Hub - Issue 33

by James S Dorr / James Bacon / Neil Gardner

  Hub

  Issue 33

  17th November 2007

  Editors: Lee Harris, Alasdair Stuart and Trudi Topham.

  Proofreader: Ellen Phillips

  Published by The Right Hand.

  Sponsored by Orbit.

  Issue 33 Contents

  Fiction: The Game by James S. Dorr

  Review: Captain America Omnibus

  Feature: The Brightonomicon

  Torchwood Season 1 - We watch things, so you don’t have to.

  When our review copy of Torchwood season 1 found its way into the office (not entirely sure how that happened, as we had wards created to avoid such an incident), there weren’t that many people keen to take on the awesome responsibility of reviewing it. After all, we’d all seen it before, and pretty unanimously dismissed it as tosh. A brave Scott Harrison stepped forward and offered to rewatch it all, so you don’t have to. This afternoon I received a text from him (when watching things of this nature it’s standard practice to call in every two hours so we know our reviewers are safe). He actually seems to be enjoying it, second time around.

  When it first aired everyone had preconceptions, and it didn’t fit any of them. Is that why the majority of genre fans hated it (though everyone else thought it was actually ok)? Did our idea of what it would be spoil our enjoyment of it so much that it never stood a chance when it turned out to be something different? Read Scott’s review soon, and find out.

  About Hub

  Every week we publish a piece of short fiction, along with at least one review and sometimes a feature or interview. We can afford to do this largely due to the generosity of our sponsors over at Orbit. If you like what you read here, please consider making a donation over at www.hub-mag.co.uk. We pay our writers, and anything you donate helps us to continue to attract high quality fiction and non-fiction.

  The Game by James S. Dorr

  Click!

  That was the fourth ball. Two more in play – the fifth one spinning, right up on the edge.

  Michael Warren felt his palms sweating.

  Steady now . . . easy now, he told himself. His nerve mustn't falter. He pulled his left hand back – the guillotine blade thunked down, right where his thumb had lain – then thrust it forward. The button. Wobble it.

  Change the wheel's pitch so the fifth ball . . .

  "Earthie!"

  The fifth ball clicked in place. Gears whirred and rumbled. He pulled his hand out again – the right one this time – then snaked it back onto the game's control surface at a different angle.

  The sixth ball . . . he had never gone this far before . . .

  "You! Earthie! Yes, Warren!"

  He tried to ignore the voice. That was a part of the game as well – to try to distract him.

  Why "Earthie?" he wondered. He'd never been to Old Earth himself. Had never known anyone…

  No! Concentrate instead. The sixth ball. Higher. Pull out his hand – thrust it back. Higher. Up the rim.

  Wobble it. Let it circle…

  CLICK!

  It was over.

  The croupier caught him as he collapsed, straining under the weight of his human frame. Guided him to a chair.

  "You, Michael Warren."

  He looked at the croupier. Looked up now into faceted bees' eyes, at spindly legs supporting a vee-shaped, chitinous body.

  "That's my name," he muttered. As if the Aztairan didn't know him. As if he hadn't come in each month to gamble the pay he got from odd jobs around the spaceport.

  To play games he couldn't win . . . except this time...

  "I want to congratulate you, Spaceman Michael Warren. Your friends will be proud of you. Shall I call Fleet Central. . . ?"

  Warren shook his head. "You know I'm not FleetCen. I'm merchant space corps. Except..."

  The Aztairan croupier held a chit out to him, folding it neatly in one of its pincers before he could take it. "Yes, I know, Spaceman Michael Warren." It thrust the chit out again, letting him have it.

  Warren laughed. The croupier had tried its best. Tried to distract him. To rig the game its way. Was even now backing away from him, scanning the neon-lit casino to find a new player in danger of winning.

  To cut its losses.

  But Warren, in the meantime, had won. Won at a game already so stacked against anyone playing it that the payoff it gave was enormous.

  It only then sank in – started to sink in. He walked in a daze to the cashier's window wondering – that crack about calling FleetCen – wondering what he would do with his winnings.

  "Shall I just transfer it?" the cashier asked him. He looked up, recognizing the voice, and saw it was Angela. Someone he'd known once.

  He shook his head. "No." If he had been connected with FleetCen, humankind's military arm as well as its government on a mixed-race planet like this one, he could have had his winnings transferred to a base account automatically. Not that gambling was strictly legal, but FleetCen took care of its own against natives, so no one would complain. But...

  He looked up, suddenly, seeing the croupier reflected in the cashier's window, talking to someone. Another human, and not a player. He shrugged, then thrust his chit through the slot in the fake marble counter.

  "Sir?" the blonde cashier – Angela – prompted. He shrugged again, wondering if she remembered him. Years ago, when she had first come to this planet, with him an "old hand" of scarcely more than six months' stay himself, already falling into the routine of those that were grounded.

  He'd been surprised then that she had stayed on herself – she hadn't had to – but people settled on off-the-beat planets like this one for all kinds of reasons. They...

  "Sir?" she asked again.

  "Oh, sorry," he muttered, then added more loudly, "I'll take it in credits."

  "It's a lot of money," the woman said, thrusting a bundle of paper through to his side of the window. "Be careful getting home."

  "Yeah," he said, shoving the bills in his jumper pocket. Feeling their weight in the slightly less than Fleet-standard gravity.

  It sank in further.

  People didn't win. They weren't supposed to.

  #

  It continued to sink in after he'd left the gaming house. What was he going to do with the money? It had never occurred to him that he might win something, other than the small pots the house let go now and again just to keep people playing.

  The point was the game itself. Playing the game had up to now been just for entertainment – something he did, like eating and sleeping, to keep himself going. Like scrounging odd jobs at the spaceport's perimeter, neither entirely accepted by the planet's natives nor willing, himself, to accept his own people. Not since he had been...

  Been what? Cashiered from the space service? That's what the FleetCen officer told him – even though he had been in the merchant corps. Grounded for loss of nerve?

  But now he had more money than even an off-world tourist. He could go to the best human bars, if that was his pleasure. Buy women at an officers' joy house. Drugs or implants, whatever he wanted. Whatever he asked for.

  Except people didn't win.

  Except he didn't know what he would ask for.

  A memory. His memory...

  He shook his head, clearing it, breathing in the planet's warm, thick air. He smelled incense, perfume, musk, sweating women. Both human and native. The smells of meat cooking in human-trade restaurants, the fish-like odors of native cuisine.

  Ahead, neon flashed – to his right, five blocks west, was the steadier silver-flecked purple glow that curtained off the native quarter, warning off-worlders like him to stay outside.

  "Hey! Earthie!"

  He looked up. A person approaching from
his left side, a half block away from him. A human person.

  "Earthie, yourself," he grumbled back. He didn't want company. Not tonight. He just wanted to get home to the room he rented, to count his winnings, then stash them somewhere. To sleep on the question of what to do with them. But the man who had called out to him was closing fast.

  "Hey, Earthie," the new person said again. "Word's out on the street that you've come in some money. You know, around here a guy's gotta be careful."

  "So?" Warren said. He stopped to face the man, looking him over. Tall, but thinly built, like a person who had been raised in gravity even lower than this planet's. If it came to it, Warren could take him.

  Except – to his right, he saw a shadow. A bulkier shadow.

  "You got friends, mister?" he asked his assailant.

  This time the man laughed. "Like I say, a man with money ain't always safe walking in this district. Now, me and my buddy, we could escort you wherever you want to go. Maybe for only a ten percent cut – that is, for each of us – 'less, of course, you want special services..."

  Which, no doubt, he would, Warren thought. After they'd let him lead them to where he lived, no doubt the word would get out about that too. Or maybe they themselves would rob him then – FleetCen wouldn't mind. The port police might investigate, sure, but when it came back that neither natives nor people in uniform had been involved – just on-the-dock space scum like him who scarcely, officially, even existed – FleetCen's Colonial Service would wash its hands. It wouldn't matter.

  But FleetCen's indifference worked both ways. Warren lashed out with his foot as he spun, pulling his work knife out of his belt. He heard the first man go down, moaning as if his kneecap was broken, then turned to the second.

  The second man backed away. "Hey, Earthie, no reason to be unfriendly. But, like my associate said, these streets are dangerous. You ought to think twice about..."

  "See to your friend's health," Warren replied. He backed to let the second man pass him, then put his knife away. Once, as he continued on, he turned to make sure he wasn't being followed. But, as he walked, he found himself deviating from the route he had intended.

  Even if these men had been scared off, he thought, others were watching. They had to be watching. His thoughts went back to the croupier's reflection in the hard plastic payout window, spreading the word itself, offering anyone a percentage to get it its money back.

  And so, it wouldn't be safe to go home. At least not until daytime – and maybe not even then. But in the meantime he had to think.

  He passed a smoke house and, glancing inside, he saw a flash of familiar blonde hair. Why not? he thought. He still just wanted to be by himself, but if that weren't possible. And if she did remember from back then.

  They had loved each other.

  He went inside.

  The place was hardly filled to its capacity, having most likely only just opened, but haze from the customers already smoking was already making vision difficult. Still he steered himself to a back booth, elbowing past the approaching attendant, and plopped himself down across from Angela.

  "Off duty?" he asked.

  "Huh?" she said. Her speech was slightly slurred.

  "From the casino. Remember? A half hour or so ago? The one who won the Game."

  Blue eyes gazed up at him through the thickening, sweet-smelling mist. He waved the native attendant away a second time as it came up with a mouthpiece to offer him. "Don't you remember? We knew each other before once, too. Michael Warren?"

  "Oh . . . Warren," the woman answered between taking puffs of smoke from her own mouthpiece. "Yeah, I, uh, I'm off duty. Just got in here. But you don't smoke, do you."

  Then she did remember – at least that much. The arguments that had finally led to their separation.

  "I need my memory," he had said then – he said now. The smoke, taken bit by bit, over the weeks and months, made forgetting the past too easy. And it was everywhere on the planet, not just in the houses where one paid to breathe it in its pure form. One couldn't avoid it.

  But one could resist it.

  "I don't," she'd answered, back when they had argued. "Not all one's life is worth remembering. The smoke helps select things, things that are more pleasant, and, even if it changes them somewhat..."

  One could try to resist the whole planet, and yet he, too, had been trying to blend in. To live with the natives.

  "You know they can read minds," Angela said now as they sat across from each other. "The native Aztairans – at least a little. I mean we like to think it's just a rumor, but when you feel one of them like the croupier stare in your eyes, you know they're not just finding out your thoughts either, but trying to manipulate them."

  He nodded. "Yes." That was why the croupier had shouted out his name while he was playing – not just to distract him, but so he'd look up. It was part of the fix. And the drifters who'd tried to mug him outside...

  But what about FleetCen?

  He glanced behind him, nervously looking back toward the street door. The haze was thickening – dangerous in some ways, since he had to breathe it too, but at least shielding him from unwanted eyes.

  "The Colonial Government," he said. "You mean you think the natives manipulate them as well?"

  She nodded back, then scowled when he took the mouthpiece from her to force her to concentrate. "The natives get what they want, don't they? In return for FleetCen's enclave, they get our money. They get trade goods from us. They even get people, like you and me. And anyway, FleetCen rotates its own people out, before their memories become too affected."

  She stopped and reached for the mouthpiece he'd taken, but he held it from her. "Go on," he prompted.

  "So FleetCen gets what it wants too. An outpost planet, in case it's needed. Cooperation." She reached out suddenly, twisting the mouthpiece out of his grasp and clamping it back between her teeth. She sucked in its smoke, then released it slowly through her nostrils.

  "But sometimes," she finally said, "something breaks down. Like you winning, Michael. But that's not important – at least not right now." She paused again, but this time instead of taking another puff from her mouthpiece, she looked in his eyes. Long and hard.

  "Michael?" she asked, after several seconds. "What were you going to do with the money?"

  He looked at her, thinking – no, remembering – how it had been before with them. Maybe she had been right, he thought. That some memories were ugly. Were best forgotten.

  Like losing his nerve . . . his ship diving through a planet's atmosphere. Him...

  Someone accusing him. Passing sentence...

  Not just for loss of nerve...

  "I-I don't know, Angela. I hadn't thought – I mean – hadn't expected I'd actually win. But..."

  He looked in her blue eyes, remembering how they had once loved each other. Wondering if she remembered too.

  "I – I mean I suppose I should make plans for it. Maybe for you and me?" He thought she smiled then, at least a little, though with the haze and the tube in her mouth he couldn't be sure.

  What did he want to do? Open up his own place, maybe? Now that he could afford to do so. A human-style bar, with a back room for card games – not heavy gambling, though. Just a place where spacers could have fun before shipping out again. Like he used to...

  The memory slipped away – he forced himself to look at her again, gazing into the depth of her eyes. Perhaps with her helping him, owning it with him...

  He saw a shadow. Some sort of thickening in the haze, to the left where the booth opened out to the narrow aisle.

  Two thickening, approaching, spindle-legged forms.

  "You know they won't let you," Angela was beginning to say when Warren launched himself off his bench. He kept his head low, feeling more than hearing sharp pincers clash shut just above him.

  He heard a woman's scream – Angela screaming. He tried to ignore it. Knowing that they wouldn't dare hurt her.

  If natives caused any harm
to a human, he knew that would cause FleetCen's intervention. Because it would be a Colonial matter – FleetCen's justice would have to take measures. And that meant killings. Retaliation. Closing down houses like the croupier's, if a connection could be proven. Or even if FleetCen just said it was proven.

  He scrambled away from both booth and shadows, swimming through smoke to the door to the street. By the same token, natives would not dare cause any physical harm to him either, not that he couldn't defend himself easily given their spindly frames and weak muscles, compared to his own higher-gravity muscles. But with their brittle external shells, he could cause harm to them, far, far too easily – which he would not do unless he was willing to give in to FleetCen. To be just like FleetCen.

  Why had he thought that?

  While, on the other hand, human assailants, like out on the street before...

  He realized then that that was the idea. It made sense in one way to send natives in for him. They at least could see through the smoke. And, even if they couldn't kill him themselves, if there happened to be humans waiting, perhaps just outside the smoke house door...

  He kept his head down, half running, half crawling, finding paths where the roiling, sweet-scented smoke seemed the thinnest. He had an idea – if he could get outside. He found a table that wasn't filled and grabbed an empty chair, launching himself up and swinging it with him. He pushed it through the smoke house window, then followed it outside, grabbing it up once more to throw it into the knot of

  just-now-turning men at the door.

  He ran across the street, dodging traffic, up the roads he had come down before, heading for the shimmering curtain he'd passed when he'd been attacked by the first two men. The one that marked off the native quarter.

  Humans, as a rule, did not go through it. Dared not go through it. But – shreds of a memory crashed back to him, just for a moment – Spaceman Michael Warren had been known to break rules before.

  #

  He'd made it. He lay on the other side, a dome-like, seemingly solid light curving up and over him. Except it curved so high that when he blinked and looked again, suddenly the dome seemed to shatter, giving way to trackless black, while fragments crashed over his head like fireworks.