, as long as Atira and the others supported him. He wondered what influence the stopping of Lif would have, once the travellers had the opportunity really to think about the possible implications. He was beginning to reassemble his jumbled thoughts when an announcement came over the address system, saying that Noss wanted to speak to him.

  * * * *

  Simde gave the room number to the video-communicator and Noss’s image appeared on the screen.

  ‘I’m in the radio room of the station, Simde. I want you to come as soon as you can.’

  There were others present and Noss obviously did not want to discuss anything in public and he could glean nothing from his friend’s expression.

  ‘I’ll come at once.’

  He found Atira, told her where he was going, then commandeered a shuttle. It was arbitrary and wasteful; but necessary.

  When they were together in a private office - Simde, Noss and a crystallographer - Noss said bluntly: ‘We think that the wheel’s beginning to break up.’

  Simde made a strangled noise and sat down abruptly, all the doubts and fears crowding in again.

  The other man said: ‘This has been a cumulative effect, over many years—’

  Simde interrupted. ‘All those inspections - what were they for, if this is happening?’

  The expert took the outburst calmly. ‘Until now, the crystal has been able to repair any cracks. However, the flare activity of the past year has been the most intense for at least a hundred years and the crystal can’t withstand the hard radiation much longer.’

  Simde slumped in the seat. He was going to be beaten. At the last malevolent flick of fate. His mind rebelled at the enormity of it. Long years of work and belief, started before he was separated, and now it was to be all for nothing. Coming on top of Lif’s stopping, how could the project survive? At that moment, Simde would willingly have stopped.

  ‘Simde—’

  Noss was speaking, but Simde didn’t look up.

  ‘I’ve done some calculations. I’m sure that the wheel will hold together for the short period of rotation required, and attain the velocity you need.’

  ‘Lif has stopped,’ Simde said. ‘For all I know, the project might be stopped, too.’

  ‘Couldn’t you—’

  ‘No!’ Simde flashed at the expert. ‘I must tell the travellers. They have a right to know and a right to decide what they want to do. The launch is the beginning of a new phase of the project. Everything must be be based on trust.’

  He stood up. ‘I’m going to Hasub.’

  They left in silence.

  * * * *

  Ten

  The first snow was falling like tiny rose-tinted flowers as Lif was taken to his final bonding. Many people followed as he was borne slowly along the tree-shadowed avenue to the ceremonial pool, which was the first stage in the conversion of a body into the nutrients that fed the growing psycho-food plants. It was a perfect cycle of separation and stopping. The pool was on a hillside, overlooking the fields where the food plants were raised and nurtured.

  The procession emerged from the avenue as the snow clouds passed on and the sun shone. Enomice and Nekk accompanied the bearers to the edge of the flower-scalloped pool. After they had looked upon his face for the last time, they stood aside. The bearers lowered the litter into the water and backed away.

  A quiet current caught it and wafted it across the pool to a skilfully disguised culvert. Enomice and Nekk gazed after the litter until it disappeared. The cycle had begun again with Lif.

  As they turned away from the pool, a youth stepped forward from the crowd. Simde did not recognize him. But Noss, standing beside him, did. It was the cub for whom he had taken the Execution of Sentence. Lezah Ewor.

  He stood in the formal position, feet together, right hand extended. At a final bonding, it was traditional that, when parents had lost a cub, one who was parentless could ask to be adopted by them.

  Simde was keenly interested in the outcome of the meeting. Enomice and Nekk had accepted the knowledge that Lif had stopped because he had taken drugs. Believing that was subtly different. Now they were confronted by Lezah Ewor, who had taken drugs, joined illicitly with Irah and been reprieved from Execution of Sentence.

  * * * *

  ‘Enomice Nerod. Nekk Nerod. My name is Lezah Ewor. I am with you in your sorrow. My parents have taken the last bonding and I am alone. I have offended against the customs and the laws and was given the Judgment by the High Custodian. I was saved by Noss Sidl from taking the Execution of Sentence. All this I admit before you. I have been cleansed’.

  This caused murmuring among the onlookers. The process of cleansing was painful and dangerous, almost as bad as the addiction of the drugs themselves. Few took the cleansing. Simde understood now the physical and mental strain that Lezah was enduring. The effects lingered long after the cure was done. Even Enomice and Nekk, who, despite the tradition, resented the intrusion and its meaning, felt more favourable towards the youth.

  ‘By the traditional right, I ask you to adopt me as your cub.’

  His right arm, still fully extended, was beginning to shake. If they did not decide soon—

  Enomice came forward and placed her hand against his in the ritual, and was followed by Nekk who, as usual, seemed uncertain. But he was quick enough to answer, ‘We, Enomice and Nekk, accept you, Lezah Ewor, as our cub and give you our name.’

  Simde and Noss offered themselves as his nominators, when the adoption was submitted to the High Custodian for formal approval. The new family conferred, then went to where Simde, Noss and Atira were standing.

  ‘Simde,’ Nekk said, ‘we shall go on the voyage.’

  ‘Thank you. I had hoped for this. Lezah will have to go up to the ship today and begin bonding with our food plant. I’ll arrange it with Neri.’

  ‘He is Lif, now.’ Smiling, they departed.

  Noss said, ‘Can anyone doubt that I was right to take his Execution of Sentence. He will be good for them, and they for him.’

  Arm in arm, they followed after the others, Simde and Atira concealing their sadness.

  * * * *

  Eleven

  The day of the launch had come. Farewells were subdued. There was little to say. Simde’s food plant had stopped just after the last bonding. Soon the pathfinders would be gone and life on Hasub would enter a new, more urgent phase.

  Simde and Noss stood at the base of the shuttle, watching the restrained activity around them. Irah was saying goodbye to Atira and the cubs and she knew within herself that she was severing one of her last links with life. She had no cubs of her own. For her there was no immortality.

  The travellers began to board the shuttle, being checked as they passed into the ship. Irah came over.

  ‘Simde. Safe journey.’

  He embraced her briefly, as if the contact might suffuse her with life.

  Noss took his hand. ‘The wheel will do its job. Then you can do yours. Irah and I shall be watching the ship.’

  The men held each othe
r.

  ‘I shall always remember you, Noss.’

  ‘And I, you, Simde.’

  He was the last to board the shuttle.

  After it had taken off, Noss and Irah went to their airship and flew to the lake.

  * * * *

  Twelve

  The travellers were all in their acceleration couches. When everything was ready, the signal was sent to the space station and in turn was relayed to the rocket motors on the crystal wheel. At first it maintained its somnolent rotation, then the rockets flared and it began to pick up speed, light flashing from its vast surfaces. Faster and faster it turned. The electro-magnets were activated in sequence, biting on the 500-mile long crystal cord and its cargo. In two minutes, the necessary escape velocity of eight miles a second would be reached - if the wheel did not break up. Second after second the velocity built up in the wheel.

  Simde watched the numbers appear on the screen above his head. One minute. Acceleration was thrusting him against the couch. One minute, ten. Would the wheel hold? Our lives could be ticking away, Simde thought, but the numbers compelled his attention.

  Aboard the station instruments monitored the condition of the wheel. Grimly, the commander studied the readings. The giant crystal wheel would disintegrate any second. When Noss had made his discovery, the station had been moved to a safe distance, in case segments came their way.

  * * * *

  Noss and Irah were following the progress of the launch from the lake. The night was peaceful and the stars blazed messages of silence as if they might evoke a response in the watchers. The little boat rocked very gently.

  * * * *

  Five seconds to terminal velocity. Pieces of the wheel began to fly off and some passed dangerously close to the cord. If that were cut, then the ship would be doomed. The final numbers seemed to take forever to appear in the window.

  One—!

  The ship was slung free from orbit, even as the crystal wheel began to disintegrate, torn apart by irresistible forces. Glittering fragments sped out in all directions, but confined mostly to the plane of rotation, like a careless scattering of jewels. Some would fall to Hasub. Others would be lost in the interstellar spaces.

  * * * *

  They watched until the ship disappeared from sight. Then they touched hands for the last time and, bound in love, Noss and Irah stopped.

  And the ship was gone, between the tides.

  <>

  * * * *

  YOUNG TOM

  Dan Morgan

  If population control finally receives the force of law, we should not be too surprised at some of the side-effects whose black humour must enliven the Young Toms of the future.

  * * * *

  I may not have time to tell all of this, and apart from the microphone of the recorder I’m not really sure whom I’m telling it to. Mandy will probably play the tape over when she gets back, but I hope not really, because it might be bad for Young Tom, and in any case she knows the whole story already. If you are listening Mandy, I’d like to say that I still love you in spite of everything. Of course there could be someone else out there - maybe even Young Tom a number of years from now. That’s a thought ... Hallo, son. Take care of your mother. She’s gone through a lot for your sake already, and I’ve no doubt she’ll make other sacrifices in the future.

  I called the police in right after Aunt Rebecca’s murder. We were anxious to get the Life Credit through as soon as possible, and apart from that I didn’t think it was good for someone in Mandy’s condition to have dead bodies lying around the house. Not that there was anything particularly gruesome about Aunt Becky now that she’d ‘passed over’, as she used to call it. She looked more or less her old self, lying there at the bottom of the stairs grinning. Of course the grin didn’t really mean anything, except that the same fall which had broken her neck had also dislodged her dentures.

  The cops arrived about twenty minutes after my call, headed by a pleasantly grizzled, middle-aged sergeant with whom I was on nodding terms. Mandy was crying most of the time while he asked his questions. Women seem to need that kind of safety valve in such situations. I’m sure he understood that, because he cut the whole investigation down to an absolute minimum.

  ‘Quite an age, wasn’t she?’ he said, as two of his assistants struggled to slide Aunt Rebecca’s remains onto a stretcher. She was an ample woman, built rather on the lines of a feather bed.

  ‘Sixty-five,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, I thought so. Most unfortunate accident..

  Mandy whimpered - not so much as an expression of grief, but to prompt me. Her elbow reinforced the message.

  ‘Oh, by the way, sergeant - we’d like to register a formal claim to the Life Credit in this case. You see my wife is ...’

  ‘Really? Well I’d never have guessed.’ The sergeant winked at me broadly. ‘Let me be the first to congratulate you both. Now don’t worry about a thing. I’ll put a report through to BureauPop the minute I get back to the station.’

  ‘Most co-operative of you, sergeant,’ I said. Mandy made a sudden recovery, turning off the tap and treating him to her number one smile.

  * * * *

  After the police had gone we opened a bottle of champagne. Mandy had decided that Young Tom wouldn’t object too violently just this once. It was, after all, a rather special occasion. The bubbly helped dispel what remained of the atmosphere of tension that had hung over our house during the past month or so and we settled down quite happily to await the arrival of an envelope from BureauPop notifying us officially that Aunt Becky’s Life Credit had been allocated to us.

  Who wouldn’t be happy with a girl like Mandy? That peaches and cream complexion and long, blonde hair in braids make her look like an Austrian doll. A big girl - not fat, you understand; but with plenty of people on the balcony, as the French so cutely put it. The kind of girl who always attracts a fair amount of attention from poolside ornithologists, even though she never would descend to the blatant exhibitionism of a bikini. I don’t mean to imply that she’s nothing more than a sexual object with big knockers and a peanut brain. As a matter of fact, she’s quite brilliant in a number of ways, and very highly thought of down at Acme Algal Processing, where she is first assistant to the head of the Bio-Chemistry department.

  But it’s the other side of her nature which is more important to the present discourse. To tell the truth, I hadn’t realized just how motherhood oriented she was until after we were married. It was only then that she explained that although she loved me dearly, she would never have gone through with it if our genotypes hadn’t matched so perfectly. In fact she was so happy about the idea of producing a Grade A child that she wanted to start out then and there, on our honeymoon, by going to a doctor and having her ContraCapsule removed.

  I talked her out of it eventually, but not until several tears had been shed. Anyway, it was fun making up, and she did seem to understand that my argument was prompted by common sense rather than any anti-fatherhood feelings. As an accountant I’m perhaps excessively conscious of such matters, but I knew that although we had been entered as willing and able to produce a Grade A child at the time of our marriage the chances of our drawing a Life Credit in the BureauPop lottery during our first year were slightly lower than that one of us should be struck by lightning or fall under a rapitrans.

  Even so, I couldn’t help being aware of her disappointment each time the 10th of the month rolled round and went past without the arrival of any envelope from Bureau-Pop. It was a shame, because Mandy was so obviously the kind of girl who back in the old days before negative population growth would have quite happily mothered at least half a dozen kids. Whether my fatherhood qualities would have stretched that far is another matter, but under the circumstances a quite academic one. She wanted a child, and because I loved her I wanted her to have that child. The difference between us was that whereas I was prepared to accept things as they were and await the dispensation of MAMA, the BureauPop computer w
hich made random selections each month from among the eligible couples, after three years of fruitless waiting Mandy decided to take matters into her own hands.

  The first thing she did was to forge my signature on an application for the removal of her ContraCapsule. The second was to wait until she was a good six weeks pregnant before telling me a darned thing about it. Naturally I was upset, even though I did appreciate her desperation, and I launched into yet another explanation of the statistical improbability of our drawing a Life Credit before the end of the crucial thirteenth week, by which time the pregnancy had to be either validated or terminated by Compulsory Abortion. It was obvious to me that the effects of a Comp Ab on a girl with Mandy’s high motherhood orientation would be disastrous, and I was extremely worried about the situation created by her impatient action. However, as I have explained before, Mandy is an intelligent girl and I should have realized that what I had interpreted as an emotional refusal to face facts was really part of a carefully thought out plan.