Elemental

by Steven Savile

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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction - Once and Future Tsunamis

  Report from the Near Future: Crystallization

  And Tomorrow and

  ACT I

  ACT II

  ACT III

  ACT IV

  ACT V

  Abductio ad Absurdum

  In the Matter of Fallen Angels

  Tiger in the Night

  The strange case of Jared Spoon, who went to pieces for love.

  The Solipsist at Dinner

  The Wager

  Expedition, with Recipes

  RICE 2075

  COCKROACHES WITH SALT

  RAT

  SURVIVAL 2075

  Tough Love 3001

  Chanting the Violet Dog Down: A Tale of Noreela

  Butterflies Like Jewels

  Perfection

  The Compound

  Sea Child: A Tale of Dune

  Moebius Trip

  The Run to Hardscrabble Station

  RIM PLANET CR-7201, HARDSCRABBLE STATION

  ABOARD THE EPSILON INDI, OFF RIM WORLD CR-8612

  RIM PLANET CR-7201, HARDSCRABBLE STATION

  ABOARD LST-041, MAMA’S GIRL

  RIM PLANET CR-7201, HARDSCRABBLE STATION

  The Last Mortal Man

  The Double-Edged Sword

  Night of the Dolls

  The Potter’s Daughter

  The Day of Glory

  Sea Air

  Copyright Acknowledgments

  Afterword - Why Elemental?

  Copyright Page

  Acknowledgments

  Elemental owes a debt of gratitude to more people than it is possible to list on one page.

  We would like to thank Tom Doherty and David Hartwell for their vision, support, and belief every step of the way.

  We tip our hats to Christine Jaeger, Priscilla Flores, Toni Weisskopf, and Elena Stokes—some of the greatest cheerleaders the world will ever know.

  To Denis Wong, Jodi Rosoff, and Steve Calcutt for all their time and hard work.

  To Janet Lee, our last-minute angel in the whirlwind.

  To Michael Whelan, for a cover that made dreams come true.

  To our parents and friends, who lived with us during the months it took for the germ of an idea to grow into the book you hold in your hands.

  To Luc Reid and the members of the Codex Writers Group, who hold a very special place in our hearts. Without them we would never have met, and this book would not have happened. Their friendship saves us from testing one of the absolutes: nothing can survive in a vacuum.

  Elemental wouldn’t be the amazing book it is without the generosity of the writers who donated their time and talent, so to them we say again thank you, and to the countless others who have shown their support in so many ways. It has been, and continues to be, an uplifting and humbling experience.

  Three of the first writers we approached are no longer with us, and it is to these three that we would like to dedicate this anthology. In the spirit that they inspired us, we can only hope that this book inspires you.

  Jack L. Chalker, Andre Norton, and Robert Sheckley

  Shapers of dreams

  Inspirers

  Friends in the great spirit of adventure

  Introduction

  Once and Future Tsunamis

  BY ARTHUR C. CLARKE

  Although the devastating tsunami struck coastal areas even a few kilometers away from Colombo, I have so far not ventured out to see any of its damage. I am not sure if I can bear to look at what the killer waves have done to my favorite beaches in Unawatuna, Hikkaduwa, and elsewhere along Sri Lanka’s southern coast. But I have been watching with mounting horror and grief the disaster’s television coverage. The New Year dawned with the Global Family closely following the unfolding tragedy via satellite television and on the Web. As the grim images from Aceh, Chennai, Galle, and elsewhere replaced the traditional scenes of celebrations, I realized that it will soon be 60 years since I invented the communications satellite (in Wireless World, October 1945).

  I was also reminded of what Bernard Kouchner, former French health minister and first UN governor of Kosovo, once said: “Where there is no camera, there is no humanitarian intervention.” Indeed, how many of the millions of men and women who donated generously for disaster relief would have done so if they had merely read about it in the newspapers? In the coming weeks, the media’s coverage of the disaster will be analyzed and critiqued. Nature’s fury presented the media with an unfolding human drama of gigantic proportions that is usually the domain of Hollywood screenwriters. As a noted media watcher in the U.S., Danny Schechter, remarked: “This is not reality television. This is reality on television.”

  Speaking of movies, when The Day After Tomorrow was showing in Colombo last summer, some people asked me if such a calamity could befall Sri Lanka. Without debating the scientific merits of the movie, I said that Nature always had a few tricks up her sleeve. Little did I imagine that before the year ended, killer waves forty feet high would lash the coast of Sri Lanka, leaving an unprecedented trail of destruction in my adopted country. For millions of Sri Lankans, the day after Christmas was a living nightmare that mimicked The Day After Tomorrow. As Sri Lanka struggles to come to terms with the multiple impacts of this tragedy, we confront a massive humanitarian crisis involving over one million displaced persons. The first priority is to provide emergency shelter and relief. As soon as possible thereafter, we must create conditions that will enable the affected people to return to normal lives and livelihoods. In spite of all its progress, science can only give us a few hours’ warning—at the most—of an incoming tsunami. And as we now know, there were no systems in place in the Indian Ocean countries to broadcast that warning to millions of coastal dwellers. As we raise our heads from this blow, we must address the long-term issues of better preparedness. That includes effective warning systems that work well just when they are needed. The tsunami, in its wake, brought its share of conspiracy theories and speculations. Among the latter kind was the suggestion that I had foreseen this disaster. The Boxing Day disaster reminded me that I had, in fact, written about another tsunami that Sri Lanka had experienced more than a century ago. In my first book about Ceylon, The Reefs of Taprobane (1957), this is what I wrote:

  One August day in 1883, the water suddenly started to drain out of Galle harbour. Within a few minutes, the sea bed was exposed for hundreds of feet from shore. Myriads of fish were flopping around in their death agonies, and many wrecks, from small fishing boats to large iron steamers, were miraculously uncovered by the water that had concealed them for years. “But the inhabitants of Galle did not stop to stare and wonder. They knew what to expect, and rushed to high ground as quickly as they could. Fortunately for the town and its people, the sea did not return in the usual tidal wave; perhaps because Galle was on the far, sheltered side of the island, it came back smoothly and without violence, like a swiftly incoming tide. “It was many days before the people of Galle learned why the sea had so suddenly deserted their harbor, when they heard for the first time the doom-laden name of Krakatoa.

  These words w
ere written too long ago for me to locate my original notes, but I am intrigued: How did the people of Galle in 1883 know big waves were coming up soon after the sea receded? What made them rush to high ground? In contrast, in twenty-first-century Sri Lanka, this simple fact was unknown to most people. No one knows exactly how many men, women, and children perished on December 26 because they rushed out to see the suddenly receding sea. But that number must indeed be high. Referring to the Krakatoa-inspired tsunami, I had also written in 1957:

  It was a moment unique in recorded history, and one which will probably never come again. I would have given anything to have been present then with a camera, but would probably have been too terrified to use it.

  Well, never say never. This time round, there were plenty of holidaymakers armed with video cameras on the beach. Many of them just could not resist the temptation to capture the moment—alas, some cameras and their owners added to the grim statistics. What survived makes this probably the most widely filmed natural disaster in history. Devastating as they are, disasters have been a favorite element of storytellers over millennia. In my own science fiction, I have conjured many and varied disasters that happen just when everything is going according to plan. A tsunami arrives toward the end of the story in Childhood’s End (1953). In The Ghost from the Grand Banks (1990), an ambitious plan to raise the Titanic is completely wrecked by a massive storm in the north Atlantic. The Songs of Distant Earth (1986) suggested a planetary rescue plan for the ultimate disaster: the end of the world. However, in terms of scientific research and policy action inspired, Rendezvous with Rama (1973) may yet turn out to be my one piece of writing that one day saves the most number of lives. Rama opens with an asteroid impact on Europe which obliterates northern Italy—on the morning of 11 September 2077. (I am still spooked by randomly choosing this date, and claim no powers of prescience.) I cannot recall what turned my attention to the possible danger of asteroid impacts. It was quite an old idea in science fiction, and one that science now takes very seriously. Life-threatening impacts are more frequent than many people realize: there were three known major impacts during the twentieth century alone (Siberia in 1908 and 1947, and Brazil in 1930)—damage was minimal in all cases as, miraculously, they happened in uninhabited areas. It is only a matter of time before our luck runs out. In Rama, I introduced a new concept. I argued that as soon as the technology permitted, we should set up powerful radar and optical search systems to detect Earth-threatening objects. The name I suggested was Spaceguard, which, together with Spacewatch, has now been widely accepted. Today, astronomers scan the skies in both hemispheres looking for rogue asteroids and comets. The fact that these efforts are woefully underfunded—and that some rely on private funding—says how little the bean counters in governments appreciate the value of this work.

  When the possible consequences of asteroid impacts on Earth are discussed, people seem to be comforted by the fact that two-thirds of the planet’s surface is ocean. In fact, we should worry more: an ocean impact can multiply damage by triggering the mother of all tsunamis. Duncan Steel, an authority on the subject, has done some terrifying calculations. He took a modest-sized space rock, 200 meters in diameter, colliding with Earth at a typical speed of 19 kilometers per second. As it is brought to a halt, it releases kinetic energy in an explosion equal to 600 megatons of TNT—ten times the yield of the most powerful nuclear weapon tested (underground). Even though only about 10 percent of this energy would be transferred to the tsunami, such waves will carry this massive energy over long distances to coasts far away. They can therefore cause much more diffused destruction than would have resulted from a land impact. In the latter, the interaction between the blast wave and the irregularities of the ground (hills, buildings, trees) limits the area damaged. On the ocean, the wave propagates until it runs into land.

  Contrary to popular belief, we science fiction writers don’t predict the future—we try to prevent undesirable futures. In the wake of the Asian tsunami, scientists and governments are scrambling to set up systems to monitor and warn us of future disasters. Let’s keep an eye on the skies even as we worry about the next hazard from the depths.

  Although he lost his diving school in the recent tsunami, Sir Arthur Clarke has no plans to leave Sri Lanka again. He thanks Nalaka Gunawardene for his support in writing this essay.

  Report from the Near Future:

  Crystallization

  BY DAVID GERROLD

  David Gerrold started writing professionally in 1967. His first sale was the “Trouble with Tribbles” episode of Star Trek. Within five years, he had published seven novels, two books about television production, three anthologies, and a short story collection. He was nominated for the Hugo and Nebula Awards six times in four years. Since 1967, he has published more than forty books. Several of his novels are considered classics, including The Man Who Folded Himself, When HARLIE Was One, and the four books in The War Against the Chtorr.

  Gerrold has written episodes for more than a dozen different television series, including Star Trek, Star Trek Animated, Twilight Zone, Land of the Lost, Babylon 5, Sliders, Logan’s Run, and Tales from the Darkside. He has had columns in six different magazines and two Web sites, including Starlog, Galileo, Profiles, PC-Techniques, Visual Developer, Yahoo, and GalaxyOnline. In 1995, he won the Hugo and Nebula awards for “The Martian Child,” an autobiographical tale of his son’s adoption.

  David Gerrold lives with his son in Northridge, California. Learn more about Gerrold at his Web site: www.gerrold.com.

  It’s that moment when a liquid solidifies, when the temperature drops or the pressure rises and the substance finally stops flowing, it slows down, it turns to slush—to mud, it hardens, it finally becomes impenetrable … .

  For the first few hours after the Los Angeles freeway system crystallized, most people believed the problem was temporary and that traffic would eventually start flowing again. Even for the first few days, they believed they could eventually chip their way out of the concretized arteries.

  The slush of Los Angeles traffic had been slower than sluggish for years, churning through looped spaghetti concrete channels in a lumpy stream of metal and plastic peristalsis, in a persistent state of uncertain hesitation, punctuated only occasionally by forward-jerking movements and uneven painful surges, a textbook demonstration of socio-technical constipation and definitely no place for a stick shift.

  The city engineers had been aware of the potential for crystallization for nearly two decades, but no one had ever taken the warnings seriously, and eventually even they began to assume that their own projections of crystallization were situational artifacts occurring whenever the simulators reached the limits of their ability to process the rapid flows of data.

  Unfortunately, only the data was flowing rapidly. One desperate afternoon, even that stopped. The air-conditioning broke down in the central monitoring station. The temperature rose uncomfortably. Fans didn’t help. The computers began shutting down in self-defense. The screens went blank, or declared, “No signal.” Blind and deaf, the traffic engineers could neither monitor nor prescribe.

  The rest was inevitable.

  Outside, in the place where the facts didn’t care about simulation, events took on a terrifying momentum of their own. It was Friday, early afternoon on a three-day holiday weekend. Temperatures in the basin had peaked at 106 degrees shortly after one p.m. Add to that a localized gas shortage acerbated by higher than usual oil prices, a high degree of situational stress about the staggering economy, a disturbing series of terrorist bombings in the mideast, and three days of overheated shock-jock nattering about a particularly scandalous high-profile murder trial, and crystallization was no longer a question of if or when, but where.

  Surprisingly, it did not begin on the freeway. Not exactly. Although a freeway was involved. The first hardening in the traffic flow began in the San Fernando Valley where Burbank Blvd. intersected with Sepulveda. Always a sluggish intersection, today it revea
led its true capacity for horror. An overweight, overstressed soccer mom with two screaming children in the backseat of her SUV and a cell phone pressed to her ear, her attention everywhere but on the road in front of her, abruptly became aware of a motorcyclist coming up out of the blind spot on her right. Startled, she swerved left, forcing two teenagers in a dropped Honda Civic (don’t ask) to brake suddenly. The empty tanker truck that shouldn’t have been in the same lane behind them braked, swerved, and jackknifed sideways into a city bus, effectively blocking all three northbound lanes of Sepulveda and the middle two lanes of Burbank.

  Almost immediately traffic stopped on both boulevards, backing up on Burbank as far east as Van Nuys Blvd. and as far west as Woodley. Sepulveda froze all the way north to Sherman Way and as far south as Ventura Blvd. When the traffic at the intersection of Ventura and Sepulveda froze, the crystallization of the surface streets began to spread east and west on Ventura Blvd. as well. In the horror about to happen, there would be no alternative routes.

  The 405 freeway stretches north across the San Fernando Valley; the heaviest used access ramps are at Burbank Blvd., just slightly east of the fatal intersection and up a slight incline. The northbound and southbound access ramps represent two additional intersections to interrupt Burbank’s westward flow—it’s a wasps’ nest of lanes, contradictory traffic signals, and intermittent left-turn arrows. Even at three in the morning, it takes ninety seconds to negotiate this ganglionic nightmare in any direction. During crush hour, wise drivers bring a book or a magazine. Teenage boys change the radio station and readjust themselves in their jeans. Grown men pick their noses and think about business. Teenage girls turn their rearview mirrors and fix their makeup. Everyone else is on the phone, their attention two or ten or a thousand miles away. Watching the road is optional, something that only sissies and old ladies ever do.

  On any ordinary afternoon, traffic feeding into the northbound Burbank offramp would start backing up by two p.m. By five, it would be backed up two miles south, all the way to the 405/101 interchange. This day, however, traffic was even more manic than usual. As soon as the critical intersection of Burbank and Sepulveda hardened, the crystallization of the 405 began spreading southward as fast as new cars arrived and joined the creeping boundaries of the linear parking lot.