21st Century Science Fiction

by D B Hartwell

  The wrong master’s brain.

  The part of me that was born on the Small Animal’s island takes over and fits the two patterns together, like pieces of a puzzle. They fit, and for a brief moment, the master’s voice is in my mind, for real this time.

  The cat is waiting, already in its clawed battlesuit, and I don my own. The Marquis of Carabas is dying around us. To send the master on his way, we have to disengage the armour.

  The cat miaows faintly and hands me something red. An old plastic ball with toothmarks, smelling of the sun and the sea, with a few grains of sand rattling inside.

  “Thanks,” I say. The cat says nothing, just opens a door into the zeppelin’s skin. I whisper a command, and the master is underway in a neutrino stream, shooting up towards an island in a blue sea. Where the gods and big dogs live forever.

  We dive through the door together, down into the light and flame.

  KAGE BKER The death of Kage Baker in 2010 cut short one of the most promising careers of the new century. But in the thirteen years she actively wrote, she created a large and rewarding body of work.

  Born and raised in Southern California, Baker worked in theater and in the insurance industry before publishing In the Garden of Iden, her first novel, in 1997. Like much of the rest of her work, it is a tale of the Company, a cadre of twenty-fourth-century time travelers who interfere with human history, ostensibly to preserve the heritage of Earth but in fact, as gradually becomes evident, for less admirable reasons as well. Many Company novels and stories followed, as well as a smaller amount of fiction set in other milieus.

  Alternately hilarious and disquieting, “Plotters and Shooters” is Lord of the Flies meets Ender’s Game, and it’s not obvious which strain is going to be dominant. It is in the great tradition of SF stories arguing with previous SF stories, and brilliantly done.

  PLOTTERS AND SHOOTERS

  I was flackeying for Lord Deathlok and Dr. Smash when the shuttle brought the new guy.

  I hate Lord Deathlok. I hate Dr. Smash too, but I’d like to see Lord Deathlok get a missile fired up his ass, from his own cannon. Not that it’s really a cannon. And I couldn’t shoot him, anyhow, because I’m only a Plotter. But it’s the thought that counts, you know?

  Anyway I looked up when the beeps and the flashing lights started, and Lord Deathlok took hold of my little French maid’s apron and yanked it so hard I had to bend over fast, so I almost dropped the tray with his drink.

  “Pay attention, maggot-boy,” said Lord Deathlok. “It’s only a shuttle docking. No reason you should be distracted from your duties.”

  “I know what’s wrong,” said Dr. Smash, lounging back against the bar. “He hears the mating call of his kind. They must have sent up another Plotter.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Lord Deathlok grinned at me. “Your fat-ass girlfriend went crying home to his mum and dad, didn’t he?”

  Oh, man, how I hated him. He was talking about Kev, who’d only gone Down Home again because he’d almost died in an asthma attack. Kev had been a good Plotter, one of the best. I just glared at Deathlok, which was a mistake, because he smiled and put his boot on my foot and stood up.

  “I don’t think I heard your answer, Fifi,” he said, and I was in all this unbelievable psychological pain, see, because even with the lower gravity he could still manage to get the leverage just right if he wanted to bear down. They tell us we don’t have to worry about getting brittle bones up here because they make us do weight-training, but how would we know if they were lying? I could almost hear my metatarsals snapping like dry twigs.

  “Yes, my Lord Deathlok,” I said.

  “What?” He leaned forward.

  “My lord yes my Lord Deathlok!”

  “That’s better.” He sat down.

  So okay, you’re probably thinking I’m a coward. I’m not. It isn’t that Lord Deathlok is even a big guy. He isn’t, actually, he’s sort of skinny and he has these big yellow buck teeth that make him look like a demon jackrabbit. And Dr. Smash has breasts and a body odor that makes sharing an airlock with him a fatal mistake. But they’re Shooters, you know? And they all dress like they’re space warriors or something, with the jackets and the boots and the scary hair styles. Shracking fascists.

  So I put down his Dis Pepsy and backed away from him, and that was when the announcement came over the speakers:

  “Eugene Clifford, please report to Mr. Kurtz’s office.”

  Talk about saved by the bell. As the message repeated, Lord Deathlok smirked.

  “Sounds like Dean Kurtz is lonesome for one of his little buttboys. You have our permission to go, Fifi.”

  “My lord thank you my Lord Deathlok,” I muttered, and tore off the apron and ran for the companionway.

  Mr. Kurtz isn’t a dean; I don’t know why the Shooters call him that. He’s the Station Manager. He runs the place for Areco and does our performance reviews and signs our bonus vouchers, and you’d think the Shooters would treat him with a little more respect, but they don’t because they’re Shooters, and that says it all. Mostly he sits in his office and looks disappointed. I don’t blame him.

  He looked up from his novel as I put my head around the door.

  “You wanted to see me, Mr. Kurtz?”

  He nodded. “New arrival on the shuttle. Kevin Nederlander’s replacement. Would you bring him up, please?”

  “Yes, sir!” I said, and hurried off to the shuttle lounge.

  The new guy was sitting there in the lounge, with his duffel in the chair beside him. He was short and square and his haircut made his head look like it came to a point. Maybe it’s genetic; Plotters can’t seem to get good haircuts, ever.

  “Welcome to the Gun Platform, newbie,” I said. “I’m your Orientation Officer.” Which I sort of am.

  “Oh, good,” he said, getting to his feet, but he couldn’t seem to take his eyes off the viewscreen. I waited for him to ask if that was really Mars down there, or gush about how he couldn’t believe he was actually on an alien world or at least in orbit above one. That’s usually what they do, see. But he didn’t. He just shouldered his duffel and tore his gaze away at last.

  “Charles Tead. Glad to be here,” he said.

  Heh! That’ll change, I thought. “You’ve got some righteous shoes to fill, newbie. Think you’re up to it?”

  He just said that he was, not like he was bragging or anything, and I thought This one’s going to get his corners broken off really soon.

  So I took him to the Forecastle and showed him Kev’s old bunk, looking all empty and sad with the drillholes where Kev’s holoposters used to be mounted. He put his duffel into Kev’s old locker and looked around, and then he asked who did our laundry. I coughed a little and explained about it being sent down to the planet to be dry-cleaned. I didn’t tell him, not then, about our having to collect the Shooters’ dirty socks and stuff for them.

  And I took him to the Bridge where B Shift was on duty and introduced him to the boys. Roscoe and Norman were wearing their Jedi robes, which I wish they wouldn’t because it makes us look hopeless. Vinder was in a snit because Bradley had knocked one of his action figures behind the console, and apparently it was one of the really valuable ones, and Myron’s the only person skinny enough to get his arm back there to fish it out, but he’s on C Shift and wouldn’t come on duty until seventeen-hundred hours.

  I guess that was where it started, B Shift making such a bad first impression.

  But I tried to bring back some sense of importance by showing him the charting display, with the spread of the asteroid belt all in blue and gold, like a stained-glass window in an old-time church must have been, only everything moving.

  “This is your own personal slice of the sky,” I said, waving at Q34-54. “Big Kev knew every one of these babies. Tracked every little wobble, every deviation over three years. Plotted trajectories for thirty-seven successful shots. It was like he had a sixth sense! He even called three Intruders before they came in range. He was the Bon
us Master, old Kev. You’ll have to work pretty damn hard to be half as good as he was.”

  “But it ought to be easy,” said Charles. “Doesn’t the mapping software do most of it?”

  “Well, like, I mean, sure, but you’ll have to coordinate everything, you know? In your head? Machines can’t do it all,” I protested. And Vinder chose that second to yell from behind us, “Don’t take the Flying Dynamo’s cape off, you’ll break him!” Which totally blew the mood I was trying to get. So I ignored him and continued:

  “We’ve been called up from Earth for a job only we can do. It’s a high and lonely destiny, up here among the cold stars! Mundane people couldn’t stick it out. That’s why Areco went looking for guys like us. We’re free of entanglements, right? We came from our parents’ basements and garages to a place where our powers were needed. Software can map those rocks out there, okay; it can track them, maybe. But only a human can—can—smell them coming in before they’re there, okay?”

  “You mean like precognition?” Charles stared at me.

  “Not exactly,” I said, even though Myron claims he’s got psychic abilities, but he never seems to be able to predict when the Shooters are going to go on a rampage on our turf. “I’m talking about gut feelings. Hunches. Instinct! That’s the word I was looking for. Human instinct. We outguess the software seventy percent of the time on projected incoming. Not bad, huh?”

  “I guess so,” he said.

  I spent the rest of the shift showing him his console and setting up his passwords and customizations and stuff. He didn’t ask many questions, just put on the goggles and focused, and you could almost see him wandering around among the asteroids in Q34-54 and getting to know them. I was starting to get a good feeling about him, because that was just the way Kev used to plot, and then he said:

  “How do we target them?”

  Vinder was so shocked he dropped the Blue Judge. Roscoe turned, took off his goggles to stare at me, and said:

  “We don’t target. Cripes, haven’t you told him?”

  “Told me what?” Charles turned his goggled face toward the sound of Roscoe’s voice.

  So then I had to tell him about the Shooters, and how he couldn’t go into the bar when Shooters were in there except when he was flackeying for one of them, and what they’d do to him if he did, and how he had to stay out of the Pit of Hell where they bunked except when he was flackeying for them, and he was never under any circumstances to go into the War Room at all.

  I was explaining about the flackeying rotation when he said:

  “This is stupid!”

  “It’s sheer evil,” said Roscoe. “But there’s nothing we can do about it. They’re Shooters. You can’t fight them. You don’t want to know what happens if you try.”

  “This wasn’t in my contract,” said Charles.

  “You can go complain to Kurtz, if you want,” said Bradley. “It’s no damn use. He can’t control them. They’re Shooters. Nobody else can do what they do.”

  “I’ll bet I could,” said Charles, and everybody just sniffed at him, because, you know, who’s got reflexes like a Shooter? They’re the best at what they do.

  “You got assigned to us because you tested out as a Plotter,” I told Charles. “That’s just the way things are. You’re the best at your job; the pay’s good; in five years you’ll be out of here. You just have to learn to live with the crap. We all did.”

  He looked like a smart guy and I thought he wouldn’t need to be told twice. I was wrong.

  We heard the march of booted feet coming along the corridor. Vinder leaped up and grabbed all his action figures, shoving them into a storage pod. Norman began to hyperventilate; Bradley ran for the toilet. I just stayed where I was and lowered my eyes. It’s never a good idea to look them in the face.

  Boom! The portal jerked open and in they came, Lord Deathlok and the Shark and Iron Beast. They were carrying Piki-tiki. I blanched.

  Piki-tiki was this sort of dummy they’d made out of a blanket and a mask. And a few other things. Lord Deathlok grinned around and spotted Charles.

  “Piki-tiki returns to his harem,” he shouted. “What’s this? Piki-tiki sees a new and beautiful bride! Piki-tiki must welcome her to his realm!”

  Giggling, they advanced on Charles and launched the dummy. It fell over him, and before he could throw it off they’d jumped him and hoisted him between them. He was fighting hard, but they just laughed; that is, until he got one arm free and punched the Shark in the face. The Shark grabbed his nose and began to swear, but Lord Deathlok and Iron Beast gloated.

  “Whoa! The blushing bride needs to learn her manners. Piki-tiki’s going to take her off to his honeymoon suite and see that she learns them well!”

  Ouch. They dragged him away. At least it wasn’t the worst they might have done to him; they were only going to cram him in one of the lockers, probably one that had had some sweaty socks left in the bottom, and stuff Piki-tiki in there on top of him. Then they’d lock him in and leave him there. How did I know? They’d done it to me, on my first day.

  • • • •

  If you’re sensible, like me, you just shrug it off and concentrate on your job. Charles wouldn’t let it go, though. He kept asking questions.

  Like, how come the Shooters were paid better than we were, even though they spent most of their time playing simulations and Plotters did all the actual work of tracking asteroids and calculating when they’d strike? How come Mr. Kurtz had given up on disciplinary action for them, even after they’d rigged his holoset to come on unexpectedly and project a CGI of him having sex with an alligator, or all the other little ways in which they made his life a living hell? How come none of us ever stood up to them?

  And it was no good explaining how they didn’t respond to reason, and they didn’t respond to being called immature and crude and disgusting, because they just loved being told how awful they were.

  The other thing he asked about was why there weren’t any women up here, and that was too humiliating to go into, so I just said tests had shown that men were better suited for life on a Gun Platform.

  He should have been happy that he was a good Plotter, because he really was. He mastered Q34-54 in a week. One shift we were there on the Bridge and Myron and I were talking about the worst ever episode of Schrödinger’s Rock, which was the one that had Lallal’s evil twin showing up after being killed off in the second season, and Anil was unwrapping the underwear his mother had sent him for his thirty-first birthday, when suddenly Charles said: “Eugene, you should probably check Q6-17; I’m calculating an Intruder showing up in about Q-14.”

  “How’d you know?” I said in surprise, slipping my goggles on. But he was right; there was an Intruder, tumbling end over end in a halo of fire and snow, way above the plane of the ecliptic but square in Q-14.

  “Don’t you extend your projections beyond the planet’s ecliptic?” said Charles.

  Myron and I looked at each other. We never projected out that far; what was the point? There was always time to spot an Intruder before it came in range.

  “You don’t have to work that hard, dude,” I said. “Fifty degrees above and below is all we have to bother with. The scanning programs catch the rest.” But I sent out the alert and we could hear the Shooters cheering, even though the War Room was clear at the other end of the Platform. As far out as the Intruder was, the Shark was able to send out a missile. We didn’t see the hit—there wouldn’t be one for two weeks at least, and I’d have to keep monitoring the Intruder and now the missile too, just to be sure the trajectories remained matched up—but the Shooters began to stamp and roar the Bonus Song.

  Myron sniffed.

  “Typical,” he said. “We do all the work, they push one bloody button, and they’re the heroes.”

  “You know, it doesn’t have to be this way,” said Charles.

  “It’s not like we can go on strike,” said Anil sullenly. “We’re independent contractors. There’s a penalty for quitti
ng.”

  “You don’t have to quit,” said Charles. “You can show Areco you can do even more. We can be Plotters and Shooters.”

  Anil and Myron looked horrified. You’d have thought he’d suggested we all turn homo or something. I was shocked myself. I had to explain about tests proving that things functioned most smoothly when every man kept to his assigned task.

  “Don’t Areco think we can multitask?” he asked me. “They’re a corporation like any other, aren’t they? They must want to save money. All we have to do is show them we can do both jobs. The Shooters get a nice redundancy package; we get the Gun Platform all to ourselves. Life is good.”

  “Only one problem with your little plan, Mr. Genius,” said Myron. “I can’t shoot. I don’t have the reflexes a Shooter does. That’s why I’m a Plotter.”

  “But you could learn to shoot,” said Charles.

  “I’ll repeat this slowly so you get it,” said Myron, exasperated. “I don’t have the reflexes. And neither do you. How many times have we been tested, our whole lives? Aptitude tests, allergy tests, brain scans, DNA mapping? Areco knows exactly what we are and what we can and can’t do. I’m a Plotter. You’re just fooling yourself if you think you aren’t.”

  Charles didn’t say anything in reply. He just looked at each of us in turn, pretty disgusted I guess, and then he turned back to his console and focused on his work.

  That wasn’t the end of it, though. When he was off his shift, instead of hanging out in the Cockpit, did he join in the discussions of graphic novels or what was hot on holo that week? Not Charles. He’d retire to a corner in the Forecastle with a buke and he’d game. And not just any game: targeting simulations. You never saw a guy with such icy focus. Sometimes he’d tinker with a couple of projects he’d ordered. I assumed they were models.

  It was like the rest of us weren’t even there. We had to respect him as a Plotter; for one thing, he turned out to have an uncanny knack for spotting Intruders, days before any of the rest of us detected them, and he was brilliant at predicting their trajectories too. But there was something distant about the guy that kept him from fitting in. Myron and Anil had dismissed him as a crank anyway, and a couple of the guys on B Shift actively disliked him, after he spouted off to them the way he did to us. They were sure he was going to do something, sooner or later, that would only end up making it worse for all of us.