Analog Science Fiction and Fact - Aprli 2014

by Penny Publications

  "You're voting, because, Toby, you're not an administrator of Cicada Corp's systems.

  "You're a shareholder."

  He never got used to how noisy it was at night. The crickets brr'd at one frequency, other bugs at others, and night-birds called, this species a high-note, that one a low. The wind in the trees roared intermittently but deafened everything when it did. Daytime was even worse; then, cicadas boomed, monkeys and birds exchanged insults in the treetops. The frequency-spread of animal calls widened until every band that could take a signal was filled. Any given morning, sitting listening to this vast symphony, was a lesson in just how impoverished the Earth had been when he'd been growing up. Only on a world with a fully recovered ecosystem, or a terraformed lock-step world wintering over, could you hear the world as it had sounded before the advent of man.

  Tonight the familiar constellations were out. Thisbe had no moon, and on cloudless nights like this it could get pretty cold. Toby was used to that by now, just as he was used to walking in the dark while Orpheus prowled ahead. Sometimes they'd scare up tomorrow's dinner. Sometimes they encountered the sleepy, slow-moving harvester and repair bots that were the only part of Thisbe's industrial system awake right now. He did his best to avoid such encounters, because you never knew whether their industrial internet had been hacked by Evayne's people. Any of those boxy grain-tenders or f lood-watch spiders could be spies for the enemy.

  There was no sign that any had been in this area, though. He moved cautiously but confidently through tall grass and between young trees. As he went he counted the low blocky shapes of the houses lining what had been, and someday would again be, a street.

  He hadn't known that the bots shrink-wrapped the houses after everyone was asleep. All that neon-pink plastic was torn away and recycled by the time the humans inside awoke. Right now, any tears or punctures in the material would be instantly visible to the monitors that overflew the houses on a weekly basis. If anything were seen, investigation and repair bots would be sent out right away. That meant Toby had to be careful when he broke into these places.

  "Seven... and eight." He whistled for Orpheus, then moved around the abstracted house-shape, searching for an overhang or tree-shadowed spot where he could cut through. "Over here!" Orpheus bounded into view as Toby was rummaging in his backpack for his shears. He'd found an indent beneath what was probably a dormer window, where a cut wouldn't be visible from the air. Orpheus watched with his usual attentive curiosity as Toby stabbed at the hard plastic again and again, until finally the blade of the shears went through.

  It took a while to cut a hole big enough for Orpheus to slither in; though it was completely dark inside, the denner moved quickly between the taut pink material and the walls of the house, and called back when he'd found a path for Toby to worm through. That was the claustrophobic part; he always had one or two moments when he was sure he'd become stuck. He'd be found, years from now, mummified against the side of the house like a squashed cockroach. Tonight was okay: he reached a window in a couple of minutes, and with a little prying, got the old-fashioned thing open. Orpheus flowed inside; Toby got in by falling noisily.

  After cursing and dusting himself off, he finally lit his windup flashlight and took a look around. The silence in here was disturbing, especially after the cacophony of the night. The air was stale but breathable. The rooms on the main floor were empty, except for a few big heavy crates that were also plastic-wrapped. Lifeless bots were chained together in places. He barely glanced at them. As soon as he found the stairs to the house's lower core, he put on his glasses and went down.

  The hibernation chamber was a concrete bunker with a vaultlike door. The edges of that door were sealed with rubber caulking, which he peeled away with a knife. While he did that, he pinged the chamber's systems through the glasses.

  After the third ping, a wireframe diagram of the vault's interior blossomed in his glasses' display. It showed three cicada beds. All were occupied; all stasis indicators were nominal.

  He read the names. The first he didn't know; the second, he frowned at. He sighed with relief when he saw the third.

  With a command through his McGonigal account, he ordered this bed to wake its occupant. Then he slid down the wall to sit on the floor. Orpheus came up, and Toby scrunched his ears and wobbled his head playfully.

  "Okay, Orph. This is home for a couple days. Might as well make ourselves comfortable."

  He got up again, leaving the backpack by the door, and went to see if he could unwrap a couch to sleep on.

  "Am I the first one up? Where is everybody?" Corva stumbled into the living room, wearing a long ratty housecoat, her hair a tangled nest.

  She froze when she saw Toby.

  He'd cleared a couch and was sitting with Orpheus in the light of his flashlight. Now that she'd seen them, Toby let Orpheus go and the denner ran to her. Corva knelt, opening her arms to him. Wrecks was still asleep in her bed.

  "They were watching us," he said. The words just hung in the air between them; her expression didn't change.

  "Watching us and listening. You didn't seriously think we could talk about anything at the lake without the government and your brother's friends hearing every word?"

  Corva stood up and went to the blank window. "We're off frequency. You woke me up... Halen's still downstairs. Are you going to wake him up too?"

  "That's up to you." He sat forward, clasping his hands between his knees. "I'm sorry, Corva. I couldn't tell you what I was planning. I had to make it seem like I was going along with them, and I knew that Halen, at least, would be watching you to see if I was faking. You couldn't know that I was. I did it because I-I was afraid they'd neuroshackle me and turn me into their puppet if I refused. Or worse— do that to you to force my compliance."

  She sucked in a quick breath. "Halen would never—"

  "Are you sure about that? You know I got a message from Shy at turn's end. He said he'd tried to get to you, he was going to ask you to winter over with him instead of your family. He couldn't get near you, but he did talk to Halen. You brother said he'd pass the message along. Did he?"

  She started to protest, but the words didn't seem to be coming. The certain fury that had been on her face a moment ago drained away. She turned away.

  "Neither of us knows Halen." He glared at her; he wasn't going to relent now. "Time stole the brother you knew, just like it stole mine. Who can we trust? Certainly not those scheming, spoiled brats I apparently have to call my family. If I can't trust my own brother and sister not to try and kill me, why should I trust yours? Why should you, when he's years away from the person you knew? And anyway, there's the government. They claim to be all democratic and rights-respecting, but what do I know? You said it yourself when we met. I don't even know what I don't know."

  She traced her fingers down the blank glass of the window. "What have you done?"

  "Nothing. Not yet. I'm going to take care of Evayne, but I'm going to do it my way, not theirs. Not as the... the messiah of the lock-steps, or whatever they're trying to call me. Not as some god returned from an eternal sleep.

  "I'll do it as her brother."

  She turned to look at him now, but with less suspicion in her eyes. "How?"

  "I know her." He stood up and came to her hesitantly. She didn't back away. Encouraged, he said, "I read the histories and I saw the strategies and tactics she's used. It's exactly how she played Consensus, and how she was with Peter and me. The thing is, nobody's ever provoked her in the right way. But I know how. I know how to push her buttons."

  "Why?" Corva shook her head. "Why make her mad? Won't she just retaliate?"

  "That's the thing. We're not going to give her anything to retaliate against. She'll hate that."

  "But she's threatened the whole population!"

  Toby snorted. "Bluff. She's never followed through on a threat like that. If you check the histories, you'll see. She's got some sense of justice, though she tries to hide it. She only strikes
against those who are directly responsible for stuff. And in this case, that's just me."

  "Just you? What are you—are you alone?"

  "Except for a few defense force pickets, you and I are the only people in the world who're awake right now. Maybe the only people in the whole lockstep. Unless you tell me you want me to wake Halen now. If you do, I will."

  Now she did back away. "But why did you even wake me? After everything—"

  "Same reason I'll wake your brother if you tell me to. Because I trust you. You're the only one I trust."

  "I don't understand."

  "Yeah, I know. But this'll probably help." He held out his glasses. Corva looked at them dubiously.

  "What's in there?"

  "The recording I made of the talk I had with Evayne when she first got here. I think you should see it... if you want to understand what it means to be a McGonigal."

  Corva was staring at the glasses as if they were some sort of poisonous snake. Then, reluctantly, she took them from Toby and put them on.

  She wore white this time. The resemblance to Mom was still uncanny, and Toby's stomach knotted the instant he saw her, but he'd been determined to not let his anxiety show. "Hey, sis. Welcome to Thisbe. I guess you're coming in to land?"

  It was a warm evening and he was sitting under a giant oak tree on the edge of the capital city. Thisbe's internet was awake, so it had been easy for Toby to route the call from his glasses to a transmitter halfway around the planet. Before he'd donned the glasses to make the call, he'd watched as one after another, reentry trails from his sister's ships had scored bright lines across the dimming sky.

  She nodded cautiously. "Hello."

  Toby sighed. "You're thinking that I'm surely recording this, and that you'd better mind what you say in case I spread it all over the galaxy. Does that mean we can't have a real conversation?"

  She half-smiled. "We wouldn't have that problem if you'd just meet me face to face."

  "Not going to happen."

  She shrugged dismissively. "It doesn't matter. Anything we said to each other would be taken as a Sign. I've been playing this game a lot longer than you have. I know what would happen if you broadcast this conversation. Half the lockstep would believe it, half would think it's a fake—and that you're a fake. Can you tell me that you know which half would get to you first?"

  For all her brave words, Evayne didn't look as confident as she had in her first message to Thisbe. She must have accessed the planet's lockstep system, and seen that he'd reset the frequency of all the McGonigal cicada beds on the planet. It was now twelve years until Thisbe was due to awake.

  "Peter and I are so sorry about the whole Lowdown thing," she said now. "We didn't think it was you—why would we? There's been so many pretenders over the years..."

  The knot in his stomach tightened even more. He wanted to believe her so much, but—"Ammond and Persea had my ship. If that wasn't enough, all they had to do to prove that it was me was ask me to command any piece of Cicada Corp equipment. I've wondered why they waited until we went to Little Auriga to do it. It must be because somebody ordered them not to try it. Somebody... didn't want them to know." He shook his head. "That would have been Peter, or you. And I'm sure you talked about it."

  "But they tried to kidnap you—"

  "They ran because Peter ordered me killed!" The knot was unraveling and in its place he felt a rushing fury that made him careless of what he said now. "And you went along with it just as casually as if this were still Consensus and it was just another move!"

  She shook her head quickly. "No, no, he didn't tell me—"

  "Evayne. I know you knew."

  He hadn't known, not for sure, but her silence now told him the truth. She didn't reply, but she didn't look away either. He remembered that def iance from when they were kids. He'd always known how to wear it down—but would the old ways work now?

  "Why?" Damnit, his voice had cracked saying that. He bit his lip and sat tensely, scared of saying even one more word.

  She crossed her arms and—a small triumph for him—broke eye contact with him. "You said it yourself," she murmured. "We're not playing a game here."

  "What do you mean?"

  "You think you can just reset Thisbe's frequency, and there'll be no consequences?" She shook her head and laughed bitterly. "That wouldn't work even in Consensus! The ripples would spread. Other worlds would be emboldened, they'd flout the lockstep rules too. Toby, you don't know how close it all is to breaking up as it is!"

  "You called me Toby," he said bitterly. "That's something, I guess."

  "You think you can just come back? If you did, you'd always be a pawn. I'm sorry I set it up that way—we really did think you were dead. It is what it is: if the world finds out you're back."

  "Evie! You tried to kill me before I'd done anything!"

  She opened her mouth, closed it. Toby hurried on:

  "The solution to this whole 'Toby the messiah' thing was obvious all along. All you had to do was bring me in and declare me as your son. Raised in secret in another lockstep, so you could say you only had me like, a month ago. So I'm a McGonigal, well, it's still a big deal, but I'm not the McGonigal. Why the Hell didn't you do that?"

  She started to answer, but he cut her off. "Why not just come to me? Take me home? Didn't you know that all I want to do is come home?" His voice was cracking again. He was on the edge of tears.

  "Toby." He was startled at the huskiness in her own voice. "Toby, do you know why I never had kids?"

  He shook his head. "You used to talk about having a family when you grew up."

  "I would have, too, but we got too busy, Peter and I. First it was running Sedna with Mom. Then, when her lockstep scheme was so successful, it was all about keeping that going. It wasn't easy. People flooded in from everywhere—at least that's how it seemed to us, sleeping for thirty years at a time. Whole cities would spring up overnight, new colonies of people speaking new languages, even biologically different! Posthuman, or barely human. We had to wrangle it all, find a way to make them fit, or the whole thing would collapse."

  She laughed dryly. "There were already legends about us. People were starry-eyed when they met Peter and me. They stammered, practically wet themselves. And they always— always —asked about you."

  "Why?"

  "'Cause you'd disappeared mysteriously, and Mom had spent so much time and energy trying to find you. Understand, by that time, she'd been searching for centuries, real-time. Word got around. You were the big secret at the heart of the lockstep. And it started to get out of control."

  "So you decided to steer it."

  "Toby, I was way too late." Her expression was fierce and unrepentant. "By the time I knew what was happening, I couldn't be seen in public with any man other than Peter, without the rumors flying that it was you, secretly returned. There were no men who didn't treat me like some unattainable goddess anyway, except for the original Sedna settlers. They all had similar problems, and what, was I going to marry one of them? They were all like uncles... it was never an option."

  "But you could have rewritten the legends," he insisted. "Could have said I'd been found, dead, or something..." But she was shaking her head again.

  "By the time I realized I had to act, there were these cults. Sects, which had developed their own stories. There was one that prophesied that the great sign of your return was going to be me announcing that you'd been found dead! And there was another one...

  "Toby, there's a whole branch of the religion that believe I'm going to announce I've got a son, and I'll reveal him and he'll be already grown-up. And I'll say—I'll say—" There were tears in her eyes now. "I'll say I only just had him but hid him away in another lockstep where he's grown up. But I'll be lying, because it'll really be you. You, returned!

  "Don't you get it?" She was leaning forward now, very close to the camera. He felt he could almost reach out and touch her, and the stricken look on her face made him want to hug her to him.
"You can never be seen with me, except as a prisoner—an official impostor. Any hint that you're not will be taken by someone as proof that you're the Emperor of Time returned to end the locksteps. Toby, you can't return. You can't abdicate. You can't keep a low profile, you can't adopt an alias and try to disappear. It's all been anticipated, it's all expected and watched for, and any hint of this or that prophecy coming true will spark revolutions and pogroms. Peter and I aren't just the most famous people in the local universe. We're the most watched, most spied-upon. You can't just come home.

  "You can't be here at all."

  The idea echoed around in his mind for long seconds: trapped, we're both trapped in this, but then... something about Evayne's expression sparked a memory. He could picture her so clearly standing with her hands behind her back, solemnly swearing to him that she hadn't taken his favorite hall flyer. Yeah, he remembered that look, and he'd seen it other times too. Toby laughed.

  "I almost fell for that. You've gotten good."

  Her eyes widened. "Wh-what—"

  "You're trying to weasel out of something, just like that last time when you and Peter were planning to wipe out my colony on Jaspex—remember, in Consensus? You gave me the same kind of bullshit speech that time." He scrunched up his mouth and tapped his chin. "Now what would it be that you're avoiding this time...?

  "Mom." He could see from her expression that he'd hit the mark. "I'm not Toby the messiah until I go to Destrier and wake her up. All this stuff about pogroms and revolutions— that's all theoretical, isn't it? There's something else going on here."

  Evayne glared at him. "Oh yes? Well, tell me you weren't on your way to Destrier next."

  She had him with that one. He ducked his head. "With nobody around to tell me the rules of the game, what else would I do? You stacked the deck against me, Evie. I want to know why."

  Now this older woman, who looked so much like some long-lost aunt, ducked her own head and said, with real sadness, "It's far too late for that, Toby. I wish we'd had a chance to finish growing up together, I really do. But that chance is gone. This has to be goodbye." She made a throat-cutting gesture and her image vanished.