Fiction: Pluto Tells All by John Scalzi
Pluto Tells All
By Pluto, ex-planet, 4,500,000,000 years old
As told to John Scalzi
• I don’t want to sound like I was surprised, but yeah, I was surprised. Because just before, they were talking about adding planets, right? Me and Eris and possibly Ceres, and it looked like that proposal was getting good play. So it looked good, and Charon and I thought it’d be okay to take a break and get a little alone time. So there we are relaxing and then suddenly my agent Danny’s on the phone, telling me about the demotion. And I say to him, I thought you had this taken care of. That’s what you told me. And he said, well, they took another vote. And then he started trying to spin the demotion like it was a positive. Look at Phil Collins, he said. He was an ex-member of Genesis but then he had this huge solo career. And I said, first, Phil Collins sucks, and second, I’m not exactly the lead singer of the solar system, am I? This isn’t the Phil Collins scenario, it’s the Pete Best scenario. I’m the Pete Best of the goddamn solar system. So I fired Danny. Now I’m with CAA.
• No, really. Phil Collins does suck. I’m sorry, but there it is. Good drummer, but a lot of his sound is from his producer, Hugh Padgham. You want to sound like Phil Collins? Have your producer drop in a noise gate. Done. And his singing. Oy. Funny thing is, in the 80s, Phil was in talks to play me in a science fiction comedy. He dropped out of it and made Buster instead. The movie deal fell apart after that. I lost some money on that. I have some issues with Phil Collins.
• The funny thing about the demotion is that I never actually wanted to be a planet, you know? I was out here minding my own business and then suddenly Clyde Tombaugh is staring at me. And the next thing I know, people start calling me and telling me I’m the newest planet. And I remember saying, I don’t know if I want that responsibility. And they said, well, you can’t not be a planet now, Walt Disney’s already named a character after you. That’s really what made me a planet. Not the astronomers, but that cartoon dog. People loved that dog.
• Ironically, I’m a cat person.
• I’m not going to sue. Who am I going to sue? You think the International Astronomical Union has any money to speak of? There’s a reason the most popular event at an astronomer’s conference is the free buffet.
• I try to look at it philosophically. Seventy-six years a fine run. And now I’m sort of the spokesperson for an entirely new class of objects: The dwarf planets. I understand it’s meant to be something of a consolation prize, but you know what, there are more of us dwarf planets out here than anything else. If we’re talking “one dwarf planet, one vote,” you’re going to find we’re setting the agenda on a lot of things.
• I might make a comeback. There are some groups rebelling against the new definition right now. And there are a lot of people telling me they want to work with me. It’s not just NASA anymore. Let’s just say CAA is earning its fee.
• Yes, I’m excited about the New Horizons mission. But I wish you guys could have found a way to get one of the Voyagers my way. I wanted to listen that record.
• I think most people know I had no direct involvement in The Adventures of Pluto Nash. That movie took place on your moon, folks.
• “Dwarf planet” is a misnomer. If I sit in your lap, you’re gonna feel me.
• “Plutoed”? Has anyone ever actually used that word? Even I don’t use it, and it happened to me. I think it’s some sort of urban myth.
• The worst thing about it all is that Eris feels like it’s her fault, like if she’d never been discovered then they wouldn’t have had an excuse to kick me out. She’s a sweet kid. She shouldn’t have to feel like it has anything to do with her.
• Yes, it’s cold this far out from the sun. But look, I’m mostly made of ice. I get any closer, I’d get melty, and then suddenly I’m the size of Vesta. Then I really will be a dwarf planet.
• No, no. Some of my best friends are asteroids.
• I’ll tell you when I think the problem started. A few years ago the director of the Rose Center for Earth and Space asked for a favor. A big fat unethical favor. I said to him that I was too big to fit in a jail cell but he was just the right size, and I didn’t want that for him. He got snippy, I got snippy back, but I thought that was that–it’s business. A little while later they do that panorama of the solar system of theirs, and I’ve been dropped from it, and the Rose Center spokesman is saying I’m the “King of the Trans-Neptunian Objects” in that patronizing way of his. I should have done the director his favor and let him rot when he got caught.
• It’s not what you think. Just because I’m named for the god of the underworld, it doesn’t mean I have connections.
• I have problems with the new definition, yeah. What is this “sweep your lane” shit? Let me toss Eris at your planet and see what sort of job Earth does sweeping the lane. I don’t think you’d like the result. Look, when people want you gone, they’ll use any excuse. Simple as that.
• Also, highly elliptical orbits are fun. You don’t know what you’re missing, people.
• One thing about something like this is you find out who your friends are. Jupiter couldn’t have been nicer during the whole thing. Saturn’s been a real sweetheart, too. And Neptune–well, we go way back. We’re simpatico, always have been. But some others, eh. Not so nice.
• No, I don’t want to name names. They know who they are.
• Oh, fine. Mercury. I got into the club, and Mercury was suddenly my best buddy. And I thought, well, okay–we’re close to the same size, both of us have eccentric orbits, we’ve both got a 3:2 resonance thing going on. Similarities, you know? So we hang out, get to know each other, fine, whatever. Then the IAU vote comes down and I haven’t heard from him since. Like the demotion might be catching or something. He may be right; he’s not exactly a brilliant lane-sweeper himself.
• Evidence? Well, you know. It’s not that he has an unusually thick iron core; it’s that he’s got an unusually thin silicate skin. Where did the rest of it go? So much for lane-sweeping. See, now you know why he’s so damn twitchy. A perfect example of small planet syndrome.
• No, I don’t have small planet syndrome. I have dwarf planet syndrome. Didn’t you get the memo?
• You know who else have been nice? Moons. If anyone had reason to be bitter about me being made a planet, it was them. Hell, you can’t tell me Titan doesn’t deserve to be a planet: He’s got an atmosphere, for God’s sake. Not one of them ever said anything against me. The day I got demoted, Titan calls up, says “you wuz robbed” and then tells me dirty jokes until I nearly throw up laughing. We should swap him for Mercury.
• I have nothing bad to say about Earth. Good planet. Friendly. Too bad you people are making her all itchy recently. If I were her I would be considering a topical application of a meteor right about now. You’re lucky she’s tolerant.
• One of the good things about the whole fracas was once it was settled, Eris finally got a permanent name. Being called “Xena” really ticked her off. She said that when Uranus was discovered, his temporary name was “Georgium Sidus,” after King George III of England. He got a national leader, she got a butch tv character. I told her I didn’t really think she wanted to be named “Dubya,” and she said I had a point. Then I said her moon would have been named “Cheney,” and then she hit me.
• It hurts when you’re hit by a dwarf planet. She’s bigger than me, you know.
• I would have preferred the term “ice planet” myself. Some of the “dwarf” planets out here are going to mess with that definition once you discover them.
• No, I won’t tell you where they are. Find them yourself. You guys are good at that.
• Life on other planets? You know, I’m paid really well not to comment about that.
I will say that if there is life on other planets, that they’d wish you’d stop beaming “lite hits” music stations into space. I’m not the onl
y one out here who has Phil Collins issues. Theoretically.
Fiction: The Leopard’s Paw by Jay Lake
Standing against a deafening roar, Jacob Ervin slammed his fists, hardened weapons as powerful as any product of the metalsmith’s art, into the head of the leaping cat. Fangs longer than his index finger brushed so close to his face that he could smell the rotten meat on the creature’s breath. But his shattering blow had done its work. The head was already stove in.
He moved quickly, unsheathing his ancient poniard. The weapon kept a marvelous edge that belied the brutish neglect of its late owner. Ervin worked the point in under the sabretooth leopard’s front right shoulder and gutted the beast in one great swoop. Long practice in the woods of Colorado stood him good stead under the alien sun as he skinned the cat.
The meat he abandoned for the carrion eaters already circling close. Let the hyenas and the vultures have it. Ervin had taken his trophy in single combat, a fair fight of muscle against muscle, backed by a superbly trained human intellect set against highly evolved predatory instinct. He could afford to be generous to those who would someday clean his own bones.
Carrying the bloody hide, he smiled into the glare of the setting sun. It would be a long run to his current camp, but the moon was rising and the smell of the cat upon him would ward off all but the most foolhardy animals.
###
He spent the next few days scraping and curing the hide. Ervin had picked this particular cave for his campsite because of the saline deposits nearby. He was not sure which of the local plants would be a good source of tannin, so he’d fallen back on the old frontier method of salt-curing. The thing stunk enough to bother even his prodigiously indifferent nose, but Ervin stayed the course.
This sabretooth leopard was key to his plan to enter the lost city of Redwater.
The Borgan tribal king had broken his word to Ervin. Betrayed by a savage! No American man could stand for such treatment, not if he wanted to look himself in the mirror again. Not that Ervin had seen a mirror since coming to this world, but the principle was the same.
The mountain-walls to the north were a boundary to everyone save those black buzzard-men who raided all the local tribes. He had yet to find a way across the rocky barrier, but he would. In the mean time, Ervin needed to settle his position among the savages once and for all. He had no ambition to be their king, but neither would he be subject to their whims and foolish taboos.
The leopard was coming along nicely. He’d boiled the skull, for the sake of being too hurried to bury it. Ervin had never chanced to study the taxidermist’s art, but he had some notion of what he was about. He’d already set aside a pair of opals stolen from the Borgans to use for the leopard’s eyes. Shame that he had no flashlight or other way of making them glow from within. Now that the skin was drying under its load of salt, Ervin worked on the wicker frame that would make it stand out from his body. This would transform him into a great cat padding through the night.
Redwater was where the last temple of the leopard priests had stood, before the savages had rebelled and thrown them down amid fire and but blood. The curses laid upon that benighted place were legendary. But curses meant nothing to a man as hard-driven and unforgiving of self as Ervin was.
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A week to the day after he had hunted and killed the great predator, Jacob Ervin was ready to wear its pelt. The Borgans and their fellow tribes believed that the leopard priests had been skin changers, walking the night with claws and fangs to punish the disloyal and slay the unwary. Ervin knew the secret of skin changing right enough–it was here in his hand.
He slipped the wicker frame across the shoulder and lashed the legs to his upper arms. The skull fell down over his forehead, while he had left the skin of the neck open to provide additional concealment as it dangled. The leopard’s pelt was heavy, but he knew the aspect he presented to any man or beast watching was ferocious.
Ervin padded into the night, using a sort of crouched run he had practiced. It was as close as he could get to the bounding gait of the one of the great cats, but he reckoned that not many were going to stick around to criticize his errors.
Only a man could stand against the leopards of these hills, and not many men at that.
He made his practice run by night, to avoid betraying details out of place. Tall grass which Ervin the man could simply look over swatted Ervin the leopard in the face. A real cat would have stopped and sat up, or maybe taken a great leap, but neither was an option for him. He cursed the slashes the sharp plant blades opened in his skin, but kept running. He was not a man to shirk or set aside a task once committed to it.
Jacob Ervin was a near-perfect specimen of human development. His physique had been the envy of anatomists at the university in Boulder when he attended college, before all the trouble started. But the human body is not designed to run long distances bent double, especially not with forty pounds of wicker and hide pressing down upon it.
By the time he reached the little creek which marked the edge of what Ervin thought of as his front yard, his hips were like to kill him, and his hands were bloody from supporting his weight. He knew he’d need to take a few days to let the palms heal, and make some sort of hand-shoe. Running gloves.
He stopped to drink, careful to bend down and lap like a cat, his face to the water.
When he looked up from his refreshment, Ervin saw another sabretooth leopard watching him carefully from the other bank, not ten feet distant. An easy pounce for such a creature.
This was peril indeed! His poniard was back in his cave-camp. With the wicker bound to his upper arms, Ervin could not throw the bone-crushing punch he’d used to kill the cat from which he’d taken the skin. That had been a carefully-set ambush, too, baited with a wounded antelope check staked out and crying. He had been at his most prepared.
If the other cat leapt now, he was dead. By God, he’d show it a thing or two! Ervin tilted his head back and roared, the astonishing projective power of his massive lungs creating an unholy screech that woke the night-roosting birds amid the nearby reeds.
The other cat roared back at him, then turned to pad off into the moonlight.
Victory, even without force of arm, was still victory. Ervin’s steps were lighter on the way back to his fire, though he took more care with his hands, avoiding the tall grass as much as possible.
By damn, he was the leopard, wasn’t he? Sometimes a man had to allow himself a little pride, he thought.
#
Six days later, at the new moon, Ervin stood on a ridge and looked down upon his goal. Redwater’s cyclopean ruins were no more than bulking shadows by starlight. The river that threaded out of the shattered city was a darker line amid the black grass.
Ervin had brought his leopard skin here by travois, two day’s march. It had taken him the days between to heal his hands and make the hand-boots. Now he shrugged his way into the wicker frame with practiced ease, lacing the arm stays. He saved the hand-boots til last. He was rather proud of the leopard spoor he’d worked in the palms.
Now, he thought, to the city.
The Borgans had believed with a passion that no man walking upright could enter Redwater. It was surrounded by curses, and everyone knew the ghosts of the leopard priests had the cold jealousy of the dead. Ervin himself had seen three Borgan youths race toward the walls in broad daylight, passions aflame with dares and counter-dares, before dropping dead in the grass. Older warriors had crawled in upon all fours to drag them forth.
The boys had no marks upon their bodies.
He reasoned that while the idea of a curse was plain foolery, it was possible some strange weapon from the ancient days existed within the ruins. Perhaps it threw a line of force at the height of a running man’s beating heart. Perhaps it knew the shape of a man, through the workings of some dimly clever electromechanical eye. The Borgans and their brother tribes were charmingly primitive and downright obtuse, but it was clear enough to Ervin that an industrial civiliza
tion had once stood here.
Someone had the means to raise the great slabs which comprised the ruins of Redwater, after all. It would take more than crowds of slaves to do such work.
By going crouched within the skin of a leopard he would twice over fool whatever defenses lurked within. Further, if the Borgans were spying on him as they so often did when he descended from his solitary hills, they would see him go in as a leopard. To be known to those savages a skin changer could only stoke their fear of him. That in turn would build respect in their simple minds, and give Ervin the freedom of action he required for his longer-term plans.
He slunk through the grass, moving in his best approximation of a leopard’s loping bound. The hardest part of this rig was seeing right before him. He accomplished this by tossing his head and looking beneath the fearsome teeth which framed the opening in front of his face.
The walls were close before him. Ervin’s sense of direction had not betrayed him. The hand-boots were saving him great trouble and pain as well.
He loped onward, through the massive gates which had stood unbarred for three generations since the downfall of the city.
###
The streets were paved, which was strange for this world. Few went mounted and there were no carts or carriages here, let alone motorcars. Stranger still, the pavers were hexagonal. The effect was that of running across a vast stone honeycomb.
Ervin’s goal was to steal the leopard’s paw. It was the most sacred relic of the leopard priests. Legend said that the attack on the city had failed to breach the great temple, which was defended by skin changers. The Borgans and their temporary allies had burned out the city instead before retreating as the curse was laid down.
He reasoned that the paw would still be inside the temple. The priests were certainly dead, and their savage cult with them. There had been not so much as a balefire inside Redwater since the city was destroyed. With the widespread belief in the cure, no one would have come to steal it. With the leopard’s paw in his hands, Ervin could bring the tribes to his word. Not to mention extract satisfaction from the troublesome Borgans.
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