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Decision Point (ARC)

Page 8

by Bryan Thomas Schmidt


  blown away. He wept.… Of course, he was in shock.”

  Ferrell dangled the locket on the end of its short chain,

  intrigued in spite of himself. It hung with a companion piece, a

  curl of hair embedded in a plastic pendant.

  “Some sort of holy water, is it?” he inquired.

  “Almost. It’s a very common design. It’s called a mother’s

  tears charm. Let me see if I can make out—he’s had it a while, it

  seems. From the inscription—I think that says ‘ensign,’ and the

  date—it must have been given him on the occasion of his

  commission.”

  “It’s not really his mother’s tears, is it?”

  “Oh, yes. That’s what’s supposed to make it work, as a

  protection.”

  “Doesn’t seem to be very effective.”

  “No, well … no.”

  Ferrell snorted ironically. “I hate those guys—but I do guess

  I feel sort of sorry for his mother.”

  Boni retrieved the chain and its pendants, holding the curl in

  plastic to the light and reading its inscription. “No, not at all.

  She’s a fortunate woman.”

  “How so?”

  “This is her death lock. She died three years ago, by this.”

  “Is that supposed to be lucky, too?”

  “No, not necessarily. Just a remembrance, as far as I know.

  Kind of a nice one, really. The nastiest charm I ever ran across,

  and the most unique, was this little leather bag hung around a

  fellow’s neck. It was filled with dirt and leaves, and what I took

  at first to be some sort of little frog-like animal skeleton, about

  ten centimeters long. But when I looked at it more closely, it

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  turned out to be the skeleton of a human fetus. Very strange. I

  suppose it was some sort of black magic. Seemed an odd thing

  to find on an engineering officer.”

  “Doesn’t seem to work for any of them, does it?”

  She smiled wryly. “Well, if there are any that work, I

  wouldn’t see them, would I?”

  She took the processing one step further, by cleaning the

  Barrayaran’s clothes and carefully re-dressing him, before

  bagging him and returning him to the freeze.

  “The Barrayarans are all so army-mad,” she explained. “I

  always like to put them back in their uniforms. They mean so

  much to them, I’m sure they’re more comfortable with them on.”

  Ferrell frowned uneasily. “I still think he ought to be dumped

  with the rest of the garbage.”

  “Not at all,” said the medtech. “Think of all the work he

  represents on somebody’s part. Nine months of pregnancy,

  childbirth, two years of diapering, and that’s just the beginning.

  Tens of thousands of meals, thousands of bedtime stories, years

  of school. Dozens of teachers. And all that military training, too.

  A lot of people went into making him.”

  She smoothed a strand of the corpse’s hair into place. “That

  head held the universe, once. He had a good rank for his age,”

  she added, rechecking her monitor. “Thirty-two. Commander

  Aristede Vorkalloner. It has a kind of nice ethnic ring. Very

  Barrayaranish, that name. Vor, too, one of those warrior-class

  fellows.”

  “Homicidal-class loonies. Or worse,” Ferrell said

  automatically. But his vehemence had lost momentum,

  somehow.

  Boni shrugged, “Well, he’s joined the great democracy now.

  And he had nice pockets.”

  Three full days went by with no further alarms but a rare

  scattering of mechanical debris. Ferrell began to hope the

  Barrayaran was the last pickup they would have to make. They

  were nearing the end of their search pattern. Besides, he thought

  resentfully, this duty was sabotaging the efficiency of his sleep

  cycle. But the medtech made a request.

  “If you don’t mind, Falco,” she said, “I’d greatly appreciate

  it if we could run the pattern out just a few extra turns. The

  original orders are based on this average estimated trajectory

  speed, you see, and if someone just happened to get a bit of extra

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  kick when the ship split, they could well be beyond it by now.”

  Ferrell was less than thrilled, but the prospect of an extra day

  of piloting had its attractions, and he gave a grudging consent.

  Her reasoning proved itself; before the day was half done, they

  turned up another gruesome relic.

  “Oh,” muttered Ferrell, when they got a close look. It had

  been a female officer. Boni reeled her in with enormous

  tenderness. He didn’t really want to go watch, this time, but the

  medtech seemed to have come to expect him.

  “I—don’t really want to look at a woman blown up,” he tried

  to excuse himself.

  “Mm,” said Tersa. “Is it fair, though, to reject a person just

  because they’re dead? You wouldn’t have minded her body a bit

  when she was alive.”

  He laughed a little, macabrely. “Equal rights for the dead?”

  Her smile twisted. “Why not? Some of my best friends are

  corpses.”

  He snorted.

  She grew more serious. “I’d—sort of like the company, on

  this one.” So he took up his usual station by the door.

  The medtech laid out the thing that had been a woman upon

  her table, undressed, inventoried, washed, and straightened it.

  When she finished, she kissed the dead lips.

  “Oh, God,” cried Ferrell, shocked and nauseated. “You are

  crazy! You’re a damn, damn necrophiliac! A lesbian

  necrophiliac, at that!” He turned to go.

  “Is that what it looks like, to you?” Her voice was soft, and

  still unoffended. It stopped him, and he looked over his shoulder.

  She was looking at him as gently as if he had been one of her

  precious corpses. “What a strange world you must live in, inside

  your head.”

  She opened a suitcase, and shook out a dress, fine underwear,

  and a pair of white embroidered slippers. A wedding dress,

  Ferrell realized. This woman was a bona fide psychopath …

  She dressed the corpse, and arranged its soft dark hair with

  great delicacy, before bagging it.

  “I believe I shall place her next to that nice tall Barrayaran,”

  she said. “I think they would have liked each other very well, if

  they could have met in another place and time. And Lieutenant

  Deleo was married, after all.”

  She completed the label. Ferrell’s battered mind was sending

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  him little subliminal messages; he struggled to overcome his

  shock and bemusement, and pay attention. It tumbled into the

  open day of his consciousness with a start.

  She had not run an identification check on this one.

  Out the door, he told himself, is the way you want to walk. I

  guarantee it. Instead, timorously, he went over to the corpse and

  checked its label.

  Ensign Sylva Boni, it said. Age twenty. His own
age …

  He was trembling, as if with cold. It was cold, in that room.

  Tersa Boni finished packing up the suitcase, and turned back

  with the float pallet.

  “Daughter?” he asked. It was all he could ask.

  She pursed her lips, and nodded.

  “It’s—a helluva coincidence.”

  “No coincidence at all. I asked for this sector.”

  “Oh.” He swallowed, turned away, turned back, face

  flaming. “I’m sorry I said—”

  She smiled her slow sad smile. “Never mind.”

  *

  They found yet one more bit of mechanical debris, so agreed

  to run another cycle of the search spiral, to be sure that all

  possible trajectories had been outdistanced. And yes, they found

  another; a nasty one, spinning fiercely, guts split open from some

  great blow and hanging out in a frozen cascade.

  The acolyte of death did her dirty work without once so much

  as wrinkling her nose. When it came to the washing, the least

  technical of the tasks, Ferrell said suddenly, “May I help?”

  “Certainly,” said the medtech, moving aside. “An honor is

  not diminished for being shared.”

  And so he did, as shy as an apprentice saint washing his first

  leper.

  “Don’t be afraid,” she said. “The dead cannot hurt you. They

  give you no pain, except that of seeing your own death in their

  faces. And one can face that, I find.”

  Yes, he thought, the good face pain. But the great—they

  embrace it.

  Lois McMaster Bujold was born in 1949, the daughter of an

  engineering professor at Ohio State University, from whom she

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  picked up her early interest in science fiction. She now lives in

  Minneapolis, and has two grown children. She began writing

  with the aim of professional publication in 1982. She wrote three

  novels in three years; in October of 1985, all three sold to Baen

  Books, launching her career. Bujold went on to write many other

  books for Baen, mostly featuring her popular character Miles

  Naismith Vorkosigan, his family, friends, and enemies. Her

  fantasy from HarperCollins includes the award-winning Chalion

  series and the Sharing Knife series.

  Ten-times nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel, she

  has won in that category four times, in addition to garnering

  another Hugo for best novella, three Nebula Awards, three

  Locus Awards, the Mythopoeic Award, two Sapphire Awards, the

  Minnesota Book Award, the Forry Award, and the Skylark

  Award. In 2007, she was given the Ohioana Career Award, and

  in 2008 was Writer Guest-of-Honor for the 66th World Science

  Fiction Convention. A complete list may be found here:

  http://www.sfadb.com/Lois_McMaster_Bujold. Her works have been translated into over twenty languages.

  More information on Bujold and her books is archived at

  www.dendarii.com

  and

  her

  blog

  at

  https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/16094.Lois_McMaste

  r_Bujold/blog

  Every teenager dreams of their first car, and Jerry is no different.

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  Somehow he stumbles onto the perfect vehicle, too good to be

  true. And that’s the problem. What dark secret lurks in the

  vehicle’s past and can he ever be free of it? Or is that the price

  of …

  D R I V I N G A B A R G A I N

  By Robert J. Sawyer

  Jerry walked to the corner store, a baseball cap and sunglasses

  shielding him from the heat beating down from above. He picked

  up a copy of the Calgary Sun, walked to the counter, gave the

  old man a dollar, got his change, and hurried outside. He didn’t

  want to wait until he got home, so he went to the nearest bus stop,

  parked himself on the bench there, and opened the paper.

  Of course, the first thing he checked out was the bikini-clad

  Sunshine Girl—what sixteen-year-old boy wouldn’t turn to that

  first? Today’s girl was old—23, it said—but she certainly was

  pretty, with lots of long blonde hair.

  That ritual completed, Jerry turned to the real reason he’d

  bought the paper: the classified ads. He found the used-car

  listings, and started poring over them, hoping, as he always did,

  for a bargain.

  Jerry had worked hard all summer on a loading dock. It had

  been rough work, but, for the first time in his life, he had real

  muscles. And, even more important, he had some real money.

  Edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt

  His parents had promised to pay the insurance if Jerry kept

  up straight A’s all through grade ten, and Jerry had. They weren’t

  going to pay for a car itself, but Jerry had two grand in his bank

  account—he liked the sound of that: two grand. Now if he could

  just find something halfway decent for that price, he’d be driving

  to school when grade eleven started next week.

  Jerry was a realist. He wanted a girlfriend—God, how he

  wanted one—but he knew his little wispy beard wasn’t what was

  going to impress … well, he’d been thinking about Ashley

  Brown all summer. Ashley who, in his eyes at least, put that

  Sunshine Girl to shame.

  But, no, it wasn’t the beard he’d managed to grow since June

  that would impress her. Nor was it his newfound biceps. It would

  be having his own set of wheels. How sweet that would be!

  Jerry continued scanning the ads, skipping over all the makes

  he knew he could never afford: the Volvos, the Lexuses, the

  Mercedes, the BMWs.

  He read the lines describing a ’94 Honda Civic, a ’97 Dodge

  Neon, even a ’91 Pontiac Grand Prix. But the prices were out of

  his reach.

  Jerry really didn’t care what make of car he got; he’d even

  take a Hyundai. After all, when hardly anyone else his age had a

  car, any car would be a fabulous ticket to freedom, to making

  out. To use one of his dad’s favorite expressions—an expression

  that he’d never really understood until just now—“In the land of

  the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”

  Jerry was going to be royalty.

  If, that is, he could find something he could afford. He kept

  looking, getting more and more depressed. Maybe he’d just—

  Jerry felt his eyes go wide. A 1997 Toyota, only twenty

  thousand miles on it. The asking price: “$3,000, OBO.”

  Just three thousand! That was awfully cheap for such a car …

  And OBO! Or Best Offer. It couldn’t hurt to try two thousand

  dollars. The worst the seller could do was say no. Jerry felt in his

  pocket for the change he got from buying the paper. There was a

  phone booth just up the street. He hurried over to it, and called.

  “Hello?” said a sad-sounding man’s voice at the other end.

  Jerry tried to make his own voice sound as deep as he could.

  “Hello,” he said. “I’m calling about the Toyota.” He swallowed.

  “Has it sold yet?”

  “No,” said the man. “Would you like to come see it?”


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  Jerry got the man’s address—only about two miles away. He

  glanced up the street, saw the bus coming, and ran back to the

  stop, grinning to himself. If all went well, this would be the last

  time he’d have to take the bus anywhere.

  *

  Jerry walked up to the house. It looked like the kind of place

  he lived in himself: basketball hoop above the garage; garage

  door dented from endless games of ball hockey.

  Jerry rang the doorbell, and was greeted by a man who

  looked about the same age as Jerry’s father … a sad-looking man

  with a face like a basset hound.

  “Yes?” said the man.

  “I called earlier,” said Jerry. “I’ve come about the car.”

  The man’s eyebrows went up. “How old are you, son?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “Tell me about yourself,” said the man.

  Jerry couldn’t see what difference that would make. But he

  did want to soften the old guy up so that he’d take the lower price.

  And so: “My name’s Jerry Sloane,” he said. “I’m a student at

  Eastern High, just going into grade eleven. I’ve got my license,

  and I’ve been working all summer long on the loading dock

  down at Macabee’s.”

  The bassett hound’s eyebrows went up. “Have you, now?”

  “Yes,” said Jerry.

  “You a good student?”

  Jerry was embarrassed to answer; it seemed so nerdy to say

  it, but … “Straight A’s.”

  The bassett hound nodded. “Good for you! Good for you!”

  He paused. “Are you a churchgoer, son?”

  Jerry was surprised by the question, but he answered

  truthfully. “Most weeks, with my family. Calgary United.”

  The man nodded again. “All right, would you like to take the

  car for a test drive?”

  “Sure!”

  Jerry got into the driver’s seat, and the man got into the

  passenger seat. Not that it should have mattered to whether the

  deal got made, but Jerry did the absolute best job he could of

  backing out of the driveway and turning onto the street. When

  they arrived at the corner, he came to a proper full stop at the

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  stop sign, making sure the front of his car lifted up a bit before

 

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