by Larry Niven
He paused and bobbed gently above the Icaran surface, tethered by a light handhold on a piece of rock. He turned and looked back in the direction he’d come. There was a hell hound coming for him from just beyond the horizon. He couldn’t outrun it much longer. Why not greet the inevitable face-on?
Santiago de la Cruz drifted into a sitting position inches above the surface and crossed his legs, assuming the Lotus position. He began to breathe in a slow, regular rhythm as he calmed his heartbeat and composed his thoughts. The problem, he thought, is rotation. And oxygen. If this damn piece of rock didn’t rotate, I’d be able to hide in its shadow indefinitely. And if I had more oxygen … But there was nothing he could do about either.
Up ahead in the expanding aurora of the Sun, de la Cruz noticed a brilliant point of light, as if a morning star shined in the heavens to presage the Sun. It grew larger, however, as the slow rotation of Icarus brought him nearer. Suddenly, de la Cruz realized what it was. It was the Prometheus! It was still there, where the collision with Icarus had left it, drifting now about two miles above the surface as the asteroid rotated beneath it. While Icarus turned constantly toward the Sun, the wrecked Prometheus hovered in stationary position, orbiting the Sun parallel with Icarus. De la Cruz’s heart leapt within him as he thrust aside thoughts of stoic acceptance. “There’s my shade!” he thought. “And oxygen, too, if the tanks weren’t ruptured!” Two miles up. So close—and yet so far!
De la Cruz coiled his legs beneath him, calculated his trajectory, and kicked off from the Icaran surface as hard as he could. Arms stretched out in front of him, like a diver in a slow-motion arc, de la Cruz aimed for the derelict hulk. His leap carried him into the full blaze of the Sun. The temperature soared on the shell of his suit and harsh UV radiation flooded over him. But he spread his wings and flew. The leap to the ship seemed to take forever. “If I miss it,” he thought, “I’ll end up diving into the Sun.”
But he didn’t miss it.
Nor did the rescue ship miss his emergency beacon. De la Cruz floated in the welcome shade of the Prometheus as he waited for the ship from Earth. They’d arrest him, he thought. Maybe imprison him. It’d be the last time a human was allowed in space. It wasn’t important. What was important was that a human had gotten to the last world in the Solar System before the robots. A human had flown to Icarus at high noon—and his wings had not melted.
Santiago de la Cruz looked out into the blackness of space. Hard pinpricks of starlight punctured the dark. They’d always called to him. They’d pulled him into space and across a dozen worlds. Their harsh reality would test him no more. But it doesn’t matter, he thought. Even if unattainable—the stars still beckon.
Published in Galaxy’s Edge Issue 8
Copyright © 2014 by Eric Leif Davin. All rights reserved.
Matial
by Lou J. Berger
Matial noticed the girl was tied too tightly and loosened her bonds. She smiled thanks and rubbed her wrists where the thongs had marked them. A small fire burned nearby.
“How much longer?”
He frowned. They weren’t supposed to talk. He didn’t even know her name. Knowing her name would make her into a person. Right now, she was just another sacrifice.
He pulled back the tent flap and peered outside, looking for eavesdroppers. Nobody was nearby. The sacrificial tent was set back from the others. A ribbon of smoke curled up from the communal fire. The black canopy of the night sky arched overhead, aglitter with stars and the swirled masses of nebulae. He closed the flap, tying the thong securely.
“Maybe four hours.”
She nodded and took advantage of the loosened bonds to stretch her legs out in front of her, reaching her arms forward to touch her toes. “Will it hurt?”
Matial tried not to notice how the white doeskin rode up on her firm thighs, averting his gaze. He did this so that he wouldn’t have to look her in the eyes. So young. In the prime of her life, she was maybe fifteen years old, with the unlined face of a girl but the body of a woman. She pointed her toes and glanced up at him through a fall of raven hair, her single visible eye bright with reflected firelight. He glanced in her direction and quickly away again.
“When you cut me, will it hurt?” she asked again, curiosity in her voice.
He picked up the knife and rested it against the flat stone in his lap. He tested the edge against his thumb and frowned. He spat on the stone and scraped the knife back and forth, holding it steady, careful to keep the edge at the correct angle. He hated sacrifices. “Not if I make it sharp enough.”
“So you’ll do it? You’ll set my spirit free?”
He nodded, avoiding her direct stare. She was very curious. She was different than the others.
“If you don’t set my spirit free, does the sun not rise?”
He finally looked at her and saw calm intelligence in her eyes. She wasn’t afraid, didn’t duck her head away from him. His head whirled. She’d asked a valid question, one he’d wondered himself. The sun came up every other day of the year, why would it not come up on the Day of Planting? Was sacrificing a virgin absolutely necessary? He cleared his throat and put some anger in his voice. “The tradition must be met. You should not ask these questions.”
“Why not?” she said, refusing to look away. Her eyes bored into him. “I’m the one dying for the crops. Don’t I get some answers before you cut my throat?”
He shook his head. “I don’t cut your throat. I open your leg and collect the blood in a clay bowl.”
She looked down at her legs, still stretched in front of her. She pointed her toes again, which made her calves flex. She raised her gaze to him slowly. “Such a waste, don’t you think?” She ran her bound hands slowly down her thighs.
He tried to tear his eyes away, but couldn’t. A burning sensation formed in the pit of his stomach and his throat grew tight. He swallowed.
She noticed his discomfort and a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. “Don’t you think it’s wrong to kill for such a stupid reason?”
Matial shook his head. “Stop it! You are not supposed to speak!”
She grew angry. “I have nothing left but a few hours. You have a lifetime. Why would you let me go to my death without sharing with me why I must die?”
He had no answer. He watched her in the flickering firelight, noticing how the light illuminated her high cheekbones, danced along the edges of her raven hair, glittered in her eyes. He allowed his gaze to stray down along her torso to her legs again and marveled at their musculature, how fleet she must be when she ran. He imagined those legs never running again. He moaned softly into the tent’s thick air.
“I can pick berries, dig roots,” she said, without hope. “I can find shelter even in a rainstorm. I’m worth more alive than dead. Much more.” She looked up at him and he saw a calm strength in her eyes. Her lack of fear impressed him.
His mind raced with confusion. He loomed over her, the knife held low by his side. “Don’t be afraid.” He lowered the sharp blade until the edge rested against her bindings. He drew a deep breath. “What is your name?”
She smiled at him. “Chimalma.”
He rolled the unfamiliar name around in his mouth, then said it aloud. He slashed the thongs that bound her and she stood, tall and proud, and hugged him. Together they ran into the dawn, her small hand nestled in his, leaving his village for the last time.
Later that morning, despite the lack of a human sacrifice, the sun rose anyway.
Published in Galaxy’s Edge Issue 9
Copyright © 2014 by Lou J. Berger. All rights reserved.
Do You Remember Michael Jones?
by Nancy Kress
Carol Kincaid and her husband, whose name began with either J or K, stood across the room, drinks in hand, talking to Dave Bukowski. Dave had put on a lot of weight. Carol had lost a lot. Above their heads drooped the red-and-gold Mylar banner: WELCOME CLASS OF ’79! Tiny bits of Mylar hung from the sagging top like bird droppings sliding
down a window. I forced myself to cross the room and talk to them, because what was the point of going to your high-school reunion if you didn’t talk to anybody. Carol looked up. “Jim! How nice to see you!”
I hugged her, shook hands with Dave and either-J-or-K. Carol’s eyes were so sunken in her drawn face that they almost disappeared. She had been our prom queen. A year ago she’d been diagnosed with cancer. That was almost the last thing Maureen had told me before she left.
“Good to see you, too, Carol. How are the kids?”
“Gone. Like everybody’s kids. After they leave college, they all move to other states.”
Dave smiled. “My sister’s son moved clear to another country.”
We chatted for a while about kids, me trying not to remember the terrible conversation with Nicole when I’d told her that Maureen and I were separating. Nicole always sided with her mother, her whole life, but of course this time she had reason. Neither Carol nor Dave asked about Maureen, which told me that they’d already heard the whole sorry story. I wished I had stayed home with a glass of Lapharoaig and the last of my smuggled Havana cigars.
Dave said, “Oh, there’s that girl from my chemistry class—will you excuse me? I’m going to ask her to dance.”
“Sure,” Carol said. “Go for it.” As Dave hurried off, she shook her head and laughed. “We none of us change, do we? He couldn’t get girls to notice him in high school, and he’s still trying.”
Carol’s husband—Jack? Keith?—said, “When I went to my thirty-fifth, none of the people I wanted to see showed up. It was a major disappointment.”
“Oh, you,” Carol said, “you’d have been just as disappointed if they had. All those old nerds still wearing plaid pants and carrying calculators.”
Jude-or-Kevin laughed, and at the glance of real and deep affection that went between them, my heart suddenly hurt as if I’d been kicked in the sternum. Maureen and I had that once, but no more.
Carol said, “You know who I wanted to see here and don’t? Michael Jones. Do you remember him?”
“Yes. He was … I think he was at my wedding.”
“Really!” The sunken eyes sharpened. She had been so beautiful once, fresh as morning in a blue tulle prom gown. “Did you know that he saved my life once? Literally?”
I shook my head. Carol’s husband frowned. “Sweetheart—”
“No, Ken, I want to tell the story. I do.” She looked directly at me. “When you don’t have too much time left, the truth of things starts to really matter.”
It was said without drama or self-pity. I nodded, not sure what else to do or say.
“It was my junior year. My mother had just died. I was so depressed I’d dropped out of school. I was—well, I was contemplating suicide. You remember that I just disappeared from Honors English.”
I didn’t remember, even though Carol and I had sat behind each other in class. The things that are so pivotal to one person don’t even make a dent on another.
“I’d actually gotten hold of pills. What was I thinking? I’d have missed Ken and the kids and all the … Anyway, Michael Jones came to my house. He was bringing me my trig assignment, but instead we talked and talked. I cried for the first time about my mother. When he left, I felt so much better. The next week I went back to school. I never told him how much that meant to me—you know how easily kids get embarrassed. Then he moved to New York and I never got the chance.”
“He didn’t move to—” I started to say, but Bad-Ass DiMonti came rushing up and threw his arms around Carol.
“Babe! You look like hell!”
“Let me go, you idiot!”
He did. All through high school we called him “Bad-Ass” because he wasn’t. Inevitably he did the wrong thing, sometimes subtly wrong and sometimes so monumentally wrong that everyone was left blinking in sheer disbelief. He was our butt, our clown, our sacrifice to an ineptitude so deep that the rest of us felt competent by comparison. Bad-Ass flunked every course, although I suspected he was not stupid. Flunking so much and still knowing the smart kids gave him a weird distinction. He pissed off every girl who might have gone out with him. He let himself be bullied—no, he almost invited bullying. It was, after all, a form of attention.
“Hey, Bad-Ass,” I said, to see if he would object, finally, to the ridiculous nickname. He beamed.
Carol said, “We were just talking about Michael Jones. Do you remember him?”
“Remember him!” Bad-Ass shouted, so that several dancing couples turned around, rolled their eyes, and went back to clutching and swaying to Donna Summer. “He got me through school!”
I said, “What? I thought you weren’t allowed to graduate.”
“Well, not with you losers,” Bad-Ass said. He pulled out and lit a cigarette, despite the clear NO SMOKING signs. Still trying to be cool. Still failing. Carol moved slightly away. Bad-Ass said, “I graduated in December the next year. Michael Jones, he really let me have it. Told me I could do it if I tried, and the only reason I didn’t try was that I couldn’t equal you grinds, but so what? And anyways all of you was gone. So I got a tutor and Michael called me up every week and yelled at me some more and I graduated and that’s why Harry Parker gave me that job at the Grease ’n Go, and now I got my own body shop.”
“Good for you,” Ken said.
“’Course, Michael moved away after that, to Atlanta. Sent me a postcard once.”
Carol sagged against her husband, and instantly Kevin had his arm around her. “Tired, sweetheart?”
“A little.”
“Let’s go sit down.”
They walked off. Bad-Ass said, “I forgot she’s going toes up. Hey, I hear you split from Maureen and got yourself a little tootsie.”
“Fuck off, Bad-Ass,” I said again, and he grinned. I wish I’d called him “Rick” instead.
The reunion was depressing. I had nothing to say to these people, who had known both Maureen and me and who now, apparently, knew about the middle-aged insanity that had led to the stupid, exciting whirlwind six months with Kayla. I had never known that much sheer, lustful excitement. Now that she’d dumped me, I hoped I never would again.
I only stayed at the reunion because now my curiosity was piqued about Michael Jones. He hadn’t moved to New York or Atlanta; he’d been at my wedding. I asked several people about him, because at least it gave me a topic of conversation, “Do you remember Michael Jones?”
They all did. Everybody had a story about some way he’d changed their lives. Mostly in good ways, although Cathy Parminter curled her scarlet lip and said, “That prick. Always sticking his nose in. He told me to break up with Paul before I got preggers. I didn’t, and I did, but that still don’t mean that smug-doll Michael had any business sticking his blond head in my business.”
“Michael wasn’t blond,” I said. “Was he?”
“Sure. Looked like Robert Redford. Don’t you remember? The one that got away.” Cathy laughed, short and bitter. Her skirt was too short for a woman in her fifties, her top too tight, her hair too yellow. She glanced at my left hand and eyed me speculatively. I decided it was time to go home.
Just as I left to the strains of the Village People, the Mylar banner snapped loose at one end and fell into the bowl of non-alcoholic punch for those whose livers no longer let them drink.
* * *
At home, I looked for my high-school yearbook, but I couldn’t find it. Maybe Maureen had taken it. She wouldn’t have asked; Maureen always just did what she wanted. Our wedding day was the first time I discovered that we had a hundred guests, not the twenty I’d been told about. That we were footing the bill, not Maureen’s parents. That Maureen carried goldenrod in her “autumn bouquet,” even though I was allergic to it. I sneezed all through the ceremony. My nose ran all night.
In my study, which was where I spent most of my time since Maureen had taken all the living room furniture, I poured a glass of Scotch and lit my cigar. Bachelor freedom: smoking in the house. The Scotch smell
ed and tasted smoky, an October bonfire.
On the top shelf of the closet, behind a box of golf trophies, I found our wedding album. Picture after picture of family, some of them now dead, and friends, most of them out of touch. In nearly the last picture, a big group outside on the lawn in front of the hotel where we’d had our reception, I found Michael Jones. He stood in the back between my cousins Jared and Fred, his face half-hidden and fuzzy—had he ducked his head at the last minute? Somehow I couldn’t even tell the color of his hair. At the reunion people had said red, or black, or blond.
Maureen was clear, though, laughing in the front of the picture, her arm through mine. God, she looked happy. Her full white gown had blown partly across my leg. Her face looked as lovely as her roses.
Roses?
I squinted at the picture, and then looked back at the rest of the album. Yes, Maureen’s bouquet was white roses. No goldenrod. Nowhere was my nose running. And then I remembered: She had planned on carrying an autumn bouquet, until I told her about my allergy. That was the very morning of the wedding. She left the goldenrod and chrysanthemums and hydrangeas in the limo, tied up with their white ribbons, and instead she’d carried a few roses her cousin hastily stole from someone’s garden.
And those hundred guests—did she really spring those on me that day, or had I agreed, however reluctantly, ahead of time? Did I pay for the wedding, or did she use money left her by her grandmother? Of course, that was “our” money, too, that we could have used for something else … but why did I remember, then, that I had resented and staggered under debt for a too-lavish wedding?
I turned back to the picture of Michael Jones, whom everybody remembered and no one had seen since. Was he really there, or was he—oh, I don’t know, it sounds so vague—the idea of Michael Jones? Was that all he had ever been, an idea, sprung from somewhere deep in people’s best selves and—