Fantasy & Science Fiction - JanFeb 2017

by Spilogale Inc.

  Maya looked skeptical. "Really? The entire planet is taking sides and you don't know where you stand?"

  "I'm not being evasive. I'm undecided."

  He told her about a protest he'd witnessed near his office. In the middle of the workday, four daredevils had sneaked onto the roof of a Tenser bank. They rappelled down the face of the building and on it painted , the glyph that had come to symbolize independence. They stayed up there for an hour, lecturing a flock of media drones and thereby broadcasting their manifesto to the world. When they finally descended and were about to be arrested, the crowd mobbed the Stability cops and helped them escape.

  "Why ?" Maya asked.

  He was surprised she didn't know.

  "I've heard several stories," he said. "All relating to Vado."

  They glanced up. Zephyr was tidally locked to Vado, one side always facing the big planet. Rockville had been built around the subplanetary point, so Vado was directly overhead. It was a busy sky. In addition to the distant sun they could see the fuzzy cloud bands of giant Vado, two big inner moons, some small fry, sparkles of debris—and slashing through it all, the ghostly line of edge-on rings.

  Franden said, "In astrology, is the symbol for Vado. Why does mean independence? Some say it's been rotated ninety degrees to show that fate will point us in a different direction if Tensen relinquishes its claim to this system."

  "Makes sense."

  "Another version is that our history will be divided into two parts: before and after independence."

  She nodded. "By the line through the middle."

  He knew a third explanation, but it was vulgar, so he decided not to say it. In any event, Maya suddenly became less exuberant and walked away. He hesitated, then followed.

  She had drawn out his own views without revealing hers. Had he said something that offended her? Maybe she sensed his admiration of the bank protest. Eccentric or not, she was Upheld. If Tensen's decision led to revolution, she was in the cross hairs. How would she defend herself?

  They came to a display of plants with heart-shaped leaves. In each leaf, a burst of purple and black struggled with a red border. Like gaping flesh wounds. The sickroom scent of their pollen made his eyes water.

  The plants were hideous, but since he was supposed to appreciate them, Franden dutifully said, "Those are striking." He had to breathe through his mouth.

  Maya scowled. "I despise them. I hate everything in Crestwood Gardens."

  He was startled by her outburst. "How come?"

  "These freaks were created on Tensen. Brighter sun, shorter day/night cycle than Zephyr. These ridiculous constructs wouldn't survive here without special care. During our long day, servos have to shade them so they don't burn. During our long night, servos have to erect lights to keep them alive. It takes a lot of effort and power to fake the day/night cycle they require. A disgusting waste of resources."

  Her anger was real. He'd touched a nerve. "Are you a gardener?" he hazarded.

  She laughed. "No. But I like plants. Useful plants, not these pretentious vascular monsters. Small plants. Small enough that millions would fit in the palm of your hand." His puzzled expression appeared to amuse her. "Come, I'll show you."

  Maya led him to one of the ornamental pools that dotted the grounds. At the edge, she knelt. He thought she was going to pick one of the spiky orange blossoms that floated on the surface. Instead, Maya took off some bracelets, rolled up her sleeve, plunged her arm down into the murk.

  On the other side of the pool, five people in a Proud Chain affinity watched in disbelief. Franden cringed. He didn't want to be seen with a nutter. He wished he were invisible.

  Muttering to herself, Maya felt around and pulled up a rock covered with slimy bright-green tendrils. Beaming, she stood and shoved the dripping mess at his face.

  " This is your favorite plant?" Franden grimaced. He pretended the people across the pool were statues.

  "Actually, I prefer smaller, but this pretty baby forms colonies big enough to see with the naked eye. Each thread is filamentous colonial algae. Now here's a useful plant. It produces oxygen for fish. It provides food for zooplankton, shelter for insects and snails. It's perfectly adapted to the light that reaches Zephyr, and it looks after itself. You keep up the good work, dear!" She pretended to kiss the stone, then carefully placed it back in the water. She wiped her arm with a red cloth that looked like a dock worker's bandana.

  Franden had been treating her as "dotty old relative to be humored." The burst of ecological insight gave him pause.

  "Maya, by any chance are you a savo?"

  She shrugged coquettishly.

  "A biologist, even?"

  "You're getting warmer."

  "A marine biologist?"

  "Well done, Major. I work for Ocean. Phytoplankton Division."

  A marine biologist, indeed. At the highest level. In the pioneer era, Zephyr had been thawed using methane-producing cryophiles. After the Flood, the atmosphere was adjusted and maintained with phytoplankton. Some species were tweaked to make oxygen, some to release CO2 and other greenhouse gases. Ocean was an elite organization, employing only a few thousand people. It was a tiny workforce compared to the hordes who served in the Preservation Authority, but their skillful management of the seas produced much of the atmosphere. Franden's company had been stationed near a marine biology base once. Those snotty bastards never socialized. They considered Preservation Authority workers little better than janitors.

  He told her this.

  "Well, you are janitors, compared to us," she said without rancor. "Do you know how the ratio of heliophilic and umbrophilic species fluctuates as Zephyr orbits Vado?"

  "Not a clue."

  "See?"

  Franden was embarrassed he'd misread her. As they walked on, he tried to get her talking about her job. Where was she when Pico erupted?

  She deflected that. "Only bores talk shop at a party."

  "Well, what would you rather discuss?"

  "Urban legends," she declared, with a mischievous grin. "People say Rockville is the best place on Zephyr to have sex. Since Vado is directly overhead, its gravity lifts you up, so you weigh less. Have you experienced that, Major?"

  He lowered his guess about her age. Was she flirting? Two could play that game.

  "You know, I have noticed that. The phenomenon is very subtle, though—I want to do more experiments."

  "Do you like experimenting, Major?"

  "I am tireless in the pursuit of scientific knowledge. I can pursue scientific knowledge all night long."

  "What's your favorite experimental protocol?"

  "Depends on the subject."

  "That sounds subjective."

  "You're right. I should conduct my next experiment with the assistance of a trained savo. Someone who wants to rigorously and repeatedly test a hypothesis."

  "Urban legend." But she brushed against him.

  They came around a corner to a little glade where a quartet was trying to play. The low-stratum musicians were being taunted by a Hard Stream affinity that was sabotaging their performance. One girl was near tears. Grimly she plucked at her byabistrum, keeping her head down, struggling to complete the piece.

  In the streets of Rockville, Franden sometimes encountered buskers playing amusingly complicated instruments. Buskers might act goofy, but they didn't take shit. Franden had seen a guy put down his instrument and fistfight a heckler who stepped on his sound. These musicians looked like effete, easily intimidated conservatory students. They played on, desperately trying to placate their tormenters with a soothing classical piece. It wasn't working.

  One of the Upheld grinned and waved, inviting Franden and Maya to join the fun.

  Franden had wanted to learn Upheld manners, but this was too much.

  He circled around the affinity, got between them and the musicians. "Knock it off," he said.

  They gaped at him, startled by the interruption.

  From the front, Franden could see how th
e Upheld were baiting the musicians. Standing side by side, they were playing an imago, divided into segments and displayed widescreen across all their wrappers. It was a clip of Stability cops breaking up a pro-independence demonstration at the Diversity. Earnest-looking students were paralyzed by neural nets, toppled by slip-spray. The clip had been edited; each time a cop hit a student, toonish blood gushed from eyes, ears, mouth.

  Franden confronted the man in the middle of the line, pushed him back. Under his palms, he felt the man's wrapper crumple as its circuit mesh broke. Franden shoved him again, at a different place on his chest, doing more damage to his techne. "Beat it. Let them do their job." He hit something hard—so hard it hurt his knuckles—but it must have been the projector node because the provocative imago dissolved into a snowstorm of random pixels.

  The Upheld outnumbered him. They exchanged glances, clenched their fists.

  Maya came bustling up. "Colonel, please let them go!" she shouted. "They don't know any better. Don't arrest them!"

  With operable oMos they could have pinged him. Lacking that information, all they saw was a uniform. An angry authority figure. Grumbling and cursing, they retreated. At a safe distance, they turned and flashed obscene glyphs on their wrappers. But they left.

  Franden's heart was pounding. "Thanks for backing me up," he said to Maya.

  "My pleasure. There's no excuse for that sort of rudeness. Are you all right, dear?" she said to the byabistrum player.

  The girl nodded and pulled herself together. "Do you have a request?" She sniffled, wiping her eyes.

  Franden asked for a pop hit. The musicians belted it out with gusto. He and Maya applauded, then moved on.

  The fight had broken the mood. Franden was thinking about how to regain momentum when up ahead, four hard-looking men and women came into view, spotted them, and advanced. Oh-oh , he thought. The affinity must have reported him. Was he going to be arrested?

  The four closed in. No visible weapons, but Franden had the impression all were armed. The outfits were unremarkable. Conservative business suits. But the fabric looked stiff. Although it was styled to resemble civilian clothing, the material was impact-resistant skarmor.

  Maya frowned at the four. "I told you to wait outside."

  Their leader scrutinized Franden. "Madame, are you all right?"

  Madame ? He raised his guess about her age.

  Maya slid her arm through Franden's.

  "I'm fine, Barr. The Colonel has been taking good care of me."

  Barr glared at Franden as if it were his fault the boss was being silly. "Madame, Crestwood canceled the alert, but I still don't feel it's secure here. You should go. I had your car brought up to the gate."

  "Oh, very well. I'll be along in a bit."

  Barr cocked his head, pleading.

  "When I'm ready!"

  He bowed. His team split up. Two in front, two trailing, they all set off along the path.

  Franden said, "You have bodyguards?"

  "Sadly, in these troubled times, one must take precautions."

  "The domain logo on their collars is Cold Arrow."

  "Is there a problem with that?"

  Each Upheld domain controlled a key sector of Zephyr's economy. Cold Arrow was energy. It built the geothermal power plants that tapped Zephyr's volcanoes. Mined thorium in the Talus, the asteroid field closer to the sun. Constructed the reactors that burned the thorium. Built and controlled all the conversion techne between source and consumer: heat exchangers, evaporators, supercapacitors, thermogalvanic batteries. Cold Arrow was the power structure, literally.

  "You said you're a marine biologist."

  "Not everyone goes into the family business. Heat plumbing?" She wrinkled her nose. "Plankton are fun ."

  Maya produced her beautiful oMo. It worked now; the security lockdown must have been lifted. She pinged Franden and coolly examined his profile.

  Resigned, he braced for judgment. They'd had a good time, outside the social framework. Now he felt like a specimen on a glass slide, under the scrutiny of a superior intelligence.

  Maya nodded.

  "I'm hosting a soiree in two days. I'd like you to attend. Some of my friends are afraid to go into the city—perhaps you can tell them what's happening." She tapped the screen. "Here's my contact information."

  He bowed and went back to high register to show respect. "I shall bend every bone in your direction."

  "Do not wear that uniform. My staff will instruct you how to dress."

  "Words of wisdom are always welcome."

  "Try to pick a side by then, Mr. Franden. Ambivalence is boring." A challenging smile, and she strode off within her perimeter of guards.

  When she was out of sight, Franden checked his oMo. Her contact info! And an invite to an Upheld soiree? A high honor indeed.

  And an even tougher social gauntlet to run. Fortunately he had two days to prepare. If Duvant coached him, maybe he could pull it off and not disgrace himself.

  He would have called it a day, but one task remained. Reluctantly, he looked up the location of the media center and started in that direction.

  His speech would not go out live, of course. He had been warned that his performance would be scrutinized by a PR specialist, two lawyers, and a qi master before it was released. Given the edgy mood in Rockville, the family was taking no chances.

  What would Duvant do?

  Ditch the prepared speech, of course. March into the recording studio, look the handlers in the eye, and say whatever he wanted.

  Yes. Why not deliver a sincere personal tribute? The man deserved it. If the family spiked the speech, that was their call. But he would have completed his mission. In a manner the Great Slacker himself would approve of.

  Smiling, Franden walked with a lighter step.

  The exotic vegetation of Crestwood Gardens looked different now. No. It looked exactly as garish as before. But Maya's attitude allowed him to admit what he really thought.

  He'd calculated once that during his hitch in the Preservation Authority, he had personally planted over two million plants. Humble black-leaf working plants, not gaudy ornamentals. Useful plants that turned volcanic ash into meadows that kept everyone on Zephyr breathing. What had the creepers from Tensen accomplished? Nothing. Unless you counted entertainment for Upholes.

  He came to a hillside covered with swan-necked plants topped by dainty white eruptions of lacy fringe. Pale flowers, stalks, leaves—they must be reflecting almost every photon, so how did they survive? With artificial help, of course. They were the epitome of fragile monsters requiring time and energy to survive.

  Franden contemplated the haughty flowers.

  No one else was in sight.

  The drones had flown back to their cote.

  He charged uphill through the white plants. Snapping stems, crumpling flowers. He trotted straight down and up again, exposing soil to make a dark vertical line. Then he walked in a wide circle, going around and around, stomping the plants flat. Their sap was a ghastly white pus that smelled of phosphorus and stained his boots. He persevered until he created a dark ⦶ in the midst of the whiteness.

  Franden shot a clip to upload to the cloud anonymously. His hands were shaking so hard he had to steady the oMo on the back of a bench.

  His ⦶ wasn't as pretty as the one on the bank, but for mooning the Upheld, it would do.

  * * *

  On the Problem of Replacement Children: Prevention, Coping, and Other Practical Strategies

  By Debbie Urbanski | 5496 words

  When Debbie Urbanski's son was diagnosed with autism, she became keenly aware of the many ways that she and other parents respond to that news. Being a writer, she could also see the connections to old, familiar myths.

  Case Study 64221

  AMBER Y. SAID, "THAT ISN'T our child anymore upstairs."

  "What do you mean, that isn't our child?" Clark Y. asked. "Are you delirious? Do you have the fever or something? That is our child. Who else would
that be in our child's bed?"

  "I don't know who he is but he isn't ours. When I read to him, he sat on the bed picking at the edges of the blanket. He's never done that before. He always sits with me on the glider when I'm reading."

  "So he's too big for the glider now," Clark said. "Anyway, a lot of kids start acting different in the summer."

  "And his hair is changing color. I thought it was all that time spent outside in the sun, but after I tucked him in, I kept an eye on him, and his hair changed color, it lightened, while I was in the room. And the smell of his room—it smells like dirt now. Like he's been burrowing."

  "Okay. So his room smells like dirt." Not knowing what to do next, Clark suggested the situation might look better in the morning and recommended they go upstairs to try and sleep.

  The following morning, after the hair of the boy who slept in their son's bed had turned completely silver and he began to speak an unrecognizable language, Clark admitted that Amber was right, this was no longer their child, and he asked to know more about what happened the previous night.

  It had been Amber's turn to watch over their son, and she had been watching over him, closely, until she remembered a bowl of cold cherries in the fridge. A sudden irrational longing for these cherries overtook her. It felt like something external had placed that longing in her and there was nothing she could do about it, other than to rush downstairs and grab a handful. She was gone for no more than two minutes. When she returned, she saw the candle had been blown out.

  "Let me guess, you didn't relight the candle right away?" Clark couldn't help asking this in an accusatory tone, for every parent these days knows a child should not be left alone during a full moon, but if a child has to be left alone, at the very least the candle in the child's bedroom must not go out. Clark was correct: Amber had not re-lit the candle right away. Instead she ate the cherries, threw the pits into the garbage bin in the corner, and then she walked over to their child's bed to check on him. That was when she knew.