The New Space Opera 2

by Gardner Dozois

  “How can you tell?” Warthog said. “Who can possibly tell one human from another? He came to the rendezvous site, and no one else showed up, so this has to be him, right?”

  “The fur on his head is the wrong length and color.”

  “They change that all the time. James said as much.”

  “And James was missing one of the minor manipulating appendages on his main grasping stalks,” Jellyfish said. “This human has five such appendages on each stalk.”

  “So?” Warthog said. “James was finally back among his own kind, for two months’ leave. His native medics had plenty of time to grow him a new finger.”

  The bundle of prickly spheres made a series of noises that sounded like a herd of cows farting.

  “First Mate Baradu is right,” Jellyfish said. “We don’t believe human medics have the ability to regrow lost limbs. And James was proud of his missing appendage, which he lost in his first boarding action. He wouldn’t have it replaced. This human is clearly an impostor.”

  They backed out of the room, leaving Danny alone in it. There were machines and devices here that he couldn’t understand, but some things were instantly recognizable. He was on a bed—small and narrow, but a bed just the same. There was a small bookcase attached to one wall, and Danny recognized most of the titles, all of which were in English. There were also a few photographs hung or taped to the same wall and he examined them. Most of them featured a stout man, between thirty and forty, with pockmarked skin, blue eyes, and a salt-and-pepper crew cut. The fellow also had a number of visible scars on his face and neck.

  “If this is you, James, how could they possibly mistake me for you?”

  In some of the photos, the widely grinning man, who was possibly James, was posing with a number of different creatures. Danny recognized Warthog, and there were several of the huge slug things, like the one who’d been with Warthog on the top of Steptoe Butte.

  With a bit of a start, Danny realized that he believed all of it. He wasn’t dreaming or hallucinating. He was actually among aliens on board the blue floating thing that must be their spaceship.

  They kept him waiting in the tiny bunkroom for hours. Just as Danny had begun to figure out how to deploy what he dearly hoped was a high-tech toilet, the warthog alien came again, alone this time.

  “I’m not James Crowder,” Danny yawlped, before Warthog could speak.

  “I know that now,” Warthog said. “And that’s dropped us both into a vat of trouble. You stowed away aboard ship under false pretenses. That’s a mortal offense. They’re going to toss you out of an airlock.”

  “Why? I didn’t pretend to be this James Crowder! I never said a thing! You just took me! And I had no intention of trying to stow away. Just let me go and I’ll walk back down the hill and never look back.”

  “I doubt you’ll be walking anywhere, unless other humans have abilities James never possessed. We’re back aboard the main ship and already a billion klees out in space, and getting farther from your world every second.”

  “No fair! Take me back!”

  “Now we can hardly do that, can we? No, human, unless we decide to throw you into vacuum, you’re coming with us. No other choice.”

  “You’d kill me, even though it was your mistake? This is your fault, not mine!”

  “You’ll no doubt be pleased to know that the First Mate agrees with you,” Warthog said. “He blames me for the blunder. James was my best mate on board and I should’ve been able to see that you weren’t him. But I’ll be flayed if one of you ugly monsters doesn’t look just like another. In any case, he has a notion that will save your life, keep me from losing rank and share, and prevent him from having to act officially. Here’s our story, and I suggest you go along with it: I never made a mistake. I intended to pick you up and take you with us all along. Now that I’ve made Fourth Rate, I have the option of hiring a personal aide, and that’s exactly what I’ve done. And since James and I were so close, of course he recommended I take on another human, a friend of his who desperately wanted to go to space, just like he did ten years ago. That’s why you showed up there at the rendezvous.”

  “But what about James?” Danny said. “What if he doesn’t support your story?”

  “Don’t be daft, human. We’ll never see him again, because he never made the rendezvous. Who knows why? He’s probably drunk or in jail. He was always a fighter, James was. But we’ll never be back this way again, because the First Mate is as mad as I’ve ever seen him and has had quite enough of this place. He’s declared Earth, its system, and the entire district off-limits from now on.”

  That’s how Danny Wells became a somewhat less-than-official member of the Merry Prankster’s crew. As Mister Orep’s personal aide—that was the warthog alien’s name—he worked much too hard for far too little pay. He cleaned Orep’s room, did his laundry, ran his errands, and performed any other task his master could imagine. And, because Orep claimed to come from a race with a great tradition of public generosity, Danny was often lent out to other members of the crew to provide similar services for them. For the first five years of his life aboard the raider, Danny was miserable.

  There were a few compensations. The late Mister Crowder had introduced many of the Prankster’s crew to the game of poker. As the only other human ever to serve on board, Danny was allowed (expected in fact) to take over Crowder’s regular game. It turned out Danny had a gift for poker and began to sock away some decent money. And the space pirate’s medical technology was leaps and bounds more advanced than anything Earth physicians had developed. Being among pirates, Danny might die of violence. It was even likely. But failing that, he would ever and always continue to be roughly twenty years old—in body, if not strictly in chronology.

  Danny’s generally wretched existence didn’t improve until the day they’d overtaken an unarmed merchant ship that turned out to be a Hroo Colonial Battleship in disguise. The Hroo marines boarded the pirate vessel, and all hands, including Danny, had to fight for their lives. He’d picked up a cutlass, whose dead owner had no further use for it, and acquitted himself well enough to impress First Mate Baradu, who’d immediately thereafter promoted Danny to his personal prize crew. Orep didn’t mind losing his aide, since he’d been killed in that day’s bloody action.

  Danny continued to distinguish himself in the years that followed, and slowly worked his way up the ranks.

  Now, more than forty years since he’d first come aboard the Merry Prankster, quite against his will at the time, Danny was exquisitely aware of the danger he was in. Two of the mob that had crowded into his spacious First Mate’s cabin were members of his own prize crew, and he detected no love or loyalty in their eyes.

  “This isn’t a mutiny,” Credogue repeated. “We’re a peaceful assembly of your friends and fellow crewmembers, who’ve come to reason with you.”

  “Hardly peaceful,” Danny said, “when you’ve got Kyal trussed up and lying on my floor.” He didn’t want to provoke them, but he was angry and growing angrier. How dare they burst in on him like this! He was the best combat officer in the Prankster’s long and colorful history and he’d made each of them rich a hundred times over! He noticed that his anyweapon was just out of reach, lying on the sideboard in its default shape of a simple compact pistol-grip handle, with no actual pistol attached. Attempting to pick it up would most certainly provoke the violence he was trying to avoid at the moment.

  “That was an unfortunate but necessary precaution,” Credogue said. “Kyal’s affection for you is obvious. She’d fight to her death to protect your rights, as she perceived them. We felt it prudent to bind her in this way, to save her from her own worst instincts.”

  “I’m going to kill you, Credogue, as soon as I’m free,” Kyal said from her place at their feet.

  “See what I mean?” Credogue said. “She can’t be reasoned with. We hope you’ll turn out to be more receptive.”

  “What’s your proposal?” Danny said.

 
“It should be obvious enough. You were a valiant and resourceful combat leader, serving under my father. Every one of us respects and admires you. But you’re human, and no raiding ship of the Outer Rings Confederacy has ever been skippered by a human. It may seem odd, given our profession, but pirates are conservative by nature. We’re beholden to long and carefully established tradition, and don’t respond well to sudden changes. Simply put, we aren’t willing to serve under you.”

  “And yet this isn’t a mutiny,” Danny said, knowing that his human sarcasm would be lost on most of them.

  “Exactly so,” Credogue continued. “In the past, many senior officers of this ship and others have retired with honor, taking their accumulated shares and living to spend it in peace and comfort. Even you only ascended to First Rank because Mister Baradu finally retired. Some might say it’s an officer’s duty to retire at some point, to make way for other crew to advance. Otherwise, we’d constantly have to kill our own to move up in the ranks, and what an unstable system that would be! Mister Wells, you’ve amassed a considerable fortune during your years among us. So has your aide. We propose that you take it and go home, with our blessing. We’ve spoken among ourselves and agreed that you should even be allowed to take your boarding yacht, as a bonus in honor of your long years of service.”

  “See, boss?” Kempee the Vraal said. “It weren’t never no mutiny. This here’s a retirement party.” Kempee loosened the pistol in his holster, to punctuate his remarks. “So, what do you say?”

  Two months later, the Merry Prankster surfaced on the far edges of Earth’s system and remained in place just long enough to spit the Raptor’s Egg out of its starboard boat dock. Then it turned, fired up its main engines, and began immediate outward accelerations for its next dive into underspace. Danny and Kyal were alone aboard the Egg.

  “You didn’t have to come into forced exile with me,” Danny said, not for the first time.

  “Of course I did,” Kyal said. “They weren’t going to let me remain on board, not after you so publicly promoted me to First Rank. The new First Mate would have had to constantly watch his back, always worried I was about to stick my dagger into it. Besides, I wouldn’t stay with them if I could. Traitorous scum.”

  “They would’ve dropped you in your own system. It was a lot closer than Earth.”

  “What did that one author of yours say? ‘You can’t go home again?’ In my case, it’s literally true. The Sendarians don’t take kindly to pirates. I wouldn’t have found a welcome there. No, sir, for better or worse, my fate is entwined with yours.”

  Kyal set their course for Earth at an easy twenty-four g’s, explaining that they’d best proceed modestly when they could, since there would never again be a repair dock for the Raptor’s Egg, or any of its systems. At that acceleration, they’d be more than three weeks getting there, traveling entirely through upperspace, since the yacht had no diving capability. The Egg was roomy enough, without an entire boarding crew to accommodate. On the trip out aboard the Prankster, they’d had plenty of time to refit it with a separate sleeping cabin for each of them. They’d also installed a more sophisticated automatic sick bay than such a boat normally carried, with ample supplies and programs for both human and Sendarian physiology.

  “Better load all weapons,” Danny said.

  “Why?” Kyal said. “The Prankster’s already well out of range, and they’d have had us outgunned anyway. They’d have blown us to atoms, after our first shot.” The pirates had let Danny keep the Egg’s weapons, knowing that the small integrator cannons it carried were no match for the larger ship’s guns and shields. Even so, they’d made sure that all guns were unloaded and powered down, before handing the boat over to them.

  “I wasn’t thinking about the Prankster. I was thinking about Earth defenses. I’ve been gone for nearly fifty years. Back then the space race was only beginning, but by now they’ll likely have bases even this far out. Let’s be prepared, just in case they don’t recognize us as friendly.”

  “And just in case they have loot worth taking?”

  “No, Kyal, I think I’m done with the pirate life. We’re both young and rich enough. Maybe Credogue—may he rot in one of his seven thousand hells—was right in that one particular at least. Maybe it is time to consider a new line of work.”

  “What do you have in mind?” she said.

  “Nothing yet. But we have a long trip inward to think about it. In the meantime let’s start monitoring communications and see if we can get a handle on what might be waiting for us. There’s a good chance, even all these years later, that our spacefaring technology is still quite a ways more advanced than anything they can do. Maybe we can make an honest living just by selling what we have?”

  “You’d sell the Raptor’s Egg?” She didn’t quite gasp her astonishment.

  “No. Never. Just the right to study it. Maybe. We’ll see. Now, if you’ll take the first watch, I’m tired. I think I’ll steal a few hours’ nap. I haven’t slept well in the past two months, always wondering if Credogue and his cutthroats might decide to change their minds and save themselves the trouble of taking us this far outside of civilized space.”

  “I think Credogue had no choice but to let us go,” Kyal said. “I think most of the crew were still fond enough of us that they wouldn’t have accepted anything less. Credogue’s going to have his tanglers full controlling that mob. Some might have respected him, but, unlike his father, no one’s ever loved him. My bet is that he’ll suffer an unfortunate accident the first time they see action against another ship.”

  “Wouldn’t that be nice?”

  For days, they accelerated inward, toward the primary. All the while, the Egg peered far ahead, scouting their way. It watched and listened, tirelessly gathering and sorting information.

  “I don’t understand this,” Danny said, on their twelfth day in transit. “There’s nothing. No ships. No bases. I can’t find a bloody thing in space, outside of a few odds and ends in low Earth orbit.”

  “What did you expect?”

  “Lots of stuff. We were in a space race! First we were going to put a city on the moon and then spread out to fill the planets. But somehow, for no reason I can find, they just stopped. And look at these broadcasts. If these are at all up to date, then none of what they’d always promised ever happened. No jet packs. No flying cars. It’s a good decade past the year 2000, according to their calendar, but where did the future go?”

  “We can make jet packs for them,” Kyal said, trying to calm him. “It’s sort of a primitive device, but I suppose we could fabricate a few, if you want.”

  “That’s not the point,” Danny said. “It’s not what we could make for them, it’s about what they didn’t become. It’s like the entire history of Earth after I left was one giant broken promise.”

  Danny slept a lot during the remainder of their inbound journey, his frustration and depression growing each day. New information continued to pour in, but it always disappointed him. Kyal, by contrast, studied the data with considerably more enthusiasm than he showed. She spent her days studying every aspect of her new home and trying to imagine what role she might play in it.

  “What are you reading?” Danny said one day, wiping the sleep out of his eyes. He hadn’t bothered to dress.

  “I’m not sure,” she said. “Some sort of text accompanied by static illustrations. But I think I may have discovered some of those amazing advancements you’ve been searching for. Look at this. Each major population center is guarded by one or more humans with incredible powers. See how this man can fly unaided. And he’s orders of magnitude stronger than the greatest Sendarian warrior, even one of us in a full battle exoskeleton. These city guardians seem to be engaged in constant battles with other enhanced beings who’re determined to destroy your world and everything in it. No wonder Earth has had trouble advancing out into space. These struggles have to be quite a distraction.”

  “Let me see,” Danny said, peering over Kyal’
s shoulder. “Oh, I understand now. That’s not a real account you’re reading. That’s a work of fiction we used to call a comic book. Back in my day they were printed on paper, in little pamphlets. I didn’t know they’d be available electronically by now. Hell, I didn’t imagine they’d still exist. In any case, those stories are all made up. Those supermen aren’t real. Funny thing is, once we get home, we’ll be the only supermen on Earth.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Well, as the wise fellow—whose name I forget—said, ‘Any technology sufficiently advanced will seem like magic to a more primitive culture.’ Substitute super powers for magic and you have my point. Earth’s certainly gone out of its way to remain primitive.”

  Danny went down to the galley to eat breakfast, leaving Kyal to ponder the implications of what he’d said. Four days out from Earthfall she approached him with an idea.

  “Look at this,” she said, handing him a reading tablet. “It’s another comic book. It’s about a superhero called the Blue Shrike and his loyal assistant Clara Zarathustra. They protect a great metropolis called Empire City. He’s just a normal man in a mask with a sword cane, but she’s the last surviving warrior princess from a lost island paradise. She’s ostensibly his servant, acting as his chauffeur and bodyguard, but they’re more like equal partners.”

  “Yeah, I remember reading their adventures way back when, though I suppose I was more a fan of Spider-Man. And Empire City is just a fictionalized version of New York. What about it?”

  “They appear in hundreds of books and movies and television programs, as do all of the other comic-book heroes. Your world loves these people. They seem to possess an unquenchable hunger for superheroes.”

  “Possibly. Who knows? But as I said, they don’t really exist. What is it exactly you wanted me to see about the Blue Shrike and his intrepid assistant?”

  “She reminds me of me. They remind me of us. I’ve been thinking about our new lives and careers. Our new chapter.”