Up and Coming: Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

by Anthology

  “And I six,” said the other man.

  “Will this do?” asked MacAndrew, taking out a gold sovereign from his own pocket and flipping it on to the table where it rattled to a stop.

  ***

  “So we mustn’t talk about it, ever?” said Smithers, after they had confirmed that the men and their machine were indeed gone from within the tomb, although he and MacAndrew had watched the exterior closely after the two Germans entered.

  The time travelers had warned the policemen not to open the door until five minutes had passed after they heard the humming noise intensify. Thereafter all trace of radiation, whatever that was, would be gone and the interior of the tomb as if the visitors had never been. MacAndrew and Smithers had done as they were asked. Afterwards Smithers’ flickering lantern revealed within the sepulcher only silent coffins in dark rows of burial niches. The Germans and their sphere were gone.

  “You heard the man,” replied MacAndrew with a smile. “More to the point, Smithers, when I have disposed of these King Offa pennies, and you may be assured that I have far more skill in such work than did our unfortunate friend the conductor of the omnibus, you will not wish to explain publicly how you came by your share of the proceeds—fifty sovereigns.”

  “That’s very generous, Sergeant, I must say. But isn’t it a little dishonest?”

  “It would be dishonest if we were committing or concealing a crime,” said MacAndrew, tapping the side of his nose, “but if you can see a crime here you have keener eyes than mine, Smithers. There is no hoard, there’s been no theft; it isn’t treasure trove, since we did not find the coins, we bought them for a fair price; we shall even be able to return the greatcoats, having discovered them stuffed under a bush, as it were. I doubt the owners will wish to ask questions. No, Smithers, there’s no crime here.”

  “Still and all, it’s sad to think of taking such a fantastic secret to our graves,” Smithers mused.

  MacAndrew’s nose twitched and his mouth quirked into a wry smile. “I believe those penny dreadfuls of yours pay a fee to people who write stories for them. There’s nothing to stop you submitting a story to one of them, is there? No-one supposes what they publish is the truth!”

  John Gregory Hancock

  http://www.johngregoryhancock.com

  The Antares Cigar Shoppe(Short story)

  by John Gregory Hancock

  Originally published in The Immortality Chronicles by Samuel Peralta, Windrift Books

  GASTON SAT IN HIS USUAL SPOT on the bench just inside the cigar shoppe. The shoppe itself was wedged into a half-circle of retail buildings that curved in a graceful arc from the traveler hostels, and ultimately emptied onto a broad collection of ticket turnstiles leading to the east. Ornately fashioned gates of metal (really sculptures by any sane definition) opened to the rocket pads. Light-duty sentinels stood at the kiosks, relaxed because there was really no threat to deter. Hadn’t been, for as long as anyone could remember.

  The village where Gaston had found himself catered to the interstellar trade. Travelers consisted of families, business agents, and the occasional religious pilgrim. The number of transient persons far outnumbered the locals, though the ratio fluctuated.

  But even local people were themselves transient, making or losing their fortunes and relocating somewhere else down the line.

  Universal credits passed from hand to hand. Products and services that a traveler had forgotten, and wanted, were offered for sale. There were plenty of taverns for people who actually wanted to forget the things they had left behind, or to celebrate what awaited them at new destinations.

  There was a back door to the cigar shoppe, but it emptied onto nothing but sand and dirt. Gaston faced the entrance instead, and calculated the total number of dust motes as they were revealed by a shaft of orange light.

  The number was without significance. He discarded the information.

  Mr. Arsenault, who acted as owner, crossed in front of Gaston and pressed a small black button at the entrance. An ionizer expelled the dust particles through a semi-permeable membrane. The security barrier automatically rolled into the top frame of the store like an antique roll-top desk would have, on Earth, long ago.

  The Antares Cigar Shoppe was open for business.

  Gaston hummed to himself and leaned back to watch Mr. Arsenault perform the myriad tiny chores one does when readying a shoppe for customers. These were mostly silent, arcane and needlessly busy things. Gaston caught his eye and politely nodded. Mr. Arsenault smiled shyly before returning to work.

  Gaston always stationed himself at the bench because he enjoyed chatting with travelers, if they felt like it. You never knew who would. In case no one stopped by, he enjoyed chatting just with Mr. Arsenault.

  This morning’s disconnected parade along the arc was heavier than usual. Some were in a dreadful hurry, having forgotten to set alarms or having slept through wake-up calls pre-arranged at their hostels.

  Others comfortably savored their time, looking at scenery, absorbing memories. Dawdling.

  Gaston considered the travelers to be his scenery.

  “Do you think we’ll see many sales?” Mr. Arsenault asked, nervously sitting down on the bench next to Gaston, their legs accidentally touching. They both looked out onto the walkway instead of at each other.

  Gaston reflected, “Well, there are eighteen scheduled launches this cycle. Factoring in various seating counts dependent on manufacturer, there is a potential for six to seven thousand passengers. Of those…”

  Mr. Arsenault looked at Gaston and sighed. “I was just shooting the breeze, Gaston. You don’t have to actually predict anything.”

  Gaston’s smile dropped fractionally.

  Mr. Arsenault rubbed his large hands against his knees and hesitated as if about to say something. Gaston waited, but was ungifted with whatever treasure was percolating inside the owner’s head.

  Over the roofs of the shoppes across the arc peeked an assortment of nosecones and fuselages, standing straight at attention.

  “Those two look like M-class,” Mr. Arsenault began.

  “Actually M-Theta class…” Gaston interrupted, then drifted off when he caught the withering look of Mr. Arsenault out of the corner of his viz-screen.

  Not for the first time, Gaston reminded himself to listen more, and stop ending conversations before they began. “But it’s true there is little difference to the naked eye,” he offered as consolation.

  Mr. Arsenault responded by pushing against his knees and levering himself off the bench. He walked to the counter deeper inside the shoppe.

  He opened his private humidor underneath the counter and selected a slim perfecto, then added a small selection of other cigars to his breast pocket. He returned to stand next to the bench with a cutter and a tiny yet clever lighter.

  Gaston gazed out onto the moving street. For a moment, he saw a river of blood flowing deep, as high as people’s calves.

  No. Not yet.

  He closed his eyes and mentally turned a virtual switch in his head to shut off the image.

  When he opened them again, he saw the orange light of Antares bathing everything in apricot. Even the exhaust streams of coiled smoke that pushed rockets away from the encumbering planet were stained in color. He relaxed.

  The shadows shone a brilliant blue against the light, unlike the grey shadows of ancient Earth. It reminded Gaston of the Maxfield Parrish painting Night Is Fled. He repeatedly viewed the art nouveau image in his databanks. It was one of his favorites. No one living could have seen it so they could discuss its beauty together. That should have made him sad; instead he just felt empty.

  Today was launch optimal: no capricious gusts, no predicted rainstorms, and limitless visibility. The complex gravitational interrelationship between red supergiant Antares and its companion blue dwarf Antares B made Curie Prime an ideal planet for a rocket port. It was one of many places in the galaxy where multiple wormholes could remain coherent.

  A g
aunt young man in an expensive suit stood still on the walkway, allowing it to move him past the shoppes as he gawked at the assorted items for sale. Mr. Arsenault waved his unlit cigar at him, holding it between his fingers as if it were already lit and he were already enjoying it.

  “Say, is that a Delphian Ultra?” the man asked as he stepped off. The walkway continued on without him.

  “No, it’s a Badeaux. But the aroma is far superior to a Delphian, I promise you,” Mr. Arsenault answered, using his fingers to pantomime waving nonexistent smoke to his nostrils.

  Gaston had noted the precise moment the man had made his decision to step off the walkway. He observed a slight change in expression, the tightening of irises and accelerated breathing. The number of neurons involved in creating one microsecond of differential choice was staggering, he observed. A human brain employed countless temporary synaptic configurations when making any decision. The afterimages of the resulting patterns remained as vestigial ghosts in the cerebral cortex.

  “Great morning for a rocket trip,” Gaston offered amiably, waving a metal-clad hand with articulated fingers.

  The man paused at the edge of the shoppe and stared at Gaston. Mr. Arsenault recovered the incident quickly by extending the cigar to him.

  “Do you know much about the Badeaux? No? Let me explain the source of its magnificent aroma. Harvested at the precise peak of maturity, the leaves are delicately aged over steam produced from slowly roasting silkworms. The essence of their secretions in death adds a tantalizing lift to the palate, which mixes deliciously with the tang of exotic Rigellian tobacco leaves,” Mr. Arsenault said, imposing himself between the man and Gaston, redirecting the man’s attention back to the product.

  The owner continued to extol the virtues of the cigar with a hypnotic rhythm, like a seductive siren calling to a lost sailor. He finally paused, and the customer nearly fell forward, unaware he had been incrementally leaning in closer and closer, drifting along the stream of finely crafted words.

  Gaston had experienced this spiel before, but he never tired of it. There was always a variation, a shading of a word here, an accent on a syllable there. He treasured hearing it.

  Still, he discarded it from his memory for being too repetitious.

  Mr. Arsenault used a small brass guillotine to remove the cap end of the perfecto. He activated a lighter and sensuously rolled the foot of the cigar over the tiny flame, lightly heating the tobacco inside. The man was mesmerized by the process.

  The owner handed it gently to the customer as if it were a holy religious totem. The young man seemed afraid to take it for fear of dropping it.

  “No, go ahead and place it in your mouth. That’s it. Don’t worry, it’s just a free sample for a new customer.”

  Mr. Arsenault placed the lighter just beyond the end of the cigar and demonstrated how to draw in the flame, in case the man had no idea of the proper way to smoke a fine cigar.

  Gaston was briefly fascinated by how the flame reshaped itself in the random patterns of the man’s breath. But it was close enough to previous observations that he decided to discard the image.

  The customer closed his eyes in pleasure as the flavor of the smoke acquainted itself with his palate.

  Then he pointed at the bench where Gaston sat. “Where did you get that?” he asked.

  Like dogs and small children will, Gaston looked at the end of the man’s finger, instead of where he was pointing.

  Mr. Arsenault shrugged and said apologetically, “He came with the store. When I started the business, he was already here. I haven’t the heart or the ability to remove him.” Then he laughed lightly. “But weren’t we just talking about cigars?” He glanced out of the corner of his eye to make sure Gaston was not upset.

  Gaston had heard that chestnut of deflection so many times, he was no longer actually offended. Instead, he pretended not to notice and patted the space next to him on the bench. “Here’s a comfortable place to sit and enjoy your cigar, Mr…?”

  “Montreuil. Jean Montreuil.” He hesitated briefly, then, with a nod to the store owner, he gingerly sat down next to Gaston. The owner strolled back to the counter, knowing that a customer enjoying a cigar was as good a billboard as one could have.

  “Are you traveling today?” Gaston asked politely. He made sure to rotate in his most genial expression. He resisted the urge to lean in closer.

  “Yes, I’m scheduled to arrive on Tau Ceti this evening. Or their evening. There is an arrangement of marriage waiting for me on the second planet.” His expression turned to equal parts excitement and dread.

  “Oh? Are you Neo-shintolic, then?” Gaston chose one of a handful of current religions that practiced arranged marriages.

  “I personally am not very religious at all. But my bride-to-be’s family is orthodox, and rather insistent upon custom.”

  Montreuil drew on the cigar and staged a minor celebration as he managed to puff a wobbling ring. It spun slowly until the integrity of the circle distorted and it dissipated in the air.

  “Remarkable. Then you are graciously honoring her religion, as a gesture of political goodwill?” Gaston asked, hoping that this was a new cultural variant.

  “Political?” Mr. Montreuil’s eyebrows drew together as he posed the question to himself. After another exhalation of fragrant smoke, he answered. “Depends on how you define political. The dowry is sinfully large. The number of marriageable men on Tau Ceti is low. Some sort of mining mishap, or asteroid strike, I’ve been led to believe. My future father-in-law owns one of the more profitable mines,” he said, being very transparent as to what the marriage would mean to his own fortunes as the eventual inheritor of the mine.

  Gaston compared that information to actual data. The shortage of men at Montreuil’s destination was exaggerated. The daughter was likely Gabrielle Trunduel, whose father was the owner of Trunduel Enterprises. Her image was markedly, almost painfully plain, judging by accepted human standards, and her father had not been completely honest with Mr. Montreuil. Instead, he had withheld information to achieve a desired outcome. An old strategy, but a new permutation, taking advantage of an interstellar knowledge deficit. Gaston decided to flag it and keep an eye on it.

  Montreuil glanced at his chronometer and reluctantly got up, taking a few more rushed draws before he extinguished the cigar in the provided collector. He did arrange to carry a large box of the special cigars as a gift for his future father-in-law.

  As he was leaving, Gaston stopped him. “You know, Mr. Montreuil…”

  “Yes?”

  “Wanting to be loved is not a crime.”

  “Meaning?” The young man canted his hip and stared at Gaston.

  “Meaning, you will meet all sorts of people there. What they are is often not their fault. Pay attention instead towho they are. All life is precious. Let your first instinct be to show kindness.”

  The man screwed up his face to retort something angry, but the meaning of the message filtered through. He nodded in assent and stepped back onto the walkway, strolling quickly to add speed.

  First checkmark of the day.

  The owner opened the collector to retrieve the discarded cigar and proceeded to finish the remainder. No sense letting it going to waste.

  He rubbed his hands nervously. “Why did you pick this bench, my store?” Mr. Arsenault wondered aloud. Gaston felt that that was just a small piece of the question he had really wanted to ask earlier, but had been afraid to. “Wouldn’t you meet more people in a restaurant at the rocket hub itself?” His face was impassive, but his eyes glimmered as he awaited the answer.

  “Are you wishing me to move on?” Gaston asked.

  “No, no, that’s not it at all.” The owner waved his arms in frustration.

  “Mr. Arsenault, this location, this very store, this precise bench. It’s all the best sort of invitation to talk, to observe. A beautiful and relaxed pause in an otherwise hurried day,” Gaston explained.

  Only partially relieved, t
he owner agreed. “True. One should never rush a good cigar.”

  “Precisely.”

  * * *

  Lunchtime. Or what passed for it in a place with a rocket port where travelers operated on circadian rhythms separated not just by time zones, but galactic neighborhoods. The 12:18 rocket to the Andromeda wormhole blasted off on time, rumbling the ground.

  Gaston observed its gradual gain on escape velocity, the greased easing as it surpassed it, and the distant thunk it made as it slipped into the corresponding opening in space-time. There was a series of portals in synchronous orbit around the planet. Each had its own specific flavor of thunk.

  Average people performed acts of great bravery, or foolhardiness, traveling in modes which stretched the boundaries of their understanding of the laws of physics. By any normal logic, wormholes shouldn’t work at all. That didn’t stop them.

  A rush of passengers had just disembarked from an arriving rocket. One piece of the crowd, a family, paused to borrow part of the bench and allow their little girl a rest for her stubby legs. Walking, even on the treadway, appeared to be a chore for her labored lungs. The mother and father stood close by with another child, an adolescent boy. The girl appeared roughly eight Earth standard revolutions old. It was difficult to gauge exactly, because Gaston recognized the telltale signs of Down syndrome.

  She climbed cheerfully up next to Gaston with no preamble at all, and stared directly at him for a long time, inspecting his mirrored visor, his metal limbs. She laughed, and her grin was an amazingly beautiful thing. Gaston knew already he was going to keep this memory.

  “Who’re you?” she asked with a slight lisp. She did not say, What are you?, which he appreciated.

  He rotated projections to put on his most kindly face. “Gaston,” he replied. “And who are you?”

  “Chantal,” she answered boldly, acting as if her family were not really there to rescue her at any moment from the strange thing at the other end of the bench.