Dominion Rising: 23 Brand New Science Fiction and Fantasy Novels

by White, Gwynn

  Finally, the UN underlined that it had every confidence that the UES Ashitaka would succeed, that the other two initiatives would very likely not be needed, and that they were proceeding based on an abundance of caution.

  To repeat them exactly: “Based on an abundance of caution.”

  Let’s move along folks, nothing to see here.

  There was a strange buzz in the lounge, but the sports channel flicked back on, and everyone clapped me on the back and started ordering drinks.

  * * *

  On my third solo flight, I took the Dragonfly on a southwest bearing, towards Milton, to a height of four hundred feet.

  The wind blew clouds past me as I was taking everything, and that’s when I saw it, below me, the Zoo, revealed like a hidden treasure.

  I’d been to it before, of course, to visit Leia and the other animals. I’d gone through all the exhibits, the baboons and the lions and the leopards and the cheetahs, and even volunteered for a couple of seasons.

  But from the air! Now I saw it, but I saw everything at once—the African savannah, the Arctic tundra, the Australian outback, and CIRCE in the middle like a human outpost—and it struck me that the Zoo, with its replicated ecosystems, was in essence a miniature of the entire world.

  On that day, I decided, that was where I needed to be.

  Part II

  Unicorn

  For Immediate Broadcast M3 70 63

  Comet Deflection Mission Enters Next Phase

  The first-ever mission to demonstrate a comet deflection technique for planetary defense, the Comet Redirection Project (CRP), is moving from concept development, numerical simulation, and preliminary design phase, to implementation, following approval by the United Earth Federation (UEF).

  “CRP would be our first mission to demonstrate what’s known as the kinetic impactor technique -- striking the asteroid to shift its orbit -- to defend against a potential future asteroid impact,” said Lindley Johnson, planetary defense officer at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “This approval step advances the project toward an historic test with a non-threatening small asteroid.”

  The target for CRP is Comet C/21B9 M2 DEMOS, which will have an approach to Earth in the near future. The comet is also referred to as Gabriel’s Comet, after the project lead of the team that discovered it, Dr. Colin Gabriel. Dr. Gabriel is Project Director for the Deep Ecliptic Multi-Object Survey (DEMOS) at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson, Arizona.

  Comet C/21B9 M2 DEMOS has been closely studied since its discovery by DEMOS. It shows as a typical object, with composition with similar characteristics to that of many of the same class of objects identified by DEMOS. The size is typical of asteroids or comets that could potentially create regional effects should they impact Earth.

  CRP is basesd on the mass accelerator on UEF’s Ashitaka platform for orbital defense. The Ashitaka would fly to Comet C/21B9 M2 DEMOS, and use its on-board autonomous targeting system to aim itself at the comet’s primary mass. The mass accelerator’s projectiles would strike the body at a speed about nine times faster than a bullet, approximately 6 kilometers per second. Several of these projectiles would likely be required to effect a non-trivial change in the orbit, but this has not as yet been ascertained.

  It is expected that both Earth- and Mars-based observatories would be able to monitor the impact and the resulting change in the orbit of Comet C/21B9 M2 DEMOS, allowing scientists to better determine the capabilities of kinetic impact as a comet mitigation strategy, and the number of standard projectiles required to effect such a mitigation.

  The kinetic impact technique is effective because it is modifies the velocity of a threatening object by a small fraction of the total velocity vector. The effectivity is optimized by accomplishing it before any predicted impact, such that a relatively small expenditure of kinetic energy accumulates over time to a large shift of the comet’s path away from intersection with the Earth’s orbit.

  Small space-originating objects impact the Earth almost daily, most of them harmlessly breaking up in the atmosphere. It is very rare for the Earth to encounter any objects large enough to do surface damage. Larger objects—with diameters greater than approximately 1 kilometer in diameter—are sizeable enough to enable global effects, and have always been the focus of terrestrial and space-based monitoring of potentially hazardous objects with orbits that bring them in the vicinity of Earth’s orbit.

  CRP would verify a technology set for deflecting objects classified as in the in the intermediate size range—large enough to do regional damage, yet small enough that there are many more that have not been observed and could someday threaten Earth. UEF assets continue to search for these objects, track their orbits, and determine if they are a threat.

  To assess and formulate capabilities to address these potential threats, the UEF established the Interplanetary Defense Coordination Committee (IDCC), responsible for finding, tracking and characterizing potentially hazardous asteroids and comets coming near Earth and the inner planets, issuing warnings about possible impacts, and assisting plans and coordination of response to an actual impact threat.

  5

  Owl Droppings

  While I was finishing my undergraduate degree, I became a Zoo volunteer—khakis, dark green polo shirt, work boots, name-tag and all.

  As a volunteer at Glen Eden, I worked part of the time presenting introductions and talks to Zoo visitors, mainly tour groups, families and students on field trips. When preparing and presenting these educational talks, I could handle owls, vultures, iguanas, armadillos, king snakes, ball pythons, and various other small animals.

  The rest of the time I volunteered, I scrubbed exhibits and enclosures; shoveled elephant manure, giraffe dung, owl droppings; distributed zoo-authorized feed to small mammals and various birds of prey, and helped prepare diets for most of the other animals.

  A lot of the recurrent, tedious work was continuously being replaced by automation, so that the need for human intervention was minimized. Still, there were always people, like me, willing to give time to the Zoo. It was a way to get back to roots, to become part of nature again.

  When I finished my degree at Guelph and submitted the final reports on my various projects at Gosling—covering a range of topics like cellular genetics, specimen collection and viability, and the vault integrity of a seed repository in Norway—I’d taken a position doing work with CIRCE, the research institution attached to the Zoo, which focused on conservation biology.

  Often that involved work outside the lab. There was a duty roster for activities that cycled among the CIRCE staff, and one day not long after I joined, I saw my name on it, alongside the location: Kruger National Park.

  It followed that, on the day the UES Ashitaka was to rendezvous with Gabriel’s Comet, I was in South Africa, thirteen thousand miles across the Atlantic, away from home.

  6

  Pigeon Hawk

  When the object was first discovered, we didn’t call it the Comet, didn’t capitalize the word as if it were some mythological deity. It didn’t have a special meaning for those of us on Earth from the other comets in the universe. It wasn’t as if it were our Moon, special among the other moons orbiting other planets in the Solar System.

  Before all that, it was a Kuiper Belt object, a KBO, a comet of some particular interest, with a number instead of a name, and some in the scientific community still called it that after the news broke.

  Seven years later, the starship Ashitaka turned over its mission to another craft, and charted a new course to overtake Gabriel’s Comet. Even then, the news of that encounter was a small, passing, unimportant part of that day, because the ending of the Earth, such as it was, was an exceedingly remote probability, a faraway thought, an unimportant part in the endings of that single day.

  And, despite what happened with the UES Ashitaka that day, looking back I realized that the time I truly felt my own world begin to end was a year later, on a Merlin, an aerospinner cruisin
g in glide mode about four hundred feet above the Niagara escarpment in Canada, at the edge of Glen Eden Zoo.

  That was when my mother finally told me her secret wish.

  7

  Blesbok or Wildebeest

  South Africa was my first major field mission, and I wanted so badly to prove I could cut it out here as well as in front of the cryopumps and centrifuges.

  That morning, at our temporary camp in Kruger National Park, I watched six split screens on a computer for any signs of Amahle. My long, black hair was braided and pinned back; the early sun’s heat beating through the tied-back tent flaps.

  On each of the screens the varied landscapes of South Africa scrolled by—savannah, river, bush, watering hole, sand. We were seeing what the cameras saw, mounted on the autonomous drones we’d let loose a half hour ago. Each unmanned aerial vehicle was following its calculated flight path through the game reserve according to its mission grid, its LiDAR sensors raster-scanning the terrain for obstacles.

  Jake Hawkins was the mission specialist in charge of the UAVs, unmanned aerial vehicles or drones. His computer was displaying video feed from each of the UAVs; he fiddled with the keyboard, enhancing the contrast here, enlarging a detail there, working furiously to re-capture the signal on a lost channel.

  He stabbed at one of the screens. “Zara?” he said to me, pointing to a shadow the edge of the frame.

  I looked at the shadow, but it wasn’t our quarry. I shook my head and he got back to his keyboard.

  More shadows marched across the landscape as we caught an occasional herd of blesbok or wildebeest. The geo-tagged images were detailed, mesmerizing, streamed to us through the drone manufacturer’s servers. Plains zebra stopped to drink. At any other time, we might have stopped and take a closer look at the amazing vista, but we were looking for something else this time. We were looking for a unicorn.

  The drones flew.

  In the base camp tent, on Jake’s computer, each drone’s field of vision was displayed neatly on the screen.

  The reserve had tried out fixed surveillance cameras in the past, scattered across a quarter of the reserve; half of them were shot out by poachers within a year.

  Amahle was a female eastern black rhino. The beautiful one, as her name implied. Our unicorn. Her name spoke to the joy of her birth, the joy of her family and her ancestors, all here with her in the present.

  All that was true. Six years ago Amahle’s mother Kitani gave birth to her, an extremely rare occurrence, especially in the wild. Fortunately, footage of mother and calf was picked up accidentally by one of the cameras, and a back-up contingent of rangers had been dispatched to guard the pair. She had grown, matured, and now she was of mating age, nothing short of a miracle.

  Once, herds of eastern black rhinos numbered in the thousands across the grasslands of Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia and Tanzania. Now there were less than sixty animals worldwide. Some had been brought here to South Africa in an attempt to preserve and, down the road, possibly expand their numbers.

  The previous October, near one of the smashed surveillance cameras, rangers found the body of Kitani, the mother of our unicorn.

  * * *

  Bezoar stones, goat’s blood, bone of a stag’s heart, unicorn’s horn—in the history of the human race, all have been thought to have powerful properties to detect, prevent, and cure human maladies. In past eras, these were also used when ancient physicians could not properly diagnose the malady but simply identified it as poisoning.

  The Greek physician Ctesias was perhaps the first to ascribe pharmaceutical properties to the single, spiral horn of the unicorn, the mythical beast. He believed that drinking from a cup fashioned from the unicorn horn would counter poisons and shield against epilepsy and other convulsive illnesses.

  The unicorn’s horn grew in reputation in medieval times, where it was touted as a cure for plague, pestilence, and poison. Strained with liquids such as water or milk, and added to less exotic ingredients such as powdered lobster shell, unicorn horn could be applied to wounds or drunk against fevers, measles and smallpox, and bites inflicted by mad dogs and serpents. Finally it was used as a cordial, a restorative, and had value as an aphrodisiac.

  * * *

  Nicholas Culpeper, an English botanist, herbalist, physician, and astrologer published the Complete Herbal in 1653, which catalogues hundreds of medicinal recipes, and commentary on antidotes from his contemporary, including Matthiolus’s great antidote against Poison and Pestilence:

  “Take of Rhubarb, Rhapontic, Valerian roots, the roots of Acorus, or Calamus Aromaticus, Cypress, Cinquefoyl, Tormentil, round Birthwort, male Peony, Elecampane, Costus, Illirick, Orris, white Chamelion, or Avens, of each three drams, the Roots of Galanga, Masterwort, white Dictamni, Angelica, Yarrow, Fillipendula or Dropwort, Zedoary, Ginger, of each two drams, Rosemary, Gentian, Devil’s-bit, of each two drams and an half, the seeds of Citrons, and Agnus Castus, the berries of Kermes, the seeds of Ash-tree, Sorrel,[338] wild Parsnips, Navew, Nigella, Peony the male, Bazil, Hedge Mustard, (Irio) Treacle Mustard, Fennel, Bishop’s-weed, of each two drams, the berries of Bay, Juniper, and Ivy, Sarsaparilla, (or for want of it the double weight of Cubebs,) Cubebs, of each one dram and an half, the leaves of Scordium, Germander, Chamepitys, Centaury the less, Stœchas, Celtic Spikenard, Calaminth, Rue, Mints, Betony, Vervain, Scabious, Carduus Benedictus, Bawm, of each one dram and an half, Dittany of Crete three drams, Marjoram, St. John’s Wort, Schœnanth, Horehound, Goats Rue, Savin, Burnet, of each two drams, Figs, Walnuts, Fistic-nuts, of each three ounces, Emblicks, Myrobalans half an ounce, the flowers of Violets, Borrage, Bugloss, Roses, Lavender, Sage, Rosemary, of each four scruples, Saffron three drams, Cassia Lignea ten drams, Cloves, Nutmegs, Mace, of each two drams and an half, black Pepper, long Pepper, all the three sorts of Sanders, wood of Aloes, of each one dram and an half, Hart’s-horn half an ounce, Unicorn’s-horn, or in its stead, Bezoar stone, one dram, bone in a Stag’s heart, Ivory, Stag’s pizzle, Castoreum, of each four scruples, Earth of Lemnos three drams, Opium one dram and an half, Orient Pearls, Emeralds, Jacinth, red Coral, of each one dram and an half, Camphire two drams, Gum Arabic, Mastich, Frankincense, Styrax, Turpentine, Sagapenum, Opopanax, Laserpitium, or Myrrh, of each two drams and an half, Musk, Ambergris, of each one dram, oil of Vitriol half an ounce, species cordiales temperatæ, Diamargariton, Diamoscu, Diambra, Electuarij de Gemmis, Troches of Camphire, of Squills, of each two drams and an half, Troches of Vipers two ounces, the juice of Sorrel, Sow Thistles, Scordium, Vipers Bugloss, Borrage, Bawm, of each half a pound, Hypocistis two drams, of the best Treacle and Mithridate, of each six ounces, old Wine three pounds, of the best Sugar, or choice Honey eight pounds six ounces. These being all chosen and prepared with diligence and art, let them be made into an electuary just as Treacle or Mithridate is.

  Culpeper comments: “The title shews you the scope of the author in compiling it, I believe it is excellent for those uses. The dose of this is from a scruple to four scruples, or a dram and an half: It provokes sweating abundantly, and in this or any other sweating medicine, order your body thus: Take it in bed, and cover yourself warm, in your sweating, drink posset-drink as hot as you can, if it be for a fever, boil Sorrel and red Sage in posset-drink, sweat an hour or two if your strength will bear it, then the chamber being kept very warm, shift yourself all but your head, about which (your cap which you sweat in being kept on) wrap a hot napkin, which will be a means to repel the vapours back. This I hold the best method for sweating in fevers and pestilences, in which this electuary is very good. I am very loth to leave out this medicine, which if it were stretched out, and cut in thongs, would reach round the world.”

  * * *

  Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, brought a piece of horn with her from France to identify poisons in her food. An entire horn belonging to Henri II, king of France in 1553, was documented at the time to be worth £20,000. I can’t even think about what that would be in today’s currency. If you couldn�
�t afford an entire unicorn horn, its astounding properties could be obtained by purchasing powdered horn at the apothecary’s for the equivalent, in 1610, of £24 per powdered ounce.

  The idea that the unicorn’s horn was a powerful medicinal ingredient held sway for several centuries, long after doubts about its effectiveness were first raised. Toward the close of the 18th century, pharmaceutical value of these horns were discredited. This was as a result of science showing that the results of the potions could be ascribed to chance, and because the existence of the unicorn gradually became identified with one of two actual creatures. Most often, a narwhal tooth or powdered rhinoceros horn were the suspects.

  * * *

  The drones flew.

  We watched, but there still wasn’t much of interest from the drones’ live feed on Jakes’s computer.

  “What do you think, Dr. Harbridge?”

  That was Walter Neilson, the American from Cincinnati. A real estate developer and recreational hunter, he’d won the right to this safari at his state hunt club auction. He’d repeated several times over dinner last week that the auction was in partial benefit of a local children’s hospital.

  “Rhinos—they’re the most dangerous animal in Africa, yes?”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. He was blond and blue-eyed, dressed in Mahikan River Outfitters khaki from head to toe, wearing Maskwa Trail shoes. I remember hesitating. It was his hunt, after all. His money was part of why this hunt was taking place, and therefore why CIRCE had a chance for this field mission.