The Mammoth Book of Mindblowing SF

by Mike Ashley

  While Donnie was alive, his father didn’t enjoy any real presence in the neighborhood. But after his family was dead, the man quit his traveling job. For two years, he lived alone inside that ghostly house. I occasionally saw him mowing his weeds or dragging his garbage can to the curb and back again. In unsettling ways, the man resembled my dead friend. They both had the same black hair and a similar wiry build, and sometimes there was shyness in Mr Warner’s stance and the way he didn’t quite look anybody in the eye. But one day he forced himself to stare into my eyes. I was walking home from school, and he stopped his mower and strode down to the street to ask me with a flat, simple voice, “Did you know my son?”

  I nodded, an invisible hand clamped over my throat.

  “I thought so,” he said. Then he conjured up a big smile, telling me, “Donnie had some nice games. Toys. So I was wondering . . . if you’d like to take a few of them home with you?”

  I was ten years old, which meant that beneath my skin was a rich instinctive greed. The man was offering free trinkets, and I couldn’t find any worthy reason to say, “No thank you.” So I nodded, and he said, “Come on then,” and led me up to his house.

  Without pets or a family, the little split-level felt spacious. The furniture hadn’t changed, and judging by appearances, Donnie’s father was a fairly determined housecleaner. Smiling in a big way, he asked if I wanted water or maybe some milk. I told him, “No thank you,” and instantly felt thirsty. We walked down the brief hallway while he asked what kinds of toys I preferred. “All kinds,” I said, although an unexpected doubt was waiting inside me. What was I doing here? How did I agree to this? Then he opened the first door on the left, ushering me into a darkened little bedroom once shared by two small boys.

  Suddenly I was sad and a little sick, standing in the middle of that gloomy quiet. Donnie’s father hovered behind me. I heard him muttering and turned to find his hands together and his head dipped, his wide thick-lipped mouth whispering a prayer or two to our Holy Father.

  Donnie had slept in the top bunk. Thorough hands had put away every toy, wicker boxes and various shelves jammed full. I studied the assembled pleasures, but then realized that my greed had abandoned me.

  The prayers stopped.

  Kneeling beside me, Mr Warner said, “Take whatever you want. I’m sure my boy would approve.”

  But I was ten years old, and nothing that I saw would entertain a wise worldly man like me.

  “Here,” he said, handing me a drawing tablet. The tablet looked old – second- or third-hand old. Its face had been wiped clean innumerable times with the built-in magnet, but I could still make out faint gray lines that Donnie, or somebody, had drawn years ago.

  “No thank you,” I muttered.

  “Or this,” he said, offering me a toddler’s plastic puzzle.

  It hadn’t belonged to my friend. Unless Donnie had played with it before I knew him, then surrendered it to his younger brother. But I took the simple object in my hand and held tight, and then I felt the kneeling man pushing his shoulder against my shoulder. Quietly, he said, “I am very sorry for you.”

  I made a vague chirping noise.

  “Sorry for you and your family,” he told me. “When you die, the four of you will be transported directly to Hell.”

  I let the puzzle drop to the floor, unnoticed.

  The man put an arm around my shoulder and said, “Join me.”

  My stomach hurt and every breath burned.

  “Pray,” he said to me. “Accept our Savior into your life.”

  I said nothing, but the ensnaring arm was pressing me toward the floor. In another moment or two, I would have found myself trapped in the most difficult circumstances. I imagined being coaxed to say a few kind words about Jesus, and even if I didn’t mean them, the floodgates would open. Against my will, I would begin an inexorable fall into the clutches of the Christian faith.

  That’s why I used my elbow, popping the man on his chin.

  And then I jumped away, and with the gracelessness of youth, I told him that he was a crazy bastard, and he fucking well better leave me alone.

  Beneath Katherine’s navel lay the neat, almost lovely arc of a C-section scar, softened by time but still discernable under careful fingers. We spoke often about it, but never with words. There were my touches and curious looks, to which she replied with a hard gaze that left no doubt this was one topic that my current lover refused to discuss. Then came a purposeful silence and mutual discomfort, the sense of some taboo being avoided, and I think she hoped that I would feel ashamed. Or maybe something awful was shaming her. Either way, the emotions would fill her tiny cabin, leaving us almost no air to breathe.

  Being female among a hundred youngish males, Katherine had been granted a princess’s life. At least as far as possible on the Spartan moon. She and the other six ladies on the base each had their own quarters – tiny cubicles physically removed from the male habitats. Vague troubles at the other American base had brought about this inadequate arrangement, I was told. I was also informed that I was handsome and a fine lover, and she assured me that she was grateful for having a friend such as me – her word, “friend” – and she appreciated decent older gentlemen who had experienced life yet somehow retained their humor.

  Yet my age and alleged wisdom kept me from feeling too proud. I was rumored to be wealthy, which no doubt made me attractive. And unlike most of the males kicking around the place, I had no uniform or rank to mess up the career of a female officer. By accepting my company, Katherine had an ally who was grateful and compliant, and who also had ample time on his hands. My government job had come to an end even before I began to work; the Castle’s door, it seemed, had been open all along. But freighting my old body home again would cost too much in terms of fuel and effort, not to mention raise a few security concerns, and that’s why I was marooned here. I was trapped. And I had nothing to do with my days but act pleasant, keep out of the way, and wait for my lover’s return.

  We avoided uncomfortable talk about scars and psychic wounds. Our old lives were on a left-behind world, and they didn’t matter here. What mattered was the latest news from Castle Rock. What secrets had been discovered during the last hours? How was the mapping of passageways going? And had they found more of the indescribable machines? Dozens of contraptions were set inside the deepest chambers, silently doing nothing . . . except of course creating a host of unanswerable questions that were frustrating everyone involved.

  “What’s the latest wrong theory?” I would ask.

  That was our little joke. These great minds that were sharing our air had been generating hypotheses at a staggering rate, only to toss them aside when they proved wrong, or even worse, untestable.

  “What is Peck’s head thinking today?” I wondered aloud. “Is it an old castle, or a very young one?”

  “Old,” she reported. “Nearly as old as the moon. Which explains why it’s buried as it is. The object fell to the surface while the crust was still liquid, nearly four and a half billion years ago. Fell here and floated until the world froze up around it.”

  The hypothesis had potential. I mentioned several tests to Katherine, who nodded and said, “Yes, I know. They’re going over the data from the biggest kinetic blasts right now, hunting for definite numbers.”

  In other words, Peck was trying to weigh his conundrum.

  But the next day, Katherine shook her head, halfway laughing when she admitted, “The numbers didn’t work out.”

  “The Castle’s too dense,” I guessed. “It should have sunk into any magma sea.”

  “That’s the reasonable assumption,” she replied.

  Again, that was one of our jokes. What sounded reasonable never seemed to apply in these situations. “You mean it isn’t a big lump of gold?”

  “According to several scales,” she admitted, “the sphere is about half as dense as water.”

  Meaning that it would have floated on the molten moon like a child’s inflated
ball.

  “Erosion covered it up,” I offered.

  “Peck has both of our geologists looking at that possibility. But to him and to me and just about everybody else . . . it seems more likely that someone took a giant spoon and carved out a round hole just big enough to bury the object most of the way . . .”

  “Which somebody?” I asked.

  Every day, in one fashion or another, one of us brought up that salient question.

  “He doesn’t want anyone using the ‘A’ word,” she warned. “If you see him, don’t mention it.”

  Don’t say, “Alien,” she meant.

  “Peck doesn’t want our perceptions contaminated,” Katherine explained, her voice wearing a slightly mocking tone. “If we assume little green starfarers, then that’s all we’re going to see. Which would be a mistake, he claims.”

  “But who else could have done this?” I asked.

  Shrugging her bare shoulders, she admitted, “I have no idea.”

  After some hard consideration, I said, “Well I do.” Then I mentioned another candidate. “God.”

  She surprised me, saying, “Maybe,” with a pleased, even relieved tone.

  But of course I was joking. Ancient extraterrestrials were completely credible next to the Almighty. Taking a breath, I steered our conversation to safer, smaller matters. “Have they found more tunnels?”

  “Not this week, no.”

  “Or any new machines?”

  For a few moments, she put on a wary expression. I was pushing too hard, and Katherine suddenly remembered her rank and pledges and the secret nature of this very important business. She was very high in our local pecking order. It was her duty to properly chasten me. So I said nothing for the next several minutes, one arm wrapped around her stocky waist, my free hand touching a few favorite places. I knew the woman wanted to tell somebody what she knew. And who else was available to absorb her gossip?

  “No new machines,” she reported.

  “The map’s finished?”

  “And you can’t see it,” she warned. “Just Peck and his people and the top officers have access.”

  Yet I had a pretty fair version of it sitting in my head. I’d drawn it from Katherine’s descriptions and stories overheard in the galley, and none of those important souls were allowed to see my map, either.

  She told me, “Those machines, or whatever they are . . . they’re our main focus for now . . .”

  Again, I let silence ask my questions.

  “And Peck believes one of them is working.”

  She said those words, and when I didn’t reply, she asked, “Craig? Are you asleep?”

  Not at all.

  “One of the machines is awake?” I whispered.

  “Peck says so. Station Gamma is.”

  I was breathing faster, my mouth and throat turning dry. “Does anybody happen to agree with him?”

  “Some do. But not everybody, no.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because the energy levels are tiny.” She named a group of lesser researchers – an alliance had formed around this single issue – and she repeated their arguments as if they were her own. “The power usage is minuscule, and there doesn’t seem to be a pattern. And nobody, not even Peck, has a clue about how to talk to the machine, or control whatever it’s doing just now.”

  Yet I had faith in Peck. I’d spent one hour of my life with the man, enjoying none of it; but I knew his mind was as relentless and sharp as any could be. And his word outweighed the judgment of a million skeptics, so far as I could tell.

  “What are you thinking?” Katherine asked.

  By chance, I had just touched her belly, fingers skimming along the crease of the old scar. For every good reason, I said, “Nothing important. I’m not thinking anything.”

  She probably assumed that I was wondering about her vanished child. And grateful that I didn’t pursue the matter, she swung a leg over me and took the initiative, giving this old man ten or fifteen minutes of fun.

  Three days after that, Katherine said, “Another theory dies.”

  “Which one?”

  “The one where the alien machinery is working,” she reminded me. “Now Peck says he was wrong, he was fooled. ‘Transient propagations of electricity,’ he says it is. Was. ‘I just made a mistake. The Castle’s dead as dead can be.’”

  I imagined him saying those exact words, in various voices.

  Pulling her close, I whispered, “Too bad.”

  “I don’t think it’s too bad,” Katherine replied. “I don’t want alien machines doing mysterious jobs, thank you . . . !”

  Another eleven days passed before I could corner Peck.

  If swagger was something you wore, then the man had been stripped naked. I could tell as much from across the galley. He shuffled to an empty table, and he set down his tray, then his body, and his head bowed as he spent the next long while using his nylon fork, punching holes in the helpless veal.

  I wasn’t the only one to notice. A couple of the base mechanics were sitting beside me – good-natured boys who didn’t mind an old engineer hanging around their shop when he was bored. Empathy wasn’t their strong suit, but one of them astutely observed, “Our resident Hawking looks kind of blue.”

  “Kind of blue?” his buddy laughed. “I’d keep him away from guns, if it was my call. Know what I mean?”

  Too well, I understood the implications.

  “I hear he got his ass chewed pretty well today,” said the first boy.

  “A real mastication,” said the other, sounding infinitely pleased.

  “When was that?” I asked.

  “A few hours back,” the first mechanic said. “You were visiting your daughter’s room. You probably didn’t hear that other screaming.”

  They liked teasing me about Katherine. And I liked to believe that they were jealous.

  “Who did the screaming?” I asked.

  “The Pentagon suits. Then the general. Then the suits again.” The kid made a show of shrugging his shoulders, explaining, “This isn’t a big place, and you don’t have private meltdowns.”

  “Our prick-genius isn’t performing,” said the second boy. “Billions spent and nothing to show for it.”

  Just then, I made my choice and acted on it.

  “Where you going?” both asked, in a rough chorus.

  “I’m going to have a chat with Peck.” Then I threw them a wink, adding, “I’ll sit with him until he insults me.”

  “See you in thirty seconds,” the first mechanic kidded.

  But really, the man didn’t have enough energy for abusing anyone, except for himself. He barely looked up when I settled across the table, and after a lot longer than thirty seconds, he finally managed to ask, “What?”

  “So the Castle’s dead, is it?”

  Nothing.

  “Katherine told me. You thought you had something big at Gamma, but you didn’t. And then you had to announce to everybody you were wrong.”

  His face lifted. His expression was drunken tired and sorry, with a strangeness gathered up behind the eyes. I couldn’t tell what I was seeing, much less what it meant. Even when I made guesses, they fell miles short.

  “I was surprised,” I admitted.

  “With what?” He spoke in a dry whisper.

  “I can imagine you admitting to an error, sure. I can see that happening. But it’s the phrasing. Katherine quoted you: ‘I just made a mistake.’ Which didn’t sound like you. Those aren’t your normal words, and the tone in her voice didn’t seem like you, either.”

  “What tone?”

  I took a moment. “Suppose we’re playing cards.”

  “Okay.”

  “And you make a lot of noise when you push your chips into the middle. Then you lay back in your chair and smile too much.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Bluffing,” I said.

  Peck might have been one of the world’s great minds, but at a poker table, I would ha
ve destroyed him. He heard me say, “Bluffing,” and shrank down a little bit, eyes bouncing left and then right, hunting for a friendly place to hide.

  “The Castle isn’t dead. Is it?”

  He tried silence.

  “Katherine didn’t pick up on it. But to me, you sounded a little too confident about your failure. A guy like you . . . being wrong should have chewed at you, and just to prove that you could, I would expect you to generate ten new hypotheses in the next little while.”

  He maintained his uneasy silence.

  “Were you bluffing, Doctor?”

  Then he chewed his bottom lip, saying everything.

  I made a show of grabbing my tray but not rising. Then with a voice that I hoped nobody else could hear, I asked, “Do you want me to go to the General and give him a poker-player’s observation?”

  “And what would you tell him? What’s your best guess here?”

  “You did discover something. I don’t know what, but you did. And you don’t want to share your news with anybody.”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “Because you want it for yourself. By nature, you’re a greedy soul. Somehow you pieced together some corner of this puzzle, and you’re acting like the little boy who can’t share his toys.”

  Peck almost laughed.

  Then he caught himself, and after a moment’s hard reflection, he admitted, “I do hate sharing the limelight. That’s true.”

  I started to nod, glad to be right.

  “Except that’s not the problem here,” he said.

  With the tray still in both of my hands, I started to push back my chair.

  “Stay,” he told me.

  I relaxed my back, then my fingers.

  “You think I’m a bastard. I know. Arrogant and self-absorbed, and all the rest.”

  “What of it?”

  “You were a government man once, Craig. Well, in my case, I’ve never been. I’m just a hired hand brought here because of my talent, and because they knew I would agree to almost anything to be involved in this work.”

  “The first scientist to peer inside an alien treasure box,” I offered.