The Best of Michael Swanwick

by Michael Swanwick

  “Um…I’ve still got fuel rods to load.”

  “Not today you don’t. The new reactor has been taken back apart and hauled out of the blasting zone.”

  Gunther thought now of all the machinery being disassembled and removed from the industrial park, and was struck for the first time by the operation’s sheer extravagance of scale. Normally only the most sensitive devices were removed from a blasting area. “Wait a minute. Just what kind of monster explosive are you planning to use?”

  There was a self-conscious cockiness to Izmailova’s stance. “Nothing I don’t know how to handle. This is a diplomat-class device, the same design as saw action five years ago. Nearly one hundred individual applications without a single mechanical failure. That makes it the most reliable weapon in the history of warfare. You should feel privileged having the chance to work with one.”

  Gunther felt his flesh turn to ice. “Jesus Mother of God,” he said. “You had me handling a briefcase nuke.”

  “Better get used to it. Westinghouse Lunar is putting these little babies into mass production. We’ll be cracking open mountains with them, blasting roads through the highlands, smashing apart the rille walls to see what’s inside.” Her voice took on a visionary tone. “And that’s just the beginning. There are plans for enrichment fields in Sinus Aestum. Explode a few bombs over the regolith, then extract plutonium from the dirt. We’re going to be the fuel dump for the entire solar system.”

  His dismay must have shown in his stance, for Izmailova laughed. “Think of it as weapons for peace.”

  ***

  “You should’ve been there!” Gunther said. “It was unfuckabelievable. The one side of the crater just disappeared. It dissolved into nothing. Smashed to dust. And for a real long time everything glowed! Craters, machines, everything. My visor was so close to overload it started flickering. I thought it was going to burn out. It was nuts.” He picked up his cards. “Who dealt this mess?”

  Krishna grinned shyly and ducked his head. “I’m in.”

  Hiro scowled down at his cards. “I’ve just died and gone to Hell.”

  “Trade you,” Anya said.

  “No, I deserve to suffer.”

  They were in Noguchi park by the edge of the central lake, seated on artfully scattered boulders that had been carved to look water-eroded. A knee-high forest of baby birches grew to one side, and somebody’s toy sailboat floated near the impact cone at the center of the lake. Honeybees mazily browsed the clover.

  “And then, just as the wall was crumbling, this crazy Russian bitch—”

  Anya ditched a trey. “Watch what you say about crazy Russian bitches.”

  “—goes zooming up on her hopper…”

  “I saw it on television,” Hiro said. “We all did. It was news. This guy who works for Nissan told me the BBC gave it thirty seconds.” He’d broken his nose in karate practice, when he’d flinched into his instructor’s punch, and the contrast of square white bandage with shaggy black eyebrows gave him a surly, piratical appearance.

  Gunther discarded one. “Hit me. Man, you didn’t see anything. You didn’t feel the ground shake afterwards.”

  “Just what was Izmailova’s connection with the Briefcase War?” Hiro asked. “Obviously not a courier. Was she in the supply end or strategic?”

  Gunther shrugged.

  “You do remember the Briefcase War?” Hiro said sarcastically. “Half of Earth’s military elites taken out in a single day? The world pulled back from the brink of war by bold action? Suspected terrorists revealed as global heroes?”

  Gunther remembered the Briefcase War quite well. He had been nineteen at the time, working on a Finlandia Geothermal project when the whole world had gone into spasm and very nearly destroyed itself. It had been a major factor in his decision to ship off the planet. “Can’t we ever talk about anything but politics? I’m sick and tired of hearing about Armageddon.”

  “Hey, aren’t you supposed to be meeting with Hamilton?” Anya asked suddenly.

  He glanced up at the Earth. The east coast of South America was just crossing the dusk terminator. “Oh, hell, there’s enough time to play out the hand.”

  Krishna won with three queens. The deal passed to Hiro. He shuffled quickly, and slapped the cards down with angry little punches of his arm. “Okay,” Anya said, “what’s eating you?”

  He looked up angrily, then down again and in a muffled voice, as if he had abruptly gone bashful as Krishna, said, “I’m shipping home.”

  “Home?”

  “You mean to Earth?”

  “Are you crazy? With everything about to go up in flames? Why?”

  “Because I am so fucking tired of the Moon. It has to be the ugliest place in the universe.”

  “Ugly?” Anya looked elaborately about at the terraced gardens, the streams that began at the top level and fell in eight misty waterfalls before reaching the central pond to be recirculated again, the gracefully winding pathways. People strolled through great looping rosebushes and past towers of forsythia with the dreamlike skimming stride that made moonwalking so like motion underwater. Others popped in and out of the office tunnels, paused to watch the finches loop and fly, tended to beds of cucumbers. At the midlevel straw market, the tents where off-duty hobby capitalists sold factory systems, grass baskets, orange glass paperweights and courses in postinterpretive dance and the meme analysis of Elizabethan poetry, were a jumble of brave silks, turquoise, scarlet and aquamarine. “I think it looks nice. A little crowded, maybe, but that’s the pioneer aesthetic.”

  “It looks like a shopping mall, but that’s not what I’m talking about. It’s—” He groped for words. “It’s like—it’s what we’re doing to this world that bothers me. I mean, we’re digging it up, scattering garbage about, ripping the mountains apart, and for what?”

  “Money,” Anya said. “Consumer goods, raw materials, a future for our children. What’s wrong with that?”

  “We’re not building a future, we’re building weapons.”

  “There’s not so much as a handgun on the Moon. It’s an intercorporate development zone. Weapons are illegal here.”

  “You know what I mean. All those bomber fuselages, detonation systems, and missile casings that get built here, and shipped to low earth orbit. Let’s not pretend we don’t know what they’re for.”

  “So?” Anya said sweetly. “We live in the real world, we’re none of us naive enough to believe you can have governments without armies. Why is it worse that these things are being built here rather than elsewhere?”

  “It’s the short-sighted, egocentric greed of what we’re doing that gripes me! Have you peeked out on the surface lately and seen the way it’s being ripped open, torn apart and scattered about? There are still places where you can gaze upon a harsh beauty unchanged since the days our ancestors were swinging in trees. But we’re trashing them. In a generation, two at most, there will be no more beauty to the Moon than there is to any other garbage dump.”

  “You’ve seen what Earthbound manufacturing has done to the environment,” Anya said. “Moving it off the planet is a good thing, right?”

  “Yes, but the Moon—”

  “Doesn’t even have an ecosphere. There’s nothing here to harm.”

  They glared at each other. Finally Hiro said, “I don’t want to talk about it,” and sullenly picked up his cards.

  ***

  Five or six hands later, a woman wandered up and plumped to the grass by Krishna’s feet. Her eye shadow was vivid electric purple, and a crazy smile burned on her face. “Oh hi,” Krishna said. “Does everyone here know Sally Chang? She’s a research component of the Center forSelf-Replicating Technologies, like me.”

  The others nodded. Gunther said, “Gunther Weil. Blue collar component of Generation Five.”

  She giggled.

  Gunther blinked. “You’re certainly in a good mood.” He rapped the deck with his knuckles. “I’ll stand.”

  “I’m on psilly,” she s
aid.

  “One card.”

  “Psilocybin?” Gunther said. “I might be interested in some of that. Did you grow it or microfacture it? I have a couple of factories back in my room, maybe I could divert one if you’d like to license the software?”

  Sally Chang shook her head, laughing helplessly. Tears ran downher cheeks.

  “Well, when you come down we can talk about it.” Gunther squinted at his cards. “This would make a great hand for chess.”

  “Nobody plays chess,” Hiro said scornfully. “It’s a game for computers.”

  Gunther took the pot with two pair. He shuffled, Krishna declined the cut, and he began dealing out cards. “So anyway, this crazy Russian lady—”

  Out of nowhere, Chang howled. Wild gusts of laughter knocked her back on her heels and bent her forward again. The delight of discovery dancing in her eyes, she pointed a finger straight at Gunther. “You’re a robot!” she cried.

  “Beg pardon?”

  “You’re nothing but a robot,” she repeated. “You’re a machine, an automaton. Look at yourself! Nothing but stimulus-response. You have no free will at all. There’s nothing there. You couldn’t perform an original act to save your life.”

  “Oh yeah?” Gunther glanced around, looking for inspiration. A little boy—it might be Pyotr Nahfees, though it was hard to tell from here—was by the edge of the water, feeding scraps of shrimp loaf to the carp. “Suppose I pitched you into the lake? That would be an original act.”

  Laughing, she shook her head. “Typical primate behavior. A perceived threat is met with a display of mock aggression.”

  Gunther laughed.

  “Then, when that fails, the primate falls back to a display of submission. Appeasal. The monkey demonstrates his harmlessness—you see?”

  “Hey, this really isn’t funny,” Gunther said warningly. “In fact, it’s kind of insulting.”

  “And so back to a display of aggression.”

  Gunther sighed and threw up both his hands. “How am I supposed to react? According to you, anything I say or do is wrong.”

  “Submission again. Back and forth, back and forth from aggression to submission and back again.” She pumped her arm as if it were a piston. “Just like a little machine—you see? It’s all automatic behavior.”

  “Hey, Kreesh—you’re the neurobiowhatever here, right? Put in a good word for me. Get me out of this conversation.”

  Krishna reddened. He would not meet Gunther’s eyes. “Ms. Chang is very highly regarded at the Center, you see. Anything she thinks about thinking is worth thinking about.” The woman watched him avidly, eyes glistening, pupils small. “I think maybe what she means, though, is that we’re all basically cruising through life. Like we’re on autopilot. Not just you specifically, but all of us.” He appealed to her directly. “Yes?”

  “No, no, no, no.” She shook her head. “Him specifically.”

  “I give up.” Gunther put his cards down, and lay back on the granite slab so he could stare up through the roof glass at the waning Earth. When he closed his eyes, he could see Izmailova’s hopper, rising. It was a skimpy device, little more than a platform-and-chair atop a cluster of four bottles of waste-gas propellant, and a set of smart legs. He saw it lofting up as the explosion blossomed, seeming briefly to hover high over the crater, like a hawk atop a thermal. Hands by side, the red-suited figure sat, watching with what seemed inhuman calm. In the reflected light she burned as bright as a star. In an appalling way, she was beautiful.

  Sally Chang hugged her knees, rocking back and forth. She laughed and laughed.

  ***

  Beth Hamilton was wired for telepresence. She flipped up one lens when Gunther entered her office, but kept on moving her arms and legs. Dreamy little ghost motions that would be picked up and magnified in a factory somewhere over the horizon. “You’re late again,” she said with no particular emphasis.

  Most people would have experienced at least a twinge of reality sickness dealing with two separate surrounds at once. Hamilton was one of the rare few who could split her awareness between two disparate realities without loss of efficiency in either. “I called you in to discuss your future with Generation Five. Specifically, to discuss the possibility of your transfer to another plant.”

  “You mean Earthside.”

  “You see?” Hamilton said. “You’re not as stupid as you like to make yourself out to be.” She flipped the lens down again, stood very still, then lifted a metal-gauntleted hand and ran through a complex series of finger movements. “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “Tokyo, Berlin, Buenos Aires—do any of these hold magic for you? How about Toronto? The right move now could be a big boost to your career.”

  “All I want is to stay here, do my job, and draw down my salary,” Gunther said carefully. “I’m not looking for a shot at promotion, or a big raise, or a lateral career-track transfer. I’m happy right where I am.”

  “You’ve sure got a funny way of showing it.” Hamilton powered down her gloves, and slipped her hands free. She scratched her nose. To one side stood her work table, a polished cube of black granite. Her peecee rested there, alongside a spray of copper crystals. At her thought, it put Izmailova’s voice onto Gunther’s chip.

  “It is with deepest regret that I must alert you to the unprofessional behavior of one of your personnel components,” it began. Listening to the complaint, Gunther experienced a totally unexpected twinge of distress and, more, of resentment that Izmailova had dared judge him so harshly. He was careful not to let it show.

  “Irresponsible, insubordinate, careless, and possessed of a bad attitude.” He faked a grin. “She doesn’t seem to like me much.” Hamilton said nothing. “But this isn’t enough to…“ His voice trailed off. “Is it?”

  “Normally, Weil, it would be. A demo jock isn’t ‘just a tech on retainer,’ as you so quaintly put it; those government licenses aren’t easy to get. And you may not be aware of it, but you have very poor efficiency ratings to begin with. Lots of potential, no follow-through. Frankly, you’ve been a disappointment. However, lucky for you, this Izmailova dame humiliated Don Sakai, and he’s let us know that we’re under no particular pressure to accommodate her.”

  “Izmailova humiliated Sakai?”

  Hamilton stared at him. “Weil, you’re oblivious, you know that?”

  Then he remembered Izmailova’s rant on nuclear energy. “Right, okay. I got it now.”

  “So here’s your choice. I can write up a reprimand, and it goes into your permanent file, along with Izmailova’s complaint. Or you can take a lateral Earthside, and I’ll see to it that these little things aren’t logged into the corporate system.”

  It wasn’t much of a choice. But he put a good face on it. “In that case it looks like you’re stuck with me.”

  “For the moment, Weil. For the moment.”

  ***

  He was back on the surface the next two days running. The first day he was once again hauling fuel rods to Chatterjee C. This time he kept to the road, and the reactor was refueled exactly on schedule. The second day he went all the way out to Triesnecker to pick up some old rods that had been in temporary storage for six months while the Kerr-McGee people argued over whether they should be reprocessed or dumped. Not a bad deal for him, because although the sunspot cycle was on the wane, there was a surface advisory in effect and he was drawing hazardous duty pay.

  When he got there, a tech rep telepresenced in from somewhere in France to tell him to forget it. There’d been another meeting, and the decision had once again been delayed. He started back to Bootstrap with the new a capella version of the Threepenny Opera playing in his head. It sounded awfully sweet and reedy for his tastes, but that was what they were listening to up home.

  Fifteen kilometers down the road, the UV meter on the dash jumped.

  Gunther reached out to tap the meter with his finger. It did not respond. With a freezing sensation at the back of his neck, he glan
ced up at the roof of the cab and whispered, “Oh, no.”

  “The Radiation Forecast Facility has just intensified its surface warning to a Most Drastic status,” the truck said calmly. “This is due to an unanticipated flare storm, onset immediately. Everyone currently on the surface is to proceed with all haste to shelter. Repeat: Proceed immediately to shelter.”

  “I’m eighty kilometers from—”

  The truck was slowing to a stop. “Because this unit is not hardened, excessive fortuitous radiation may cause it to malfunction. To ensure the continued safe operation of this vehicle, all controls will be frozen in manual mode and this unit will now shut off.”

  With the release of the truck’s masking functions, Gunther’s head filled with overlapping voices. Static washed through them, making nonsense of what they were trying to say:

  **astic Status***epeat: We******his is Beth The****hail******yo****ere?*C Su**ace adv***ry *as*******vejus**issued****ost***om**on**good**uddy****ve up*******to Most**rast rastic ad*isory**Get*off me a**oot***Miko, Sabra* ic Sta**s. All unit* and the surfac*****ddamn**ou, Kangmei******your asse** personn*l are to find sh are you list***ng? Find undergrou***right now*** elter immediately. Maxim shelter. Don*t try to ge don’t want*to hear you’* um exposure twenty minut back to Bootstrap. Too tayed behind to turn off es. Repeat: Maximum exp far, it’ll fry you. List***f the lights. Who else*** os*re twenty m*nutes. Fi* en, ther* are thr*e facto****is out*ther*? Come in ri******helter im***iatel****ries no****r from***ur pr****ght n*w**Ev**yone! Anybo* **Th*******h***eco*ded*voi**ent**ocat*on***Are***u * dy k*ow w**re*Mikhail is***ce of t*** Radiati***Fore***li***ning**y***goofoff******C*mon, Misha***on’t yo*****cast Fa**lity. Due**o an*Weisskopf*AG*is one, Niss****et coy on us***ound u***unpre**c*ed solarflar********and**unar**acrostruct ***your voice, hea***We g****th***urfa***adviso****as***ural***Weil******me kn*****ot word Ezra’s dug**nt*** *****upgrad******Most Dr**if****’re listeni*****ome a factory out Chladn****

  “Beth! The nearest shelter is back at Weisskopf—that’s half an hour at top speed and I’ve got an advisory here of twenty minutes. Tell me what to do!”