The Best of Michael Swanwick

by Michael Swanwick

  “Tell me about the spiders,” Abigail said, before he could continue. The moths were darting up, sideward, down, a chance ballet in three dimensions.

  “The aliens,” Dominguez said, frowning at Paul, “are still a mysteryto us. We exchange facts, descriptions, recipes for tools, but the important questions to not lend themselves to our clumsy mathematical codes. Do they know of love, do they appreciate beauty? Do they believe in God, hey?”

  “Do they want to eat us?” Paul threw in.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Dominguez snapped. “Of course they don’t.”

  The moths parted when they came to Abigail. Two went to either side; one flew over her shoulder. The cat batted at it with one paw. “The cat’s name is Garble,” Paul said. “The kids in Bio cloned him up.”

  Dominguez opened his mouth, closed it again.

  Abigail scratched Garble under the chin. He arched his neck and purred all but noiselessly. “With your permission,” Paul said. He stepped over to a keyout and waved its operator aside.

  “Technically you’re supposed to speak a convenience language, but if you keep it simple and nonidiomatic, there shouldn’t be any difficulty.” He touched the keyout. “Ritual greetings, spider.” There was a blank pause. Then the spider moved a hairy leg flickering across the screen.

  “Hello, human.”

  “Introductions: Abigail Vanderhoek. She is our representative. She will ride the spinner.” Another pause. More leg waving.

  “Hello, Abigail Vanderhoek. Transition of vacuum garble resting garble commercial benefits garble still point in space.”

  “Tricky translation,” Paul said. He signed to Abigail to take over.

  Abigail hesitated, then said, “Will you come to visit us? The way we will visit you?”

  “No, you see—” Dominguez began, but Paul waved him to silence.

  “No, Abigail Vanderhoek. We are sulfur-based life.”

  “I do not understand.”

  “You can garble black hole through garble spinner because you are carbon-based life. Carbon forms chains easily, but sulfur combines inlattices or rosettes. Our garble simple form garble. Sometimes sulfur forms short chains.

  “We’ll explain later,” Paul said. “Go on, you’re doing fine.”

  Abigail hesitated again. What do you say to a spider, anyway? Finally, she asked, “Do you want to eat us?”

  “Oh, Christ, get her off that thing,” Dominguez said, reaching for the keyout.

  Paul blocked his arm. “No,” he said. “I want to hear this.”

  Several of the spiderlegs wove intricate patterns. “The question is false. Sulfur-based life derives no benefit from eating carbon-based life.”

  “You see,” Dominguez said.

  “But if it were possible,” Abigail persisted. “If you could eat us and derive benefit. Would you?”

  “Yes, Abigail Vanderhoek. With great pleasure.”

  Dominguez pushed her aside. “We’re terribly sorry,” he said to the alien. “This is a horrible, horrible misunderstanding. You!” he shouted to the operator. “Get back on and clear this mess up.”

  Paul was grinning wickedly. “Come,” he said to Abigail. “We’ve accomplished enough here for one day.”

  As they stared to walk away, Garble twisted in Abigail’s arms and leapt free. He hit the floor on all fours and disappeared into the greenery. “Would they really eat us?” Abigail asked. Then amended it to, “Does that mean they’re hostile?”

  Paul shrugged. “Maybe they thought we’d be insulted if they didn’t offer to eat us.” He led her to her quarters. “Tomorrow we start training for real. In the meantime, you might make up a list of all the ways the spiders could hurt us if we set up transportation and they are hostile. Then another list of all the reasons we shouldn’t trust them.” He paused. “I’ve done it myself. You’ll find that the lists get rather extensive.”

  ***

  Abigail’s quarters weren’t flashy, but they fit her well. A full starfield was routed to the walls, floor, and ceiling, only partially obscured by a trellis inner-frame that supported foxgrape vines. Somebody had research into her tastes.

  “Hi.” The cheery greeting startled her. She whirled, saw that her hammock was occupied.

  Cheyney sat up swung his legs over the edge of the hammock, causing it to rock lightly. “Come on in.” He touched an invisible control, and the starfield blueshifted down to a deep erotic purple.

  “Just what do you think you’re doing here?” Abigail asked.

  “I had a few hours free,” Cheyney said, “so I thought I’d drop by and seduce you.”

  “Well, Cheyney, I appreciate your honesty,” Abigail said. “So I won’t say no.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I’ll say maybe some other time. Now get lost. I’m tired.”

  “Okay.” Cheyney hopped down, walked jauntily to the door. He paused. “You said ‘later,’ right?”

  “I said maybe later.”

  “Later. Gotcha.” He winked and was gone.

  Abigail threw herself into the hammock, redshifted the starfield until the universe was a sparse smattering of dying embers. Annoying creature! There was no hope for anything more than the most superficial of relationships with him. She closed her eyes, smiled. Fortunately, she wasn’t currently in the market for a serious relationship.

  She slept.

  ***

  She was falling…

  Abigail had landed the ship an easy walk from 3M’s robot laboratory. The lab’s geodesic dome echoed white clouds to the north, where Nix Olympus peeked over the horizon. Otherwise all—land, sky, rocks—was standard-issue Martian orange. She had clambered to the ground and shrugged on the supply backpack.

  Resupplying 3M-RL stations was a gut contract; easy but dull. So perhaps she was less cautious than usual going down the steep rock-strewn hillside, or perhaps the rock would have turned under her no matter how carefully she placed her feet. Her ankle twisted and she lurched sideways, but the backpack had shifted her center of gravity too much for her to be able to recover.

  Arms windmilling, she fell.

  The rockslide carried her downhill in a panicky flurry of dust and motion, tearing her flesh and splintering her bones. But before she could feel pain, her suit shot her full of a nerve synesthetic, translating sensation into colors: reds, russets, and browns, with staccato yellow spikes when a rock slammed into her ribs. So that she fell in a whirling rainbow of glorious light.

  She came to rest in a burst of orange. The rocks were settling about her. A spume of dust drifted away, out toward the distant red horizon. A large jagged slab of stone slid by, gently shearing off her backpack. Tools, supplies, airpacks, flew up and softly rained down.

  A spanner as long as her arm slammed down inches from Abigail’shelmet. She flinched and suddenly events became real. She kicked her legs, and sand and dust fountained up. Drawing her feet under her body—the one ankle bright gold—she started to stand.

  And was jerked to the ground by a sudden tug on one arm. Even as she turned her head, she became aware of a deep, profound purple sensation in her left hand. It was pinioned by a rock not quite large enough to stake a claim to. There was no color in the fingers.

  “Cute,” she muttered. She tugged at the arm, pushed at the rock. Nothing budged.

  Abigail nudged the radio switch with her chin. “Grounder to Lip Station,” she said. She hesitated, feeling foolish, then said, “Mayday. Repeat, Mayday. Could you guys send a rescue party down for me?”

  There was no reply. With a sick green feeling in the pit of her stomach, Abigail reached a gloved hand around the back of her helmet. She touched something jagged, a sensation of mottled rust, the broken remains of her radio.

  “I think I’m in trouble.” She said it aloud and listened to the sound of it. Flat, unemotional—probably true. But nothing to get panicky about.

  She took quick stock of what she had to work with. One intact suit and helmet. One spanner. A worldful
of rocks, many close at hand. Enough air for—she checked the helmet readout—almost an hour. Assuming the lip station ran its checks on schedule and was fast on the uptake, she had almost half the air she needed.

  Most of the backpack’s contents were scattered too far away to reach. One rectangular gaspack, however, had landed nearby. She reached for it but could not touch it; squinted but could not read the label on its nozzle. It was almost certainly liquid gas—either nitrogen or oxygen—for the robot lab. But there was a slim chance it was the spare airpack. If it was, she might live to be rescued.

  Abigail studied the landscape carefully, but there was nothing more. “Okay, then, it’s an airpack.” She reached as far as her tethered arm would allow. The gaspack remained a tantalizing centimeter out of reach.

  For an instant she was stymied. Then, feeling like an idiot, she grabbed the spanner. She hooked it over the gaspack. Felt the gaspack move grudgingly. Slowly nudged it toward herself.

  By the time Abigail could drop the spanner and draw in the gaspack, her good arm was blue with fatigue. Sweat running down her face, she juggled the gaspack to read its nozzle markings.

  It was liquid oxygen—useless. She could hook it to her suit and feed in the contents, but the first breath would freeze her lungs. She released the gaspack and lay back, staring vacantly at the sky.

  Up there was civilization; tens of thousands of human stations strung together by webs of communication and transportation. Messages flowed endlessly on laser cables. Translators borrowed and lent momentum, moving streams of travelers and cargo at almost (but not quite) the speed of light. A starship was being readied to carry a third load of colonists to Proxima. Up there, free from gravity’s relentless clutch, people lived in luxury and ease. Here, however…

  “I’m going to die.” She said it softly and was filled with wondering awe. Because it was true. She was going to die.

  Death was a black wall. It lay before her, extending to infinity in all directions, smooth and featureless and mysterious. She could almost reach out an arm and touch it. Soon she would come up against it and, if anything lay beyond, pass through. Soon, very soon, she would know.

  She touched the seal to her helmet. It felt grey—smooth and inviting. Her fingers moved absently, tracing the seal about her neck. With sudden horror, Abigail realized that she was thinking about undoing it, releasing her air, throwing away the little time she had left…

  She shuddered. With sudden resolve, she reached out and unsealed the shoulder seam of her captive arm.

  The seal clamped down, automatically cutting off air loss. The flesh of her damaged arm was exposed to the raw Martian atmosphere. Abigail took up the gaspack and cradled it in the pit of her good arm. Awkwardly, she opened the nozzle with the spanner.

  She sprayed the exposed arm with liquid oxygen for over a minute before she was certain it had frozen solid. Then she dropped the gaspack, picked up the spanner, and swung.

  Her arm shattered into a thousand fragments.

  She stood up.

  ***

  Abigail awoke, tense and sweaty. She blueshifted the walls up to normal light, and sat up. After a few minutes of clearing her head, she set the walls to cycle from red to blue in a rhythm matching her normal pulse. Eventually the womb-cycle lulled her back to sleep.

  ***

  “Not even close,” Paul said. He ran the tape backward, froze it on a still shot of the spider twisting two legs about each other. “That’s the morpheme for ‘extreme disgust,’ remember. It’s easy to pick out, and the language kids say any statement with this gesture should be reversed in meaning. Irony, see? So when the spider says that the strong should protect the weak, it means—”

  “How long have we been doing this?”

  “Practically forever,” Paul said cheerily. “You want to call it a day?”

  “Only if it won’t hurt my standing.”

  “Hah! Very good.” He switched off the keyout. “Nicely thought out. You’re absolutely right; it would have. However, as a reward for realizing this, you can take off early without it being noted on your record.”

  “Thank you,” Abigail said sourly.

  Like most large installations, the Clarke had a dozen or so smaller structures tagging along after it in minimum maintenance orbits. When Abigail discovered that these included a small wheel gymnasium, she had taken to putting in an hour’s exercise after each training shift. Today, she put in two.

  The first hour she spent shadow-boxing and practicing savate in heavy-gee to work up a sweat. The second hour she spent in the axis room, performing free-fall gymnastics. After the first workout, it made her feel light and nimble and good about her body.

  She returned from the wheel gym sweaty and cheerful to find Cheyney in her hammock again. “Cheyney,” she said, “this is not the first time I’ve had to kick you out of there. Or even the third, for that matter.”

  Cheyney held his palms up in mock protest. “Hey, no,” he said. “Nothing like that today. I just came by to watch the raft debate with you.”

  Abigail felt pleasantly weary, decided uncerebral. “Paul said something about it, but…”

  “Turn it on, then. You don’t want to miss it.” Cheyney touched her wall, and a cluster of images sprang to life at the far end of the room.

  “Just what is a raft debate, anyway?” Abigail asked, giving in gracefully. She hoisted herself onto the hammock, sat beside him. They rocked gently for a moment.

  “There’s this raft, see? It’s adrift and powerless, and there’s only enough oxygen on board to keep one person alive until rescue. Only there are three on board—two humans and a spider.”

  “Do spiders breathe oxygen?”

  “It doesn’t matter. This is a hypothetical situation.” Two-thirds of the image area were taken up by Dominguez and Paul, quietly waiting for the debate to begin. The remainder showed a flat spider image.

  “Okay, what then?”

  “They argue over who gets to survive. Dominguez argues that he should, since he’s human and human culture is superior to spider culture. The spider argues for himself and its culture.” He put an arm around her waist. “You small nice.”

  “Thank you.” She ignored the arm. “What does Paul argue?”

  “He’s the devil’s advocate. He argues that no one deserves to live and they should dump the oxygen.”

  “Paul would enjoy that role,” Abigail said. Then, “What’s the point to this debate?”

  “It’s an entertainment. There isn’t supposed to be a point.”

  Abigail doubted it was that simple. The debate could reveal a great deal about the spiders and how they thought, once the language types were done with it. Conversely, the spiders would doubtless be studying the human responses. This could be interesting , she thought. Cheyney was stroking her side now, lightly but with great authority. She postponed reaction, not sure whether she liked it or not.

  Louise Chang, a vaguely highly placed administrator, blossomed in the center of the image cluster. “Welcome,” she said, and explained the rules of the debate. “The winner will be decided by acclaim,” she said, “with half the vote being human and half alien. Please remember not to base your vote on racial chauvinism, but on the strengths of the arguments and now well they are presented.” Cheyney’s hand brushed casually across her nipples; they stiffened. The hand lingered. “The debate will begin with the gentleman representing the aliens presenting his thesis.”

  The image flickered as the spider waved several arms. “Thank you, Ms. Chairman. I argue that I should survive. My culture is superior because of our technological advancement. Three examples. Humans have used translation travel only briefly, yet we have used it for sixteens of garble. Our black-hole technology is superior. And our garble has garble for the duration of our society.”

  “Thank you. The gentleman representing humanity?”

  “Thank you, Ms. Chairman.” Dominguez adjusted an armlet. Cheyney leaned back and let Abigail rest against him
. Her head fit comfortably against his shoulder. “My argument is that technology is neither the sole nor most important measure of a culture. By these standards dolphins would be considered brute animals. The aesthetic considerations—the arts, theology, and the tradition of philosophy—are of greater import. As I shall endeavor to prove.”

  “He’s chosen the wrong tactic,” Cheyney whispered in Abigail’s ear. “That must have come across as pure garble to the spiders.”

  “Thank you. Mr. Girard?”

  Paul’s image expanded. He theatrically swigged from a small flask and hoisted it high in the air. “Alcohol! There’s the greatest achievement of the human race!” Abigail snorted. Cheyney laughed out loud. “But I hold that neither Mr. Dominguez nor the distinguished spider deserves to live, because of the disregard both cultures have for sentient life.” Abigail looked at Cheyney, who shrugged. “As I shall endeavor to prove.” His image dwindled.

  Chang said, “The arguments will now proceed, beginning with the distinguished alien.”

  The spider and then Dominguez ran through their arguments, and to Abigail they seemed markedly lackluster. She didn’t give them her full attention, because Cheyney’s hands were moving most interestingly across unexpected parts of her body. He might not be too bright, but he was certainly good at some things. She nuzzled her face into his neck, gave him a small peck, returned her attention to the debate.

  Paul blossomed again. He juggled something in his palm, held his hand open to reveal three ball bearings. “When I was a kid I used to short out the school module and sneak up to the axis room to play marbles.” Abigail smiled, remembering similar stunts she had played. “For the sake of those of us who are spiders, I’ll explain that marbles is a game played in free-fall for the purpose of developing coordination and spatial perception. You make a six-armed star of marbles in the center…”

  One of the bearings fell from his hand, bounced noisily, and disappeared as it rolled out of camera range. “Well, obviously it can’t be played here. But the point is that when you shoot the marble just right, it hits the end of one arm and its kinetic energy is transferred from marble to marble along that arm. So that the shooter stops and the marble at the far end of the arm flies away.” Cheyney was stroking her absently now, engrossed in the argument.