Asimov's Science Fiction 10-11/2001

by Dell Magazines

  “Thank you, sir!” Relief had warmed his haggard, unshaven features. “I hope you're okay now.”

  We went back down our trail. Here and there we caught the glint of a fallen diamond lying in the dust. The engineer wanted to gather more, but the uneasy drivers voted to hurry on. We were near the escarpment before darkness stopped us.

  Sleeping that night with the old dollar clutched in my hand, I dreamed of Elena. Alive and lovely again, she was happy to see me. We were back on the clean white beach, breathing sweet air with no need of oxygen gear. The surf was murmurous music. We made love. Again she was wonderful.

  But suddenly we were back where I had found her bones, standing beside the crawler in the ghostly phosphoresce of the forest. Still nude, she had great diamonds tangled in her long black hair. I reached to embrace her, but she pushed me away. I saw her own bones at her feet.

  “You must go.” Her eyes were dark with tragic sadness. “Get off the planet. You and all your people.”

  “They won't,” I told her. “They're diamond-mad.”

  “You have no choice.” She gestured at her skull. “You are killing us. We must protect ourselves.”

  “Elena,” I whispered, “can you explain—”

  Before I could finish, she had dissolved into the faint white glow of the forest around us. I woke inside the crawler, chilled with sweat and trembling, the oxygen generator whispering faintly above me and the engineer snoring in the berth beneath. Lying there till dawn, I wrestled for some sort of sanity.

  What had she been?

  Who was the child?

  Or was it all hallucination?

  No answer offered much comfort. I knew nothing of the silicon life, if the stuff was in any sense alive, but the tall stalks were shaped like exotic plants. Now I had to wonder if Elena had met some kind of silicon mind before she died. Had the child in her womb become some kind of bridge to it? I found no way to know.

  * * *

  Dawn came. We found our trail down the escarpment and followed it through the forest and the frost, back to the site. Most of the settlers were still aboard the passenger ship, out in orbit, but scores of workers were already busy at the landing. Bates gathered the leaders into a temporary hall. Displaying the diamonds and our holos of the diamond forest, he got a roar of applause and asked me to speak.

  Standing there before the eager workers, thinking of Elena's skeleton and my dreams of her, if dreams were all they had been, I was groping uncertainly for what to say until suddenly I heard the child speaking with my own voice.

  “The diamonds are there,” it said. “But they are not for us. We must leave the planet and forget them.”

  The applause fell to silence and became a roar of anger. The child was gone. Left there without comprehension or direction, I stumbled though the story of our drive, the crystal trees, Elena's bones, the warning from the child.

  “It's only a dream,” I had to admit. “But I do believe the crystals have some kind of sentience. It sees us as a threat, and it doesn't want us here.”

  Bates took the lectern to preside over a furious debate. The diamonds were real. The supply was endless. Only idiots or cowards would give them up for any crazy dream. Yet perhaps there was actual danger, he agreed. Out of respect for my uncle and his investors, we should be prudent.

  After all, the terraforming process was far from complete. He asked for a show of hands by those who might want to fly to Earth and back while the algae released oxygen enough to make the planet habitable.

  No hands rose.

  “We came for diamonds,” the engineer spoke for the crowd. “I say damn the danger.”

  * * *

  A pilot from the freighter took me back to Earth in a little escape craft, with my uncle's share of the diamonds. Elated with them, he floated a new company given title and a charter to occupy the second continent on New Earth. Free land, a fine climate, rich soil, trees that grew diamonds! He wanted me to go as his high commissioner.

  Remembering Elena and the child's voice, I hesitated.

  “You and your idiot father!” He shook his head in astonished pity for me. “Nothing to it. Just get your fleetload of suckers into orbit. Drop down to the planet for a quick look around. Collect data for the sales staff. Pick up the diamonds due me. And you'll come back eternal!”

  I left Elena's dollar with her green jade Buddha in my cold box at the Skipper's Club and went back to New Earth one last time, with almost a dozen vessels in our flotilla. Calling from low orbit, we got no response. The passenger craft and the freighter were still in orbit, but lifeless as the survey lander. We did not approach them.

  Dropping to scan the peninsula, we found bright white frost grown back over the landing strip and the lonely little huddle of buildings beside it, unmarked by anything. No trace was left of our track though the crystal jungle. The injured planet had healed itself.

  The spectrometers showed no free oxygen left in the atmosphere, and only traces of carbon dioxide. That had been replaced with cyanogen, the molecule of nitrogen and carbon that forms deadly ‘prussic acid. Nobody who breathed it would leave the planet alive.

  We came back home.

  “So things go.” Unperturbed, my uncle shrugged the failure off. He had bought another planet. “A cosmic anomaly, they call it. Earth-like, but tossed out of its mother system by some odd freak of orbital mechanics. It's twenty light-years from its mother star. Sunless, frozen, dead a billion years. The holos look a little dismal, but I got it for nothing. A great chance for you. Terraform it for successful development, and you can still earn your own immortality.”

  Copyright © 2001 by Jack Williamson.

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  The Dog Said Bow-Wow by Michael Swanwick

  Michael Swanwick's novels include In the Drift, Vacuum Flowers, Stations of the Tide, and Jack Faust. His tales have appeared in Omni, Penthouse, Amazing, Universe, Full Spectrum, and elsewhere. He has been the recipient of the Hugo, Nebula, Sturgeon, and World Fantasy Awards. His stories “The Very Pulse of the Machine” (Asimov's, February 1998) and “Scherzo with Tyrannosaur” (Asimov's, July 1999) both won Hugo awards and his tale, “Moon Dogs” (Asimov's, March 2000), is currently on the Hugo ballot. Mr. Swanwick's latest collection of short stories, Cigar-Box Faust and Other Miniatures, is forthcoming from Tachyon Press and his next novel, Bones of Earth, will be published by Eos this February.

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  The dog looked as if he had just stepped out of a children's book. There must have been a hundred physical adaptations required to allow him to walk upright. The pelvis, of course, had been entirely reshaped. The feet alone would have needed dozens of changes. He had knees, and knees were tricky.

  To say nothing of the neurological enhancements.

  But what Darger found himself most fascinated by was the creature's costume. His suit fit him perfectly, with a slit in the back for the tail, and—again—a hundred invisible adaptations that caused it to hang on his body in a way that looked perfectly natural.

  “You must have an extraordinary tailor,” Darger said.

  The dog shifted his cane from one paw to the other, so they could shake, and in the least affected manner imaginable replied, “That is a common observation, sir.”

  “You're from the States?” It was a safe assumption, given where they stood—on the docks—and that the schooner Yankee Dreamer had sailed up the Thames with the morning tide. Darger had seen its bubble sails over the rooftops, like so many rainbows. “Have you found lodgings yet?”

  “Indeed I am, and no I have not. If you could recommend a tavern of the cleaner sort?”

  “No need for that. I would be only too happy to put you up for a few days in my own rooms.” And, lowering his voice, Darger said, “I have a business proposition to put to you.”

  “Then lead on, sir, and I shall follow you with a right good will.”

  * * *

  The dog's name was Sir Blackthorpe Ravenscairn de P
lus Precieux, but “Call me Sir Plus,” he said with a self-denigrating smile, and “Surplus” he was ever after.

  Surplus was, as Darger had at first glance suspected and by conversation confirmed, a bit of a rogue—something more than mischievous and less than a cut-throat. A dog, in fine, after Darger's own heart.

  Over drinks in a public house, Darger displayed his box and explained his intentions for it. Surplus warily touched the intricately carved teak housing, and then drew away from it. “You outline an intriguing scheme, Master Darger—”

  “Please. Call me Aubrey.”

  “Aubrey, then. Yet here we have a delicate point. How shall we divide up the ... ah, spoils of this enterprise? I hesitate to mention this, but many a promising partnership has foundered on precisely such shoals.”

  Darger unscrewed the salt cellar and poured its contents onto the table. With his dagger, he drew a fine line down the middle of the heap. “I divide—you choose. Or the other way around, if you please. From self-interest, you'll not find a grain's difference between the two.”

  “Excellent!” cried Surplus and, dropping a pinch of salt in his beer, drank to the bargain.

  * * *

  It was raining when they left for Buckingham Labyrinth. Darger stared out the carriage window at the drear streets and worn buildings gliding by and sighed. “Poor, weary old London! History is a grinding-wheel that has been applied too many a time to thy face.”

  “It is also,” Surplus reminded him, “to be the making of our fortunes. Raise your eyes to the Labyrinth, sir, with its soaring towers and bright surfaces rising above these shops and flats like a crystal mountain rearing up out of a ramshackle wooden sea, and be comforted.”

  “That is fine advice,” Darger agreed. “But it cannot comfort a lover of cities, nor one of a melancholic turn of mind.”

  “Pah!” cried Surplus, and said no more until they arrived at their destination.

  At the portal into Buckingham, the sergeant-interface strode forward as they stepped down from the carriage. He blinked at the sight of Surplus, but said only, “Papers?”

  Surplus presented the man with his passport and the credentials Darger had spent the morning forging, then added with a negligent wave of his paw, “And this is my autistic.”

  The sergeant-interface glanced once at Darger, and forgot about him completely. Darger had the gift, priceless to one in his profession, of a face so nondescript that once someone looked away, it disappeared from that person's consciousness forever. “This way, sir. The officer of protocol will want to examine these himself.”

  A dwarf savant was produced to lead them through the outer circle of the Labyrinth. They passed by ladies in bioluminescent gowns and gentlemen with boots and gloves cut from leathers cloned from their own skin. Both women and men were extravagantly bejeweled—for the ostentatious display of wealth was yet again in fashion—and the halls were lushly clad and pillared in marble, porphyry, and jasper. Yet Darger could not help noticing how worn the carpets were, how chipped and sooted the oil lamps. His sharp eye espied the remains of an antique electrical system, and traces as well of telephone lines and fiber optic cables from an age when those technologies were yet workable.

  These last he viewed with particular pleasure.

  The dwarf savant stopped before a heavy black door carved over with gilt griffins, locomotives, and fleurs-de-lis. “This is a door,” he said. “The wood is ebony. Its binomial is Diospyros ebenum. It was harvested in Serendip. The gilding is of gold. Gold has an atomic weight of 197.2.”

  He knocked on the door and opened it.

  The officer of protocol was a dark-browed man of imposing mass. He did not stand for them. “I am Lord Coherence-Hamilton, and this—” he indicated the slender, clear-eyed woman who stood beside him—"is my sister, Pamela.”

  Surplus bowed deeply to the Lady, who dimpled and dipped a slight curtsey in return.

  The Protocol Officer quickly scanned the credentials. “Explain these fraudulent papers, sirrah. The Demesne of Western Vermont! Damn me if I have ever heard of such a place.”

  “Then you have missed much,” Surplus said haughtily. “It is true we are a young nation, created only seventy-five years ago during the Partition of New England. But there is much of note to commend our fair land. The glorious beauty of Lake Champlain. The gene-mills of Winooski, that ancient seat of learning the Universitas Viridis Montis of Burlington, the Technarchaeological Institute of—” He stopped. “We have much to be proud of, sir, and nothing of which to be ashamed.”

  The bearlike official glared suspiciously at him, then said, “What brings you to London? Why do you desire an audience with the queen?”

  “My mission and destination lie in Russia. However, England being on my itinerary and I a diplomat, I was charged to extend the compliments of my nation to your monarch.” Surplus did not quite shrug. “There is no more to it than that. In three days I shall be in France, and you will have forgotten about me completely.”

  Scornfully, the officer tossed his credentials to the savant, who glanced at and politely returned them to Surplus. The small fellow sat down at a little desk scaled to his own size and swiftly made out a copy. “Your papers will be taken to Whitechapel and examined there. If everything goes well—which I doubt—and there's an opening—not likely—you'll be presented to the queen sometime between a week and ten days hence.”

  “Ten days! Sir, I am on a very strict schedule!”

  “Then you wish to withdraw your petition?”

  Surplus hesitated. “I ... I shall have to think on't, sir.”

  Lady Pamela watched coolly as the dwarf savant led them away.

  * * *

  The room they were shown to had massively framed mirrors and oil paintings dark with age upon the walls, and a generous log fire in the hearth. When their small guide had gone, Darger carefully locked and bolted the door. Then he tossed the box onto the bed, and bounced down alongside it. Lying flat on his back, staring up at the ceiling, he said, “The Lady Pamela is a strikingly beautiful woman. I'll be damned if she's not.”

  Ignoring him, Surplus locked paws behind his back, and proceeded to pace up and down the room. He was full of nervous energy. At last, he expostulated, “This is a deep game you have gotten me into, Darger! Lord Coherence-Hamilton suspects us of all manner of blackguardry,”

  “Well, and what of that?”

  “I repeat myself: We have not even begun our play yet, and he suspects us already! I trust neither him nor his genetically remade dwarf.”

  “You are in no position to be displaying such vulgar prejudice.”

  “I am not bigoted about the creature, Darger, I fear him! Once let suspicion of us into that macroencephalic head of his, and he will worry at it until he has found out our every secret.”

  “Get a grip on yourself, Surplus! Be a man! We are in this too deep already to back out. Questions would be asked, and investigations made.”

  “I am anything but a man, thank God,” Surplus replied. “Still, you are right. In for a penny, in for a pound. For now, I might as well sleep. Get off the bed. You can have the hearth-rug.”

  “I! The rug!”

  “I am groggy of mornings. Were someone to knock, and I to unthinkingly open the door, it would hardly do to have you found sharing a bed with your master.”

  * * *

  The next day, Surplus returned to the Office of Protocol to declare that he was authorized to wait as long as two weeks for an audience with the queen, though not a day more.

  “You have received new orders from your government?” Lord Coherence-Hamilton asked suspiciously. “I hardly see how.”

  “I have searched my conscience, and reflected on certain subtleties of phrasing in my original instructions,” Surplus said. “That is all.”

  He emerged from the office to discover Lady Pamela waiting outside. When she offered to show him the Labyrinth, he agreed happily to her plan. Followed by Darger, they strolled inward, first to witne
ss the changing of the guard in the forecourt vestibule, before the great pillared wall that was the front of Buckingham Palace before it was swallowed up in the expansion of architecture during the mad, glorious years of Utopia. Following which, they proceeded toward the viewer's gallery above the chamber of state.

  “I see from your repeated glances that you are interested in my diamonds, ‘Sieur Plus Precieux,'” Lady Pamela said. “Well might you be. They are a family treasure, centuries old and manufactured to order, each stone flawless and perfectly matched. The indentures of a hundred autistics would not buy the like.”

  Surplus smiled down again at the necklace, draped about her lovely throat and above her perfect breasts. “I assure you, madame, it was not your necklace that held me so enthralled.”

  She colored delicately, pleased. Lightly, she said, “And that box your man carries with him wherever you go? What is in it?”

  “That? A trifle. A gift for the Duke of Muscovy, who is the ultimate object of my journey,” Surplus said. “I assure you, it is of no interest whatsoever.”

  “You were talking to someone last night,” Lady Pamela said. “In your room.”

  “You were listening at my door? I am astonished and flattered.”

  She blushed. “No, no, my brother ... it is his job, you see, surveillance.”

  “Possibly I was talking in my sleep. I have been told I do that occasionally.”

  “In accents? My brother said he heard two voices.”

  Surplus looked away. “In that, he was mistaken.”

  England's queen was a sight to rival any in that ancient land. She was as large as the lorry of ancient legend, and surrounded by attendants who hurried back and forth, fetching food and advice and carrying away dirty plates and signed legislation. From the gallery, she reminded Darger of a queen bee, but unlike the bee, this queen did not copulate, but remained proudly virgin.