by George Mann
Mason could hardly believe what he was seeing. He raised his shotgun just as the tail of the black rat disappeared behind the dung hill. Then he swore and lowered it, came out from behind the tractor, and approached the cart the three black rats had been towing. The brown rat approached from the other side.
The cart had been made from a cut-down supermarket trolley and was loaded with various pieces of mechanical and electrical junk filched from one of Mason’s workshops. There were also bags of rapeseed stacked on it. Mason glanced at the brown rat as it stared avidly at those bags. He gestured at the contrivance and turned away to head indoors. He needed to put some cream on his nose.
Mason rested his hand on his wallet and repressed the urge to bolt the doors and fetch his gun as the suit stepped out of his car, still speaking into his mobile. Mason had asked for a maintenance man and they had sent him a salesman. He hated salesmen.
“Ah, Mr. Mason, so pleased to meet you,” said the suit, pocketing his phone and taking out an electronic filofax.
Mason shuddered.
“Maintenance has informed me you are having some problems with that old TW157 harvester.” The filofax disappeared and the suit retrieved a briefcase from his car. The case opened with a horrid click. Glossy brochures glistened at Mason from the interior.
“If I might interest you in…”
Somehow Mason found himself in his own kitchen with brochures spread on the table before him and his throat clenched over a scream. The man must have trained as a time-share salesman before moving on, for his skin wasn’t just thick, it was a veritable armor.
“But I don’t want a new harvester or a new drive mind! I want my old one repaired, as it should be under the warranty!”
“Yes, of course you do, and there are advantages in retaining such archaic equipment. So for you I can offer twenty percent off the TW158 or twenty-five percent off the newest drive mind with free installation. I’ll be in trouble with my boss, but for such a customer as you, Mr. Mason, it is essential that we…”
And so it went on, and on, and Mason found himself walking to the door, clutching a piece of paper he’d been a hair’s breadth from signing, the suit pacing at his side. The sell was getting more brutal now, for the suit was moving him to different territory - the garage - to try a different approach, perhaps to draw comparisons between his old 157 and the new 158. Mason felt powerless to resist. Perhaps if he signed something this suit would go away, disappear. How long had it been now? One hour, two hours?
“Of course the TW158 is not so prone to agoraphobia as the 157. It has the optional on off switch, which makes for a substantial power saving. You’ll notice your bills-”
“Agoraphobia?” Mason managed. He halted at the door, shaking his head. “My harvester has got agoraphobia?”
“Yes, the fear of open spaces, fairly common with the 157 when garaged for the winter. As I said, with the optional on off switch there are such-”
The salesman opened the door and there came a resounding thud.
“Such what?”
“Urgh!”
“Pardon?”
“Aargh!”
The suit stumbled back and sat down on the floor. Mason peered down at him and noticed a large cut on his head at the center of a quickly inflating lump on his forehead. In front of the salesman, lying on the doormat, was a large hexagonal wheel nut. Mason ducked down by the jamb and looked outside. The black rat, the boss, was legging it for the fields, his beautifully constructed siege catapult abandoned in the yard. Mason grinned then frowned.
“Have to find a way,” he said, and thumped the door jamb, then, “Of course, idiot!”
The suit gurgled.
As the car weaved from side to side up the drive shedding glossy brochures as it went, Mason headed for his workshop and got himself a couple of tins of paint. Soon he had altered the signs. On the storage barns he had splattered black rats as well as brown, and on the old chicken shed he had an even more complex sign. Now, after blocking up the holes in his barns, it was a waiting game.
It was past midnight when he heard a low squeaking from the wall of the barn. He eased himself off a pile of rapeseed, a shovel in one hand and a shotgun in the other, and crept over towards where the sound was coming from. After a moment there came a flicker of moonlight through a small hole as a drill bit was retracted. Next, a cut-down hacksaw blade poked through and the laborious cutting of the soft metal began. An hour later the cutter had completed its circle and a disk of metal fell in. Moments later the black rat stepped through, removing a set of thick gloves as it did so. Mason slammed the shovel in front of the hole.
“Right, you little git.”
With very beady eyes the black rat looked up the throat of the shotgun.
“Agoraphobia, y’say? Right. Mr. Mason, we’ll soon sort that.”
The maintenance man wiped his hands on his overalls then reached into the back of his van and removed a club hammer.
“It’s a matter of psychology,” he said, knowingly.
Mason eyed the hammer dubiously.
“You’ll see.” The maintenance man glanced round. “Is that…?”
“A rat,” said Mason.
“What’s…?”
“A catapult, throws tractor wheel-nuts.”
“Oh.”
The black rat stood on a round bale by the drive. Next to it rested its catapult and a stack of wheel nuts. It was watching the drive through a set of opera glasses mounted on a tripod.
“The harvester is this way.”
The repairman scratched his head then followed Mason. To be expected really - some of these farmers were a bit loopy. The repairman put it down to ergot dust.
Mason stood at the doors to the garage as the repairman worked his magic on Bertha. Two blows of the hammer and some artistically couched threats and the harvester was edging out of the garage. Encouragement to follow had it trundling off to the fields in a few minutes.
“Funny sign there, on that old chicken shed…” said the repairman as he returned to his van. “What’s it mean?”
“If you’d been wearing a suit you’d have found out,” replied Mason cryptically.
The repairman replaced his hammer in the rack beside five others and closed the back of his van. Definitely the ergot dust. He got the required signature, hopped into his van, and drove away as quickly as he could.
Mason returned to the chicken shed to view his work. The picture of the black rat eating grain had been easy. The picture of the man in a suit lying on the ground clutching at his bleeding head had presented more of a challenge. Mason grinned to himself then turned away. Before setting out for the fields to see how the harvester was getting on, he raised his hand to the black rat guard; the first living employee on his farm in decades.
Blood Bonds
Brenda Cooper
I hesitated in Aline’s doorway. As soon as I stepped through, my sis’s minibots would whisper to her and she’d leave wherever she was and come into real to see me. Tonight, the step toward her might be off a cliff.
For now, she lay blissfully unaware, gone to some virtual place. With luck, she was in the arms of a lover or climbing Olympus Mons. Anywhere but in her broken body living in VR contact gel.
Her face had survived the terrorist’s bomb. She’d been walking away from the Marin County Fair, on Earth, north of San Francisco, and if she’d walked just a little faster, she might be able to walk today. But terrorism or not, it was partly my fault. I was the one who had talked her into applying for a trip to Earth. I’d wanted her to be happy, and she wanted to see forests and butterflies and elephants and oceans. Sure, we’re identical twins, but she needed to go to Earth, and I longed for Mars. At the time, we were both on the moon.
And now the next thing that happened was going to be my fault, too. I wanted a choice and there wasn’t one.
By the time I stood beside her bed, she’d opened her startled-blue eyes, her face swimming up above the blue-green gel and the my
riad contacts that kept her body fed and exercised. Her warm smile played across my heart like a soft blanket and I wanted to melt into the chair beside her bed.
“Lissa,” she said. “How was your day?”
I couldn’t bear to tell her yet. “No, Aline, you first.”
She blinked - code for a nod. “I went for a long hike with the virt club, around some Earth - like mountains Rudy designed. Even with laws-of-physics design rules, he made a two-story-tall waterfall that spilled a rainbow into the sky, and a flock of blue butterflies as big as my hand.”
Aline always started her day with exercise. Before Mom died when we were twelve, she used to take me and Aline running and playing through the tunnels every morning. Saturdays we went out on the surface and played moon-gravity bounce before breakfast. So hearing about Aline’s morning virtual workouts was like being a kid again, when she was whole. But Aline’s day was a lot longer than a real one-time flew differently in virtual worlds. “So then what did you do?”
“A photo shoot in New Mexico and a… a few meetings with friends. That’s all. Nothing you want to know about.” She glanced away from me for a moment. She’d gotten more and more to skipping over what she did. Like I wouldn’t understand it? Or I wouldn’t think it was good? How could I think she was anything but good? I ran my fingers over her forehead. It was dry and cool, her skull naked. “Did you get any pictures you want to show me?”
“Maybe later. Tell me about your day.”
“This morning was bad as ever. Jack-o called in sick, so we had Cherie for shift super and she wanted to set some kind of record. Our yields were low ‘cause the soil’s shyer of H3 where we’re mining than it is on exposed slopes, but she didn’t care. Her face was purple by lunch.”
Aline grinned. “You’d think Helium-3 was the best of everything.”
“It gave us the power to get to Mars.” I looked away, swallowing.
“I bet you were spitting mad at having Cherie.” She arched an eyebrow and winked. “You always are.”
How did she get so much from my stories? “Me? Sure. You should have seen Davey and John-boy and Mark. I thought they were going to kill her by the time the lunch-bell rang. They didn’t show it to her, but Davey was secret-telling John all afternoon - they must’ve spent half what they made for the day on privacy. It was actually kind of funny.”
“That was the morning. What about the afternoon?” she asked, her eyes shining as if she knew what I was going to say and was trying to help keep me from having to say it. But she couldn’t know.
I winked. “We slowed down a little, waited. She finally figured out our game and her mouth opened so big I thought she might scream, but she laughed and slapped Davey on the back, and we made our credit-load, anyway.” I spent every day noticing fine details so I could bring them home to her. Could I stand life any other way? “Worldgov cleared two more ships for Mars today.” I swallowed. “My name came up in the lottery.”
She closed her eyes.
We’d talked about it before I put in for the lottery, and so there wasn’t a question about what I’d do. Hazard-pay might buy her a new body some day; the syntharms and legs were no big deal, but the spine was a fortune. And if I didn’t make the fortune in time, she wouldn’t have enough left to work with. The last govdoc that’d talked to us said she had two years or so.
A single tear slid down her cheek. She couldn’t take my hand, couldn’t touch me, but her tear touched me for her. I stood so my own tears would fall on her face.
Zubrin base was a sterile bubble filled with air, and also a light wind so our bodies would think, maybe, they were home. Of course, there was about twice the moon’s gravity keeping me stuck to the surface. But hey, the breeze was nice. I crossed the open tarmac and climbed into my flitter, the Moon Escape. Even though she was a company ship, she was assigned to me full time, getting her rest and maintenance when I slept. I’d named her myself, as much for the hope of bringing Aline here to help me fly her as thanks for my own luck of the lottery. I’d not only won passage to Mars, but also a job I wanted, as if I’d somehow been anointed with fairy dust.
After I double-checked the cargo manifest, I dogged the hatches, grinning. Compared to the moon, Mars was a heaven of variety. Twice the diameter meant a hell of a lot more surface area. Of course, I only got to fly over about five percent of that, but the sheer size of it still stunned. I waited my turn at the base locks, waving at the doorbot as it let me through into the wilds where a girl could be alone.
As usual, I started off feeling too alone.
The communications lag between Mars and the Moon was about five minutes, give or take a bit to account for orbits. The only way Aline and I could talk was email or vidmail. So at the end of every day I recorded a message for her about my job driving cargo from base to base. Every morning, I got her reply. But we couldn’t giggle about our respective lovers or play off the way our eyebrows arched. Those aren’t things you do with a five minute stutter. And forget about meeting anyplace virtual with latency like that.
If only Aline were already here. She was the stronger one, the one-minute-older one, the best one. I needed her. And so far, I’d saved less than half the money for her surgery. “Honey, girl, Aline, how am I going to do this?” I said to the walls.
Aline-in-my-head whispered back. “You’ll find a way. Or I will.”
“Even a single-step promotion won’t save us now. I need… something extraordinary.”
My words bounced around the empty cabin, and it seemed like the echo was her voice: “We are extraordinary.”
If only it was really her! I flopped into my red captain’s chair and stared out the wrap-around window at the gray skies of Mars. An hour of silent meditation on the rocks and plains of Mars cheered me up a little. I dropped my cargo at Robinson and two men I’d never seen before loaded four big sealed boxes for Zubrin. “Go on,” the tallest one said, “so you won’t pull any overtime.”
I bristled at the suggestion I’d loiter on purpose for more pay, and it almost made me do it. But I hightailed it out of there instead, happy to be heading home and hungry for a glass of homemade berry wine from Chu’s Bar.
A single cheep roused me. Data coming in. Hopefully not another request for an early shift start. There’d been way too much work the last month or so. “What?” I asked.
“Sis.”
Not me speaking her voice. Her voice. My throat fisted. An open call would be a fortune. “What? I’m here.” My top teeth nearly bit through my bottom lip. Now the ten minute wait for an answer.
“Me too. Here.”
There was no delay!
“With you. I’m sorry.”
Her voice had tears in it, and I knew. A download. It was the only way she could be here and be invisible. A download. “I didn’t know you died.”
“I didn’t.”
Her body must have. No consciousness could operate in two places at once. It broke every law in the book. “My god, honey! Why?” My head was spinning. Such a stupid thing to do. Such a… hopeless choice. And it was done. No going back for her, for me, for us. But I was her and she was me and somewhere deep inside, below the breastbone, I understood. Anger and shock gave way. I could feel my own smile peel my cheeks back. “Thank god. I missed you. I missed you every damned day.”
“Me, too.”
I wondered if I could fly well enough to make the flitter do loops. “You’ll love it here. There’s so much I want to show you.” After we got back, I’d take her home and show her the wall-nano pattern I’d been working on all week. Maybe she’d have some good ideas about how to get the sunset sky I’d splashed across the tiny living room to brighten up even more. Surely she’d be okay here; data stratum was thick in most of the bases; there weren’t enough people to tug at the capacity at all. “Did you come in on one of the cargo ships?”
“Something private.”
“Wow, that must have cost a fortune.”
“No.”
I swallowed
. It wasn’t like her to answer so shortly. It had to be her, though. I knew her voice. “Aline? What did mom used to say when we got up?”
“That wasting a day in bed was the worst sin of all.”
She hadn’t hesitated. “And what did we say?”
“The worst sin was…” I finished it with her, two voices, “going to bed early.” I blushed for having to check, for doubting. I’d have never doubted her body, but a download was… well, I couldn’t see her. The cabin still looked empty even if it felt full of her. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I wanted to surprise you.”
The lights of Zubrin Base loomed large. “We’re almost there.” How would she get off the ship with me? Why didn’t I know these things? “How portable are you? I mean, you’re in the ship’s data now, right? What creds do you need to get into the base’s systems?”
A warning bell sputtered out of the same speakers Aline talked to me through. Three bursts, so it wasn’t routine. A male voice, not the usual computer-recorded neutral. “All research ships are to proceed to the closest base immediately. Repeat. All research ships proceed to the closest base.”
We weren’t a research ship, but the warning was odd. Aline didn’t remark on it, but instead answered my earlier question. “I’ll fit in your personal data space. I’m afraid I’ll take most of it, but as soon as we get inside the base I can move out again. So as long as you don’t want to watch any movies as you dock this thing?”
She always could make me laugh. I authorized the transfer. If she was in my personal datapod, that meant she’d get through without any creds, or more accurately, with my creds. But she couldn’t even be on Mars with no authentication: there were layers and layers of datasec here. “Sure.” So as I flew Moon Escape into Zubrin Base, Aline flowed into me, unfelt, unseen, except I knew about her, as if the ghost of my sis was filling my most personal dataspaces.