ASIM_issue_54

by ed. Simon Petrie

  Ignorance won. No-one picked it.

  Footnotes:

  1 Action figures alone for Pestilence were calculated to turn a profit between US$40 to 60 million, given he had never been heard using the same accent twice, much less seen in the same outfit. (back)

  2 In the aftermath of these statements, Democracy herself noted that although she yes, alright, did resent the characterisation of being both abused and ancient, she bore no ill will, and she would be definitely participating. Work was work. (back)

  3 That shoulder movement contributed to a social networking war that never quite left the series. There were those who wailed about the slight to Death, there were those who pointed out that Death was not noted to carry any item in the Original Reference and the scythe was associated with the Unnamed later, and those who believed Death was unfairly slighted/honoured/present by implication. (back)

  4 It was noted that this looked odd on a muscle shirt, but it didn’t stop Versace having a line of them out six days after this episode. (back)

  5 They were: ‘journey’, ‘need’, ‘time to shine’, ‘different person’, ‘rest of my life’, or any reference to the contestants or judges as ‘family’. (back)

  6 Including, but not limited to, the true purpose of the platypus, the best depth in water to eat chocolate, a novella about the sex life of Pope Gregory XV written entirely as a palindrome, and four hundred thousand words on what it feels like to be a trouser cuff (this last essay was swiftly banned in Belarus). (back)

  7 In trackpants, out of breath, with damp and soapy-smelling hair, and very very visibly sans under-garments. (back)

  8 Yes, every. (back)

  On Carbon Wings

  …Sarah Frost

  An impossible black butterfly floats over the wasteland outside my ship. It changes direction with a flurry of beating wings, shedding white sparks into the airless waste. I blink. My eyes take a hundred years to close. The butterfly dances over craters on wings blacker than the void.

  Somewhere a million miles away, a red light is blinking.

  * * *

  I placed my tray on the little extruded table just inside the door to Feng’s Cafeteria. There are only two places to eat out on Siberia Station: the canteen, where the only virtue of the food is in the calories; and Feng’s, where the food is greasy, pricey, and good. I bit into a batter-fried slab of protein drenched in fish flavor, and calculated the best angle from which to attack my pile of waffle-cut fried potatoes.

  “May I sit here?”

  I looked up into Drake’s smiling face, his kid-blue eyes and artificially perfect teeth set into a face that looked like a lump of pink clay. I knew his rough voice well enough to tell when he was being friendly. I waved him into the seat opposite me.

  He sat. A moment later, Feng’s daughter glided over with Drake’s order: fried tofu in noodles with green flecks that were supposed to be onions. (Potatoes, station hydroponics could do. Onions, for some reason, were another story.) Feng’s daughter—Ami, I reminded myself—set Drake’s tray in front of him, then shot me a look that punched through my skull and made the back of my head burn.

  When she was gone, I leaned forward and said, “What was that?”

  Drake laughed. “She’s just mad because you stole her boyfriend.”

  “I did what with who?”

  “The party two nights ago, down in Organics? Everyone’s saying you slept with Arens.”

  “Merciful God, give me some credit.”

  Drake looked up, a mouthful of noodles balanced on his chopsticks. “So you didn’t sleep with him?”

  “No!”

  “Well, everyone says you did.”

  “Everyone’s wrong. I think I’d remember something like that.” I shuddered visibly, hoping he’d realize it wasn’t a compliment.

  “Maybe you were drunk?” Drake offered.

  “I was too broke to get that drunk,” I said.

  “Was?” Drake said. He leaned forward. “You strike it rich without leaving the station?”

  I let myself smile. “I’ve got a contract with ASIE. I’m going to Ketzal.”

  He frowned, and lifted the places where his eyebrows would be.

  * * *

  I open my eyes. The butterfly is gone, but for a second I think I can hear its wings beating, like glass chimes.

  Then I see the red light of my ship’s master alarm, blinking.

  I find my hands tucked against my chest. They look like alien things, a pair of white spiders pinned between my body and my ship’s controls. They move when I ask them to, which is a relief. I find the rest of my body in working order and chase the memories of what happened before I blacked out. Before the butterfly. The screen in front of me shows nothing but a planetoid’s lifeless surface. I shake my head. A hallucination, that’s all. I awaken the ship’s instruments and query them about the alarm.

  * * *

  “You don’t have to prove yourself to anyone,” Arens said. He was standing between me and the locker. A round man, like someone had taken a miner and wrapped him in fat in preparation for the frier. He wore a ginger goatee and shaved his head because he was going bald—and that was the truth, no matter what stories he made up when he thought women might be listening. I stopped, and stared up at him, one hand on my hip, one hand on the wheeled tote I’d been dragging.

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “What you signed up for! The Ketzal run? Damn it, Mira, you don’t have to do that. I have a cousin. He’s going to Bao’s Moon next week. He needs a pilot.”

  “Rent was due this week. And I’ve done Bao’s. The money’s crap.”

  “I could have covered you! Mira, come on. What are you doing, taking the Ketzal run? It’s a damned star graveyard! I’ve done that run, and …”

  “I haven’t.”

  “So?”

  I glared at him. “It matters. You know it does. You think I don’t hear you guys talking?”

  “Mira …”

  “Three months ago, when that dirt rat Haru got back from the Ketzal? Remember that? ‘You’re a real spacer now, kid!’ He didn’t see straight for a week, what with all the booze you guys poured into him.”

  “You want us to throw you a party?”

  “No.” I seethed. “Shut up. Go away. I’m done talking to you.”

  “Fine. I warned you. But you know better, don’t you? You’ll come back here empty, and you’ll know I was right.”

  I started to drag my tote around him.

  “If you come back,” he said.

  * * *

  My computer informs me that there has been an explosion in the cargo hold. The master alarm keeps pulling my attention away from the other readouts, so I shut it off. My suit is in a compartment behind me. My guts clench, and the air feels thin. The computer tells me that I’m imagining things. My ship, The Glass Cat, is spaceworthy. For now.

  Error codes pour across my screen. Containment has been breached in the cargo hold. I take a long, deep breath, and ask the computer for shipwide radiation levels.

  The cabin is green. I sigh, and thank God for His mercy. The main access corridor is yellow, with a little cross floating beside it. Dangerous, and trending higher.

  The cargo hold is off the scale. A deathshead icon blinks at me.

  I have some time. First I need to figure out where the hell I am. I tell the computer to get a fix on the brightest stars, see if any of their spectra look familiar. Then I return to the forward viewscreen.

  The Glass Cat sits on a planetoid big enough to be round but not big enough to be more than a number on the charts. The horizon curves visibly in the distance. Silvery supernova remnants hang in the sky like cobwebs. I’m still in the Ketzal, then; I only glance at the readouts to confirm it. I don’t know if I landed my ship before I blacked out, or if The Cat’s autopilot got me down. Either way, I have bigger problems now.

  Life support checks out, and none of the bulkheads show anything but superficial damage. That�
�s good, very good. If the drives are working, I’m probably going home. Even if the insystem rockets are fried, I could still risk the stardrive. It’s not the safest thing, especially not here, but it’s better than the other option.

  Space is big. The odds that someone will find me are essentially nil. I’m not interested in a slow death by stranding when there’s a chance that my engines might not explode and kill me. Besides, I still think I can salvage my cargo.

  My cargo. Two things make this run a killer: the cargo and the destination. The Ketzal is a star graveyard, full of supernova remnants and mean little neutron stars. My cargo hold is full—by mass, not volume—of the most exotic materials in the universe. Condensate. Degenerate matter. Starstuff flung into the void by the death throes of supergiants that burned hot and died young. It’s unsafe, expensive, and essential to modern industry. My bread and butter, or so I hope.

  Nothing you’d want to share a bunk with, though. I check the containment field holding my deadly cargo in check. One of the readouts is orange, indicating a 90% integrity failure. A hair further, and I wouldn’t have a ship anymore.

  * * *

  The Glass Cat was mine, every wire and bolt of her, earned while I was working journeyman’s runs out to long-period comets on a converted junk scour. A rented junk scour. Merciful God, that was hell, but I was too young to know it. Back then, I thought anything was better than the life my parents had made. They were scientists, first generation spacers. Achingly poor. I became a miner because miners sometimes get paid.

  The Glass Cat waited for me, her nose snugged up against Siberia Station’s docking ring. I punched my code into the dockside doors and let the machine swallow my card, wincing mentally as it deducted its fees. The station’s great doors undogged, and I heaved them open. The Glass Cat accepted my code and opened its doors for me in turn.

  I caught a rung of the ladder up to The Cat’s cockpit. With a practised lunge I grabbed hold of the G-railing and pulled myself up. The Cat’s cockpit was pristine: soft peach-colored foam flooring thoughtfully glued down everywhere I might need a floor, black-and-silver access panels with their standardized labels in bright colors, and my beautiful chair. I ran my hand across the back of the headrest, then settled in. The chair sensed my weight and molded itself to my body. The console took a cue from the chair and lit up, raising the preflight buttons and offering them to my hands.

  “Hey, you,” I said to my ship. I began my prelaunch checklist. An icon flashed, indicating a query from Station Control. I touched it, expecting a standard automated request. Instead, I heard a man’s voice.

  “Glass Cat Primary, this is Control. We have a request for your presence at Control Primary.”

  “Control, this is the The Glass Cat. I thought I already had clearance.”

  “Ah, no, Glass Cat. Have your primary present himself at Control Primary within the hour.”

  “I will,” I said. “The Glass Cat out.” Then I switched off the comm. “Screw you too, Control.”

  * * *

  I set the radiation scrubbers throughout the ship as high as they will go. Better safe than irradiated, and there is a good chance I’ll be going aft to check on my cargo. Best to give the little machines time to work their magic. I grit my teeth, and call up the telltales on my stardrive. If that’s down, I’m doomed.

  The computer answers me as fast as breathing. (With all the mining robots stowed and inactive, it has cycles to spare.) It brings up the readings from my ship’s Hawking generator, and I let out the breath I’ve been holding. The generator is ticking away quietly, all systems green.

  The Glass Cat’s heart is still beating. Aside from the radiation—and I have to laugh at that, aside from the radiation, indeed—environmentals all check out. The telescope and communications array are intact, and my computer’s self-diagnostics show no faults, for whatever that’s worth. The red lights in cargo containment glare at me.

  I query the propulsion subsystems. Everything looks fine. There are no lights, no fault warnings, and I begin to close the screen. Then I stop. I had left the Hawking generator’s telltales open for my own peace of mind. I can hear it ticking steadily in time to the surging energies it contains. Those generators never quite go cold. There is always a stream of particles bubbling up through the folds of crenelated reality inside them. Mass and energy. It has to go somewhere.

  The exhaust ports show zero throughput. None. I shiver, my hand hovering over the trigger for the diagnostics. There are things I can fix, even out here in the void, and things I can’t. I wonder for a moment if I really want to know. I could take my chances, throttle up the engines, and see what happens.

  I still can’t remember the explosion that put me here.

  I let my hands fall back onto the controls. I query the computer for a diagnostic scan of the exhaust ports, and turn back to the radiation monitors. The corridor shows green, the cargo hold yellow. That won’t last long. I unstrap myself from the chair and kick off lightly. My head swims. There is one diagnostic I’ve forgotten: Mine. Never mind. I don’t need the computer to tell me that I feel like I’ve been stepped on. My hands don’t look like aliens welded to the ends of my arms anymore, which I take as a good sign.

  I glide over to the pod that holds my EVA suit and hit the release. The door slides halfway open, then sticks. I swear, and smack it with the palm of my hand until it opens. Goddamn sliding doors came with the ship. They are unreliable, unsafe, and expensive to replace. A mere repair won’t hold past two landings at best. I shrug on my suit and cycle the door to the corridor before I have time to get scared.

  Radiation makes me itch. It’s purely psychosomatic, but it bothers me anyway. I do a visual check of the scrubbers. They’re fresh, which means that they can soak plenty of grays before I’ll need to replace them. Their readouts are all green, so far. I start the timer on my suit and step into the cargo hold.

  The hold is the biggest open space on my ship. My deadly, expensive cargo hangs in the middle of that space: a ball of shining coralline starstuff, hideous blue light pulsing from its constantly-shifting poles. Tethers reach out to hold the anvil-shaped containment pads just close enough to keep the exotic matter at bay. I push off and check each mooring in turn, trying to stay as far away from the shimmering mass of frozen starstuff as I can. Not that it makes any difference. If the scrubbers fail me, I’m already dead. Inside the suit, my skin crawls.

  I make my way around to the back of the cargo hold, and now I see what generated the warning lights. A section of the hold’s wall is marred by rainbow arcs of corroded metal. A containment pad floats loose inside a tangle of tether cables. I put a hand against the wall to kill my forward momentum, and just float for a moment, doing a gut-level assessment of the damage. It’s bad, very bad. A quick count tells me that one of the pads is completely gone, probably annihilated when it fell into the starstuff. Not good, but … I run the numbers in my head.

  No. Short two pads, I won’t make it home. It’s a miracle I’ve made it here. In theory, I could rig the remaining pads to hold it, but in reality the least bit of shimmy in the lines would throw the load off-balance and probably blow up my ship. I consider the tangled mess of cable and conduit in front of me, then I thumb open the control pad on my wrist and tell the computer to send me a robot.

  * * *

  I couldn’t think of a reason why Control Primary would want to see me.

  It was damned rude to pull a miner off her ship so close to launch. I started to get nervous. Was there some reg I’d overlooked in my excitement? I was always meticulous—I always wanted to be meticulous, I corrected myself. Everyone slips. With me, though, there was always someone like Arens looking over my shoulder, saying “Did you check that? Are you sure? Why don’t you let me.” And if I slip up? Then it’s “Look, she doesn’t know what she’s doing, she’s incompetent, she’s dangerous.”

  I worked my way down out of the docking ring to where Siberia Station spins up gravity for the homes and offi
ces of its crew. The halls were crowded with men. I did see the occasional woman, somebody’s wife walking calmly ahead of her minder. They lifted the official ban years ago, but slogans like “You’ll fry your eggs!” take a while to leach out of the imagination.

  My mother went to space despite the scaremongering about cosmic rays, and I don’t dare show less nerve. Other spacers think that makes me stupid. A second-generation spacer woman must be damaged, chromosomally or mentally or both, right? I caught myself glaring at the people in the halls, and forced myself to stop. Don’t pick fights. I’ll be damned if I’m giving up the Ketzal now.

  I’m as good as anyone in the void, and if Control Primary has forgotten that, I’ll just have to remind him.

  * * *

  I glance at the clever machine hanging beside me in the cargo hold. Its gross manipulators blur, splicing the ragged ends of cables together. Points of white light glitter as it makes pinprick welds in the control tether. It keeps its fine manipulators folded away within the silver lozenge of its body. Those are strictly for particle work.

  My robots are my livelihood, as much as The Glass Cat itself. They are the best semiautonomous matter-handlers money can buy, hardened against the worst deep space can throw at them, and more versatile than some lovers I’ve had. They resemble insystem asteroid-mining drones the way my ship resembles a solid rocket lifter.

  I turn back to the containment pad, looking for another way around the fried logic pathways. I don’t trust these repairs to a machine that lacks an oh-shit reflex. I want to rub my nose, run my hand through my hair. I want out of the damned hold, out of this damned suit.