by C J Paget
Picking up the tube, he ran exploring fingers along its smooth surface. No apertures, no buttons, no protrusions of any kind. He threw the tube up to his shoulder, and sighted down its dull–black length. Without warning, the tube jumped in his hands, and began twisting into the shape of a rifle. When completed, the long, slim, elegant weapon in his arms looked more grown than manufactured. Perfectly balanced and proportioned! It feels as if it’s been made for me.
Slinging the rifle over his shoulder, and taking care to stay in the shadow of the rocks, he began working his way toward the now thinning dust cloud thrown up by the bombs. As he moved forward he could see that small caves pitted the mesa’s sides, and that a slope of dark red rubble surrounded its base.
A short time later he came across a water–carved gully. Broad, dry and ancient, it skirted the base of the mesa, heading in the general direction of the remaining wisps of bomb–raised dust. He frowned. A concealed approach? Now, isn’t that convenient! He crouched for a moment, considering his options, and then, seeing no better alternative, slid down the side of the gully and made his way forward, moving from cover to cover. A jumble of rocks and potholes, the gully made for rough going. Despite the cold, he was bathed in sweat by the time he reached the site where the bombs had landed.
He peered over the gully’s edge. Other than a half dozen overlapping craters, still smoking and too hot to approach, there was nothing to be seen. Circling the craters he saw what, in another time and place, might have been a goat trail.
He climbed out of the gully, intent on following the trail. And then, from somewhere high on the slope of broken rock rising behind him, someone whistled. He spun round, staring up the slope, trying to spot the source of the sound. There was a bit of an overhang where the slope ended and the unpromising face of the mesa began. But, other than that, there was no obvious place of concealment. Nowhere to hide. But if they wanted me dead I’d be toes up already. Might as well find out what they want.
Pausing from time to time to catch his breath, he clawed his way up the incline. The slope was steep, slippery and devoid of cover. Twice he lost his balance, but the rucksack miraculously shifted to compensate, allowing him to continue the climb. His legs became rubbery. Breathing became torture. He came to a panting halt.
And then a voice—harsh, guttural, and heart stoppingly close—called out. “Tralmat, Mar!”
He jerked his head up, and froze. Perhaps ten feet above him jutted the overhang first seen from below. He fought back the impulse to topple over backward and, hugging the rocky slope with both arms, peered about him. Where the hell did that voice come from? And how the hell do I know that ‘Tralmat, mar!’ means ‘Make haste, fool?’ My first acquired memory?
Seeing nothing but broken stone ahead he took a deep breath, and resumed climbing. Feet slipping, lungs aching, vision blurring, head down, he didn’t see the embrasure until strong hands grabbed and dragged him through it.
He lay gasping on the floor of a natural cave, staring up at the parka–clad figures towering over him. Three faces—bearded, scarred, and tattooed—grinned back. The largest of the three, a giant of a man with a wild mane of black hair, and yellow, cat–like eyes, extended a massive hand, missing two fingers, and hauled him to his feet, grumbling, “You took your own sweet time getting here, Trig.”
To his surprise, he found the strength to meet the giant’s grip, and jerked his head toward the still smoking bomb–craters, clearly visible through the embrasure, “I met with some distractions along the way.”
At this his new companions roared with laughter, throwing up their hawser–like arms and mimicking the sound of bombs exploding. The giant relinquished his grip on Dennis’ hand, and, while the other two relieved Dennis of the rucksack, produced a metal flask from a side pocket of his parka, which he pushed into Dennis’s hands commanding, “Drink deep, Trig. You did well today.”
Dennis took an immediately regretted swig from the flask, and, coughing and spluttering, handed it back. All three men once again roared with laughter, showing strong, yellow teeth.
The giant gave him a staggering slap on the back. “That, Northerner, is Rakasis, the drink of the South. Better than food! Better than sex! Better even than fighting!”
The others grinned and shouted agreement, as they commenced removing an assortment of unrecognizable and yet strangely familiar objects from his rucksack.
Intrigued, Dennis stood watching as they began fitting the objects together. That thing they’re assembling. I know that it’s a military issue, tight–beam circuit–scrambler. I smuggled the damn thing down from orbit! And I know that the embrasure overlooks Starport Crom. Additional memories flooded over him. Wave after wave of them. Oppression! Rebellion! Atrocity! Retribution! He swung round to face the giant, now knowing him to be Saird Manticack, leader of the rising in the southern hemisphere. “The bombs. How did the Masters know I’d be coming?”
Saird gave a massive shouldered shrug. “They have their traitors. We have ours.” He produced a palmful of coin–sized transmitter disks from his belt pouch. “Once activated, these little devils replicate and broadcast your bio profile. The Masters wanted you. So we gave them you. Thousands of you. Scattered all across the southern massif, and all screaming for attention. The fools have been bombing these disks all week.”
“And just now, I didn’t get bombed because?”
Saird grinned. “Because a similar device in your backpack masks your bio profile and sends out a masking signal.”
“A masking signal?”
“Yes, to the Masters instrumentation you would have been a slow moving sand–lizard. Nothing more.”
Dennis walked over to the embrasure, rested his elbows on the sill, and gazed out at the jagged horizon. He could just make out the distance–blurred outlines of what he immediately recognized as Starport Crom. Soon the assault craft carrying the first wave of the Masters’ Legionnaires would drop down from orbit, intent on carnage. Beside him, the scrambler, now mounted on a squat tripod, began powering up, emitting, as it did so a deep lion–like purr. The smell of ozone filled the cave.
His cell phone chirped. Dragging the phone from one of his parka’s many side pockets, he stood staring at it, marveling at the suddenly acquired foreignness of the thing. He stepped away from the embrasure and cautiously raised the phone to his ear. “Hello?”
“Hello, Dennis. Harrison here. Our meeting’s about to start…” At that moment the scrambler discharged, sending an invisible, circuit–frying pulse shimmering toward the first of the six assault craft, fast dropping towards the Starport. Saird and the others clapped meaty hands together and roared in triumph as the targeted craft shuddered, stalled, and then plummeted into the gully, exploding moments later in a retina–searing flash. A thunderous, rolling explosion followed.
The scrambler purred again, recharging. Dennis joined in the cheer that followed its second strike. The remaining assault craft now broke off their attack, and, with figurative tails tucked between figurative legs, went streaking off toward the horizon. The big men broke into a victory dance, pounding the floor of the cave with booted feet, slapping together gloved hands, and roaring out a song of rebellion and defiance. Someone gave Dennis a slap on the back that sent him sprawling, and the phone flying.
Scrambling around amid the stamping boots, he retrieved the phone, and rolled to the relative safety of the wall. “You still there, Harrison?”
“Yes, I’m still here! Where the hell are you?”
Dennis glanced around the cave. “I have no idea where I am, or who I am, for that matter, but I do know that I won’t be coming back.” And with that he snapped the phone shut, and flicked it back under the boots of his new comrades.
THINKING IS THE WORST WAY TO TRAVEL
by Ira Nayman
Space. It’s big. It’s really big. Really, really big. Vast, in fact. Vastly big. You may think Mister Jenkins in 1223 is big, but, compared to space, he’s nothing. Feel free to remind him
of this the next time he complains about how hard he is finding it to stay on his diet. Imagine the biggest thing you can imagine. Really work that imagination muscle, really put some sweat into your imagining. Got it?
Space is bigger. Space is bigger by an amount you can’t imagine, so put your imagination away before you hurt somebody. It’s stupid big, eh? (That was for Canadian readers. If you’re not Canadian, find somebody from that country to translate for you.)
Humanity has created many means to see beyond the end of space. Infrared sensors. The Hubble Telescope. Magic mushrooms. Good approaches, all, yet all with their deficiencies. Especially the Hubble Telescope.
This is the sort of thing object psychologist Antonio Van der Whall thinks of when he’s on hold.
“Officer Platz,” a voice finally said on the other end of the line. It was a world-weary voice, which was odd because Officer Platz was only twenty-nine and had only been on the force for three years. “Who am I speaking with?”
“Antonio Van der Whall,” Van der Whall introduced himself.
“How may I help you, sir?” Officer Platz asked.
“I’d like you to tell me everything you have on the Ferblungett suicide.”
Jefferson Ferblungett was an astrophysicist who, when he wasn’t astrophysicisting all over the place, taught astronomy at York University. A couple of days earlier, he had glued a knife to the top of a toy train engine. He then set the engine in motion down a track that started in his den and ended in his kitchen, where the knife cut a cord. Cutting the cord allowed a trap door to open, which allowed a ball to wind down a ramp and turn on a Bunsen burner. The flame from the Bunsen burner cut a piece of string that allowed a balloon to rise, turning on a gas oven. When enough gas had been released, it was ignited by the flame from the Bunsen burner, blowing up several rooms in the house.
The suicide was clearly one of Ferblungett’s typical spur-of-the-moment decisions.
“Are you related to the late professor?” Officer Platz asked.
“Only in the sense that if you trace our lineage back far enough, all human beings are related to each other,” Van der Whall admitted.
“I see. Were you a student of the late professor?” The tone of her voice suggested that she had been bored of this conversation before it had even started.
“Yes, but he gave me a C+ in his Introductory Astronomy course, so I wouldn’t say we were close.” In fact, Van der Whall had enjoyed the course, and probably would have done very well but for his fundamental disagreement with Ferblungett on the nature of assignment deadlines in a relativistic universe.
“Okay, um, I’m sorry, sir,” Officer Platz apologized in name only, “but what is your interest in Mister Ferblungett’s death?”
It had been thirteen years since the Singularity, in which digital computing power essentially took over the universe, making every object, at every level, conscious. Van der Whall had been studying matter for almost as long, first as a graduate student, then as a professional object psychologist. Ferblungett’s death happened just as he had hit a research plateau: he had written papers on all of the subjects that originally interested him, and he was searching around for something new. In short, he was bored. But, you can’t say that to a police officer investigating a suspicious death—
“I’m bored!” Van der Whall blurted. Apparently, you can say that to a police officer investigating a suspicious death.
Officer Platz responded by hanging up.
Van der Whall considered his next move. He could just drop into the Quantum Entanglement Dimension, where conscious matter communicated, and ask Officer Platz’ brain some questions directly. However, since the incident at the Hickenlooper dinner party two months earlier, he was reluctant to communicate with the brains of living beings, or any of the constituent components therein.
But, of course, Frances—the love of his life and his unhappy date for the Hickenlooper dinner party—hadn’t said anything about the brains of dead beings.
Van der Whall closed his eyes and listened. It was a different kind of listening than you would use for, say, the latest single from a Lady Gaga clone. It was more directed, more intense, more… interested, frankly. Soon, he was surfing the QED. He searched for atoms that had been part of Jefferson Ferblungett’s brain. It didn’t take long.
“Hello,” Van der Whall started to introduce himself to the first atom he encountered, “my name is—”
“Ohnoohnoohnoohnoohnoohnoohnoohnoohnoohnoohnoohnoohnoohnoohnoohnoohno,” the atom mantraed.
“Excuse me, but…” Van der Whall tried to break in.
“Ohnoohnoohnoohnoohnoohnoohnoohnoohnoohnoohnoohno,” the atom ignored him.
“If I could just…” Van der Whall tried again.
“Ohnoohnoohnoohnoohnoohnoohnoohno,” the atom continued.
“Frappuccino!” Van der Whall shouted. At this point, the atom was supposed to snap out of it, stop repeating the same phrase over and over again and respond, “I say, did you just utter the word ‘frappuccino’? Why would you do that?” However, this did not happen; the “ohno” drone continued.
Van der Whall tried another atom: “I have a couple of questions, if you wouldn’t mind giving me a moment of your time.”
This atom responded: “Horrordespairhorrordespairhorrordespairhorrordespairhorrordespair.”
“Um, okay, sure, we all feel that way, sometimes, but…”
“Horrordespairhorrordespairhorrordespairhorrordespair,” the second atom continued.
Then, a third atom repeated the phrase: “Gooboogaboogooboogaboogooboogaboogooboogaboogooboogaboogooboogaboogooboogaboogooboogaboogooboogaboogooboogaboogooboogaboogooboogaboogooboogaboogooboogaboo…”
While the fourth atom just screeched: “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”
The problem with atoms is that they don’t have to breathe, so there was no point in any of their repetitious expressions of trauma that Van der Whall could cut in. He was about to try another atom when he heard a crash in the real world and emerged out of the QED.
Everything in the den where he had been working seemed in order, so he rushed into the kitchen. Frances was looking at a chainsaw on the floor, shaking her luxurious red locks ruefully. The door to a cupboard over the stove was wide open. A voice on the radio, which rested on the counter next to the pot of fava beans and the nice Chianti, was saying, “That was Waldo Rafferstein and the Sidewinders with their rendition of ‘Lick My Love Pump in D Minor.’ Stay with us as—”
“I had a feeling we shouldn’t keep the chainsaw up there,” Frances said dully.
“Are you okay?” Van der Whall asked, concerned.
“Fine,” a new voice on the radio said, “but the Mayor refuses to pay it until his appeal is heard. This ad was paid for by…”
“I’m fine,” Frances told him. “I do think, though, that we need a better place to keep the chainsaw.”
“How about the vegetable crisper?” Van der Whall suggested.
Frances did that thing with her lips that suggested she didn’t think much of the idea. “Where would we keep the vegetables?”
“Well…” Van der Whall tried to buy himself a little time to come up with an—Oh. Obviously. “How about the cupboard above the stove?”
Frances tilted her head at him, not a good sign.
“It is 3:47 EST and time for the news,” a new voice on the radio said. “Improbably, our top story is about the death of astrophysicist—”
“Oh,” Van der Whall said to the radio, “will you shut—What?”
“Maringue ‘Mutt’ Jeff,” the radio voice said. “Jeff was well known for her interest in cosmology—and no folks, that’s not the study of makeup, but the study of the make-up of the universe at the moment of its creation.”
“Honey…?” Frances tentatively asked. Van der Whall held up his index finger, the universal sign to hold that thought (except in parts of Alaska, where the gesture means: ‘The dog that made the mess on the carpet doesn’t belong to me’).
“She had worked for several years at CONCERN,” the radio voice continued, oblivious to the kitchen drama, “the particle physics lab on the opposite side of the planet from CERN. Her theory was that if you speed up particles really, really fast and smash them together, you would be able to learn something about the universe shortly after the big bang. But in over ten years of operation, mostly what they found is that janitorial services for particle accelerators are woefully inadequate.”
“How did she die?” Van der Whall asked the radio.
“Jeff,” the radio voice droned on, as radio voices will sometimes do, “was survived by her husband, Amatal Marimba, their two children, Frankfurter and Beanz, their dog, Snotty, two cats, Philpotts and Stinch, a rare arctic octopus named Benji, a mortgage nobody knows how to pay off, and unresolved emotional tensions that will take her children years to recover from.”
“Yes,” Van der Whall insisted, “but, how did she die?”
“In other news…” the radio voice stated.
“Oh, come on!” Van der Whall shouted at the radio.
“Just kidding,” the radio voice announced, “we wouldn’t leave you hanging about the exciting bits. Jeff killed herself three days ago. Police have yet to release details of her death, but an electric picture frame and seventeen stuffed owls appear to have been involved.”
Hmm, Van der Whall hmmed to himself. Another astrophysicist commits suicide. I wonder…
“Honey?” Frances asked him.
“Yes?”
“Do you think it’s time to put the hold-that-thought finger down now?”
Van der Whall looked at his index finger as if it was an exotic… thing that shouldn’t be there. “Right,” he said, lowering the digit. “Sorry.”
“What should we do about the chainsaw?”
“Why don’t we give it to your sister?” Van der Whall suggested absently. “The kids could use it to cut down trees for shop class projects. They have shop in kindergarten, don’t they?”