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InterText Vol. 2, No. 5 / September-October 1992
================================================
Contents
FirstText: Where Are We Now?......................Jason Snell
Short Fiction
Neuterality_....................................Phillip Nolte_
Back from the West_................................Mark Smith_
Just a Company Man_.............................P.R. Morrison_
The Long Way Home_..............................P.R. Morrison_
....................................................................
Editor Assistant Editor
Jason Snell Geoff Duncan
jsnell@etext.org gaduncan@halcyon.com
....................................................................
Proofreaders Send subscription requests, story
Katherine Bryant submissions, and correspondence
Loretta Griffin to intertext@etext.org
....................................................................
InterText Vol. 2, No. 5. InterText (ISSN 1071-7676) is published
electronically on a bi-monthly basis. Reproduction of this
magazine is permitted as long as the magazine is not sold
(either by itself or as part of a collection) and the entire
text of the issue remains intact. Copyright 1992, 1994 Jason
Snell. Individual stories Copyright 1992 by their original
authors.
....................................................................
FirstText: Where Are They Now? by Jason Snell
================================================
After a long summer filled with plenty of changes for us here at
InterText, I can honestly say that it's good to be back.
Since I wrote last, it's been quite a ride. I sent out the issue
and promptly packed up my stuff in a U-Haul truck and made the
long drive from San Diego to my home in Northern California.
Once there, I spent a day unpacking and promptly went to work as
a reporter for the Union Democrat newspaper.
As you might imagine, that pretty much ate up my summer. I still
occasionally logged in to my computer account in San Diego from
home, updating the InterText mailing list and receiving a few
story submissions. The relatively slight size of this issue is
partially due to my absence from electronic communication for
most of this summer. Hopefully now that I'm back in touch, the
submission numbers will pick up.
Speaking of being back in touch, let me explain my situation
now. I'm beginning my first of two years at UC Berkeley's
Graduate School of Journalism, where I'll end up receiving a
Masters of Journalism. In addition to the grind of my classes
(including Journalism 200, the core course and supposedly the
school's hardest), I'm also working as a Teaching Assistant in
Berkeley's Mass Communication program. Undergraduates, now might
be a good time to run for your lives.
Oh, and editing InterText on top of all of that. We'll see how
it goes.
In any event, my new internet mail address is
jsnell@ocf.Berkeley.edu. You can also still send mail to
intertxt@network.ucsd.edu for the time being, and that's where
the FTP site is still located.
For Geoff Duncan, my assistant editor, this summer marked the
end of his job at Oberlin College. He's currently trying to
track down a job in the computer-rich realm of Seattle. As it
is, he's working in Ohio as a freelance Macintosh consultant. If
he ends up in Washington, I might actually even get a chance to
meet him, since a friend of mine goes to school at the
University of Washington.
So this is the beginning of the second phase of InterText, and
the nature of the magazine may change along with the changes
going on in our lives. I hope that our readers will be able to
help us along, continuing to submit stories and helping out in
other ways. (One of those ways would be if there are readers who
use Aldus Freehand or Adobe Illustrator to make PostScript
illustrations... I've got a few old Mel Marcelo graphics around,
including this issue's cover, but they're limited in number and
I'd like to have other artists, if at all possible. I know
PostScript artists are out there -- witness the nice covers that
Quanta has had recently.)
I've got a few ideas for different ways InterText might change
in the future, including the possibility of distributing printed
editions or disks with the issues on them, both on a
cost-recovery basis. I've also got an idea for a "theme issue"
of the magazine, which might come to pass by early next year.
Oh, and two proud notes: InterText won two awards over the
summer. The magazine was named first runner-up for the Disktop
Publishing Association's Digital Quill Award for best Literary
(what, me literary?) Publication, and I was named as one of four
winners of the San Diego Supercomputer Center's 1992 Creative
Computing Awards because of InterText.
In the Disktop award race, we were up against tough
international competition, including Quanta (which earned a
second runner-up award), and I'm very proud that we were even
given a mention. Congratulations to Del Freeman, Editor of
Ruby's Pearls, the winner of the award. I've seen a few issues
of Del's magazine and will try to get more information about it
to include next time.
I should also mention that another Disktop award -- this one for
first runner-up for Best Computer/Technical Publication -- went
to our friend Rita Rouvalis, for editing EFFector. Rita, of
course, also edits CORE.
The SDSC award usually goes to high-tech science and math
projects, as well as computer music projects; it was nice to see
something like this magazine get some recognition. Much thanks
to Hassan Aref and the rest of the awards committee at the San
Diego Supercomputer Center.
Before I go, I thought I'd share a brief mail message I received
over the summer from a professor of mine, Wade Chambers. He's
from Deakin University in Australia, but was visiting UCSD when
I took a class of his in science writing (Warren Ernst's "One
Person's Junk..." was a product of that class.)
"Hi! Sorry to be so long getting back to you. By now you've
probably gone off surfing for the summer. My assistant Andre is
a happy subscriber to your electronic magazine, which you
mentioned but which I didn't pay much attention to at the time.
However I was most impressed when he showed me your picture in
his files. And he in turn was impressed when he heard you were
in my class at UCSD. (That is, I think my status went up a notch
or two.)"
I'm starting to wonder just how small a world this is, and just
how many people see InterText. I know the magazine's on
CompuServe now, but it's also been turning up in the weirdest
places. If you get InterText by some means other than mail from
me, FTP, or CompuServe, I'd appreciate it if you'd drop me a
line, either via email or real-live mail, at the address listed
in the indicia at the end of this file.
Well, that's enough from me. Until next time, enjoy this
somewhat-truncated issue. By next time things should be a bit
more settled. They'd _better_ be!
Neuterality by Phillip Nolte
===============================
"Such beautiful animals! So agile, so graceful! What are they?"
One of the animals in question was, even then, rubbing its
forehead on the rough, pebbly chins of Hagedorn Twee.
"They're called 'cats,' " said Theresa. "They're natives of old
Earth, Sol system. They're quite common on Human worlds. You
mean you've never seen one before?"
"Perhaps in a holovid, Captain, but never in real life. The body
covering is so soft and so subtly colored!" Twee, a big
blue-skinned native of Heard's World, was completely taken by
the little creature. Apparently the feeling was mutual. Theresa
could hear the loud purring of the little cat from clear across
the room. The Hearder made an instant decision. "I simply must
have them! Both of them."
Captain Theresa Helms of the merchant ship Jupiter quickly ran
down a mental list of reasons why she shouldn't sell the little
animals and found that list to be surprisingly short. Both of
the animals -- the lovely little female calico currently rubbing
up against the formidable chins of Merchant Twee and the
long-haired male tabby rubbing affectionately against the
alien's scaly, tree-like legs -- belonged to her and her husband
Tim, who was also her business partner and the only other crew
member of the Jupiter.
On the plus side, the little animals were a welcome diversion
during the long periods of inactivity that were part of FTL
travel and they did find and destroy the occasional pest that
somehow slipped onboard no matter how rigid the inspections, but
Theresa and Tim had found that the cats required a lot of
attention and often asked for affection at inopportune times.
There had also been a couple of incidents during free-fall
regarding their food and litter that had been downright
unpleasant. Besides that, about halfway through their current
voyage she had begun to suspect that Tim was allergic to the
little beasts.
"I'm afraid that you wouldn't like the price, Merchant Twee. We
transported them a long distance and both my husband and I have
become rather attached to them."
"Attached?" said the big alien, lifting the little calico up and
looking it over carefully with all three of his large green
eyes. Eyes that, coincidentally, had vertical pupils, just like
those of the contented little beast he was examining.
Theresa chuckled, "Sorry, Merchant Twee," she said, shaking her
head. "'Attached' means emotionally bound. My apologies." The
big blue alien laughed, a sort of booming chortle that sounded
quite a bit like a horse in distress.
"Never fear about the price, Captain Helms. Some things are
beyond mere credits. These animals are simply wonderful! My
offspring will adore them. Name your price!"
"I have to talk it over with my partner. We didn't get them with
the intention of selling them," said Theresa. Of course, that
was before we knew that someone wanted to buy them at an
extravagant price, she thought. "We'll give you an answer
tomorrow. Is that okay?"
"That will be fine, Captain Helms. If you do not mind, I would
like to keep the small animal with me for a while yet. The
rumbling sound it makes is very soothing."
Together, Theresa and the big, blue, amiable Hearder checked off
the lists of cargo allotted to the Hearder merchant. All the
while the little female cat sat contentedly on the Hearder's
broad shoulders, next to his lopsided head, purring loudly.
With the day finally over, the docks quiet, and the ship sealed
up for the night, the two humans sat down in Jupiter's small
stateroom to discuss the day's business before bed. Theresa
flopped her slight frame down in a soft lounger next to the
computer station where Tim was checking over the days business.
She ran one of her delicate hands through her short black hair.
Her husband, by way of contrast, was a large, blond Nordic type,
gone a little to fat, who was surprisingly graceful in spite of
his size. He typed in a last notation, hit the return and
swivelled his chair around to face his wife.
"Not a bad day at all, Hon," he said, as he stretched and
yawned. "How're you doin'?"
"Not bad. In fact, I had an interesting conversation with
Hagedorn Twee today," she said. "One that could make us a lot of
credits."
"Hey, makin' credits is what we're here for!" he said eagerly.
"As long as it's not too illegal! What've you got, Terry? I'm
all ears."
"He wants to buy our cats."
"Huh? Our cats? I thought you said something about a lot of
credits?" Tim's look could only be described as disappointed.
"Let me finish! You wouldn't believe it, Tim. I've never seen
anything like it! Those two cats were all over him. I don't
know, maybe it's the high body temperature of the Hearders or
some subtle scent that humans can't detect, but those cats just
adored him!" Somewhat mollified, Tim got to the root of the
question.
"How much?"
She tried not to sound too excited. "He said, and I quote,
'Never fear about the price, Captain Helms!'" Tim came halfway
out of his chair and winced as he bumped his knee on the
computer console.
"Say again?" asked Tim, rubbing his wounded knee.
"He said that money was no object."
"Sold!" said Tim. He gave Theresa a calculating look. "How much
do you think we can get?"
"Well, considering that we transported them all the way from
Earth and that they'd be the only two animals of their kind in
this entire planetary system, I think the price should be high.
Besides, Hagedorn Twee is one of the wealthiest merchants on the
planet."
"What did we pay for the cats, Terry?"
"I'm not sure, honey. Not a lot. Let's see, ten credits for each
cat, five credits for immunization tabs and another twenty
apiece for neutering--I'd say forty credits each max. Total,
about eighty."
Tim thought for a moment. "What do you think about four hundred
apiece?"
"The only two animals of their kind in the system? The
wealthiest merchant in the sector? Come on, Tim, think big! I
say, no less than twenty-five hundred for the pair. Hmmm... I
think we should start at five thousand!"
"Five thousand! That's a fourth of what we still owe on this old
tub! With what we stand to make on the rest of this trip, we
could be in damned good shape!"
"That's kind of what I thought," said his wife, smiling. "The
sooner we pay off the Jupiter, the sooner we can get down to
making some real credits!"
"You're the salesman on this team, Terry. Do your stuff!" said
Tim, standing up to embrace her, his injury apparently
forgotten.
Hagedorn Twee's first offer took Theresa completely by surprise.
It was for ten thousand credits -- apiece! Fortunately she
recovered her composure in time to haggle the price up a little
more. They finally settled on twelve-thousand- five hundred
each, but only after Hagedorn Twee extracted the Helms' promise
not to bring any other cats into the system. It seemed like a
strange request, but the lucky husband-wife team could more than
triple their proceeds for the entire voyage and pay off the loan
on their old but still-serviceable cargo ship. They agreed.
Since there were offworld animals involved, the legal work on
transferring ownership of the two cats had to be handled by the
Regional Office for the Importation of Non-indigenous Flora and
Fauna. Theresa met Hagedorn Twee at the huge Regional Government
Complex in downtown Heardhome, the spaceport and capital city of
Heard's World. The district rep was another of the big
easy-going Hearders, Ottobon Kurr, who, it just so happened, was
a relative of Hagedorn Twee. His brother-in-law, or the Hearder
equivalent, in fact.
"Do you have the papers, Captain Helms?" said Ottobon Kurr in
his deep, booming Hearder's voice.
"I have them right here," said Theresa, putting the documents in
front of the official. Kurr read from the documents.
"Let me see... Planet of origin: Earth, Sol system....
Classification: Mammal.... Species: Felius domesticus...
Immunizations: okay.... Tests for antibodies to contagious
diseases--all negative. Good, good! Have the animals been
sterilized? They cannot be allowed to remain here unless they
have been sterilized."
"Turn the certificate over, Representative Kurr," said Theresa .
"They were neutered before they left earth."
"Everything appears to be in order," said Ottobon Kurr. "Place
your palmprint here."
Hagedorn Twee was the proud owner of the only two cats on
Heard's World, a planet with five hundred million inhabitants.
Theresa and Tim Helm were considerably wealthier than before.
Everyone, including the two cats, was deliriously happy.
The Jupiter returned to the Heard's World system some ten months
later with a fresh cargo of hard-to-get and expensive items for
sale and trade. In spite of her age, the old ship shifted
smoothly out of Whitney psuedospace, fading easily back into
normal space-time some three AU's out from Heard's world. Ten
months ship's time, because of the vagaries of the Whitney
Overdrive FTL System that powered the old Jupiter, translated to
about twenty-two months of Heard's World time. Within two weeks,
the little trader ship would leave with a load of local products
for sale to the planets on Jupiter's route through the inner
system stars of the galaxy. These products including Hearder
arts and crafts and, most importantly, several hundred small,
carefully packed vials of Nardeezium.
Nardeezium was a rare and valuable drug made from the skin
excretions of the rare and exotic Nardeezy dragon. "Dragon" was
somewhat of a misnomer since the animals were really more like
small, slow-moving salamanders than dragons. Not only were the
animals sluggish, they were also stupid and slow to reproduce.
What's more, they had stubbornly resisted all attempts to get
them to thrive in captivity. As a result, the fastidious little
beasts were carefully tended in special preserves and their
precious sweat was very carefully harvested.
Nardeezium was the most valuable substance on Heard's World, and
very important to her economic well-being. The drug was
non-addictive and gave a mild high when used sparingly but its
most sought-after feature was that it greatly increased the
intensity of the mammalian sexual experience. As you might
expect, demand far exceeded the supply among the wealthy on the
human-settled planets.
Theresa and Tim were hailed by Hagedorn Twee within five minutes
of groundfall. It's usually difficult for members of different
races to read another's emotions, but even over the videocom,
both Theresa and Tim could tell that Merchant Twee was agitated.
Maybe it was the nearly painful volume of a voice that was, even
normally, too loud. Or maybe it was the fact that Twee was
sweating.
"I must talk to you immediately, Captain Helms. It is a matter
of the utmost gravity!"
"Please, calm down, Merchant Twee," said Theresa. "We'll meet
with you as soon as possible." The Hearder seemed to relax, but
only a little. They signed off.
"Tim, he looked really upset," said Theresa, nervously. "He was
sweating! Tim, do Hearders sweat?"
The two humans got a groundcab and went directly to Hagedorn
Twee's huge merchant complex, where they were immediately
ushered into Twee's private office. Twee looked up and down the
corridor suspiciously before closing and carefully locking the
door. Ottobon Kurr was already there, looking, if possible, even
more upset than his somewhat larger brother- in-law. The two
Hearders were both sweating, or something much like it.
Fortunately, Hearder biochemistry is somewhat different from
human and the atmosphere of the office had taken on a fragrance
somewhat reminiscent of nutmeg and basil, which didn't bother
the humans in the least.
"Something most unfortunate has happened," said Hagedorn Twee,
still obviously upset.
"Just what is the problem?" asked Theresa.
Twee motioned with one of his large, blue three-digited forepaws
to Kurr, who was across the room.
Ottobon Kurr reached into a small cargo box that was down on the
floor, next to his huge, black hind hoof. There was no mistaking
what he pulled out.
"Where in all of space did you get a kitten?" said Theresa, as
the little animal climbed up Ottobon Kurr's arm, its sharp,
little claws not affecting the thick, scaly hide of the Hearder
in the least. The little beast began to purr loudly as it rubbed
itself luxuriantly under the big alien's chins.
"There are now at least twenty-four immature sol-system cats
like this one on Heard's World," said Twee, mopping his narrow
forehead with a large ultravelvet swab. "And it looks like there
is the potential for many more."
"We're ruined!" ejaculated Kurr, his eyes raised to the ceiling.
"Ruined!"
"How can this be?" asked Theresa, ignoring Kurr's outburst.
Hagedorn Twee couldn't meet her eye. "We had the two original
animals cloned. There are now two thousand copies of each. We
sold them, as quickly as we got them, for five thousand credits
apiece." He gave an embarrassed shrug, an action that almost
made the floor move. "We made an enormous profit."
Theresa shook her head in disbelief.
The Hearder brought his triple gaze back to the humans. "But,
within a few months some of the clones began behaving
strangely-- irrationally. We did not suspect that it was
reproductive behavior until it was too late. So far, at least
four of them have reproduced and many others appear about to."
"You had them cloned?" said Theresa. "That was not a part of our
original bargain."
"Check the contract, Captain Helms," said Kurr. "Cloning was not
mentioned. As such, it was not strictly forbidden."
"You shouldn't have cloned them, Merchant Twee," said Tim.
"There is more," said Hagedorn Twee.
"We're ruined!" shouted Kurr, again. "Ruined!"
"You mean this gets worse?" asked Theresa.
"Yes," said Ottobon Kurr, somewhat calmed after his latest
outburst, "several twelves of the original four thousand clones
have escaped and gone into the wild where they may be
reproducing even as we speak. You see what I mean? We're ruined!
Ruined!"
"That's not so bad," said Theresa, over the wailing. "Your
species seems to really get along well with cats." The two
Hearders looked nervously at one another.
"They seem to have developed a taste for the flesh of the
Nardeezy Dragon," said Twee, miserably. "Nardeezium, even in
crude form, has the same effect on the animals sexual
performance as it does on yours. Not only are they eating some
of the dragons, they are probably reproducing more rapidly as a
result.
"Couldn't you just destroy the wild ones?" asked Theresa. Both
of the aliens looked horrified. Kurr made a strangled noise.
"Out of the question!" Twee was almost shouting. "Hearders do
not take the life of any creature! It is against our most basic
principles."
"It appears that we have no choice," said Kurr, "We are not
going down to ruin alone. You humans are certainly liable. We
shall have to call in the 4th Quadrant authorities. You may
consider your ship impounded and quarantined, and yourselves
confined to the ship until this situation is resolved! Good
day!"
Tim looked at his wife and partner, thinking that it had been
nice to own their own ship, even if it was for just a few
months. They went back to their grounded, impounded ship and
waited nervously for the two and a half days that would be
required for the authorities to arrive from Quadrant
Headquarters on New Ceylon.
The Quadrant Supervisor for Hazardous Flora and Fauna was a
being by the name of Aalber T'verberg, a Lotharian. Lotharians
were short, slender, bipeds native to Lothar, a small, neat
planet in the first quadrant. Their bodies are covered with
short yellowish fur, except for their heads, which are bare and
pink. Lotharians are intelligent but not inquisitive and
eminently fair, if somewhat boring. They are also very good with
numbers. In fact, they are a race of natural certified public
accountants.
In the Regional Office for the Importation of Non-indigenous
Flora and Fauna an argument was in progress. Again the
atmosphere was tinged with the smell of basil and nutmeg.
"I can't believe that you had those animals cloned," Tim Helms,
was saying, with some heat. "We never intended for that to
happen."
"We have gotten off the subject, Master Helms," replied Ottobon
Kurr, with equal heat. "As the Regional Officer for the
Importation of Hazardous Flora and Fauna, I wish to know why the
cloned animals are reproducing. You swore that the originals
were sterilized."
"Is that correct?" lisped Aalber T'verberg, trying without much
success to take control of the situation.
"That's right," said Theresa. "They were neutered."
"Why, then, are the clones reproducing?" asked Kurr.
"Well, that explains it," interrupted T'verberg, sensing his
opportunity. Finally, the combatants turned their attention to
the sibilant tones of the little Lotharian. "These animals were
sterilized by having their reproductive glands removed, a
process traditionally referred to as 'neutering.' It is a simple
and common procedure that renders the animal sterile and halts
much of the undesirable behavior associated with reproduction.
It must be emphasized, however, that this is a surgical
procedure and doesn't change the animal genetically."
"What a barbarous operation,' said Kurr, in disgust.
"Not really," replied T'verberg. "It depends on your viewpoint.
On Earth, where these animals originated, the genetic
alterations that are practiced elsewhere in the Galaxy, are not
only considered immoral, they are highly illegal. Earth's
authorities are very strict about the genetic purity of their
native animals. I'm not so sure it's such a bad idea."
"I still do not understand," said Hagedorn Twee.
"It's quite simple," said T'verberg. "When you had the felines
cloned, the clones were grown from a single cell, usually an
epithelial cell taken from the lining of the animal's small
intestine." Here the two Hearder's looked at each other. Kurr
wrinkled his huge nose in disgust. T'verberg continued. "This
technique utilizes the animal's inherent genetic patterns.
Simple surgery, such as the amputation of the sex glands, would
have absolutely no effect on the animal's genes. If that were
so, clones produced from an animal that had accidentally lost a
foot or an eye would have the same defects. Such is not the
case."
"What does it mean?" asked Hagedorn Twee.
"It means that the clones are all fertile," said the little
Lotharian. "Who did this cloning job for you anyway?"
"We went to Jakob's Genetics, on Titus Five. He came highly
recommended," said Twee, somewhat defensively. Now it was the
Lotharian's turn to show disgust.
"More like he gave you a low, low price!" snorted T'verberg.
"Jakob Hochsteter is an amateur, nothing more than a part-time
gene hacker!" He shook his round, pink head. "You went to Jake
the gene jockey. No wonder you're in such a mess!"
"What are we to do?" asked Twee, intertwining his digits in
agitation. One of the objects of his discomfort, a kitten, was
even then rubbing affectionately against the Hearder's double
chins. He reached over absently, to stroke the little animal. It
began to purr audibly.
"There are a number of reputable genetic engineers who may be
able to help you," said T'verberg, "but I'm afraid it's going to
cost."
The two Hearders looked at each other. After a few moments,
Twee's huge shoulders drooped visibly. They looked resignedly at
the Lotharian and nodded their huge lopsided heads reluctantly.
Genetic engineers from Cornucopia Genetic Services scratched
their heads when confronted with the problem but, after a short
consultation, came up with an elegant solution. After a
three-week waiting period the head engineer, a middle-aged,
uncharacteristically paunchy Lotharian named Stimon P'teragon
presented the Hearders and the Helms with the answer.
"This should solve your problem," said the sleek Lotharian as he
handed Hagedorn Twee a small neoplex vial.
"What is it?" asked Twee, looking somewhat doubtful. Obviously
the solution to such a huge problem as theirs could never come
in so small of a package.
"It is a constructed feline rhabdovirus," came the smug reply.
"A what?" asked Tim Helms.
"It is a virus that will only infect a terrestrial cat. We have
designed it to infect and destroy the gonads which will render
the animals sterile. It is also non-antigenic so the animal's
immune system cannot fight off the infection."
"That is all well and good," said Ottobon Kurr, "but what about
the attacks on our priceless Nardeezy Dragons?"
"Ahhh," smiled P'teragon, showing his flat, herbivorous teeth,
"here is where the extra cost comes in. The virus also affects
the olfactory apparatus of the infected animals in a subtle way
that makes the Nardeezy dragon smell like something inedible.
This is also the method by which the virus is spread, much like
the human cold or the Hearder flux."
"The animals must not be killed!" said Kurr adamantly. Hearders
were good a being adamant.
"There is no danger to the infected animals. Once the target
tissues have been attacked the virus becomes dormant until it
encounters fresh, uninfected tissue. This extends your
protection indefinitely."
"Will it work?" asked Twee.
"It is guaranteed," said P'teragon.
"Just a minute," said Tim.
"Yes?" said P'teragon.
"What if one of these infected cats somehow gets back to Terra?
What's to protect all the cats on my homeworld."
"That is a good question, Mr. Helms," replied P'teragon, "but
Cornucopia Genetics has thought of that possibility. It is just
another of the reasons that we offer the best service of this
kind in the Quadrant. None of our engineered viruses will
survive the jump through hyperspace. Once the virus has
replicated inside its animal host, it will fall apart in Whitney
pseudospace."
Tim nodded his head in approval.
"One more thing," said Stimon P'teragon.
"Yes?" asked Twee.
"Stay away from gene jockeys. They're nothing but trouble."
The Cornucopia people were as good as their word. Within a few
months, there were still just as many feral cats on Heard's
World, but all of them had a mild case of the sniffles and none
of them were reproducing. The treatment had not come cheaply
but, still, the costs had only cut Twee's enormous profits on
the venture by about a tenth.
Tim Helms picked up a few more credits by designing a live trap
to capture the loose cats. Baited with an old-Earth weed called
"catnip" (of which the Helms had a small supply), the traps were
an immediate success. Recaptured animals were returned to their
original owners with a caution and, of course, a somewhat
more-than-nominal fee or simply sold as new, on the open market.
Profits soared. Tim added catnip to the products that he and his
wife would bring on their next trip, mentally rubbing his hands
together in anticipation of the credits they would make. The
lucky couple were back in business.
Tim and Theresa stood next to the now-released Jupiter getting
ready to head out on the remainder of their somewhat delayed
merchant foray. Hagedorn Twee, with a cat purring on each of his
massive shoulders stood before them.
"I almost hate to do this," said Theresa. "But I do have
something else you might be interested in, Merchant Twee. With
all the ruckus over the cats, we didn't have time to show this
to you."
"Yes?" asked Twee, expectantly.
"Okay, Tim," Theresa called out.
Tim released a white and brown-spotted animal with four legs, a
short, pointy tail and a pair of droopy ears. To the delight of
the two humans, the creature went immediately over and sniffed
the big alien's foot. After a brief investigation, the little
animal's ears perked up and its tail began to wag. It then put
its two front legs up on the big alien's elephantine leg. The
alien reached down in wonder to touch the small animal who began
to lick the huge hand with a wet, pink tongue.
"What an adorable creature!" said Hagedorn Twee, with obvious
Hearder delight. "What is it?"
"It's an Earth-native animal called a 'puppy,'" said Theresa.
Twee picked the dog up and laughed his booming, strangled-horse
laugh as the little creature licked his pebbly face. Obviously,
the two cats on the Hearder's shoulders weren't nearly as
pleased as the Hearder with this most recent turn of events.
As if in anticipation, Theresa answered the Hearder's next
question.
"Yes, Merchant Twee, it has been neutered..."
Phillip Nolte (nolte@idui1.csrv.uidaho.edu)
----------------------------------------------
Phillip Nolte is a contributing editor to InterText, in addition
to being an extension professor at the University of Idaho and
an expert on potato diseases. He lives in Idaho Falls with his
wife and daughter.
Back from the West by Mark Smith
===================================
"Go this way, asshole."
"No, you miserable simp."
"That's a one-way street for chrissakes."
For over a decade, through a dozen houses in two states, I have
kept these eight pages: double-spaced, typed on the back of
scrap paper, fastened together with a rusty staple. Some phrases
and even paragraphs repeating like an echo, or like we really
lived it more than once even that night. Now here they are
again, beside my keyboard, the rambling, incoherent log of the
night of January 1, 1980, the first night of a bygone decade.
Start again, middle of page three.
"Go this way, asshole."
"No, you miserable simp."
"That's a one-way street, for chrissakes."
The car careens across three lanes of the empty avenue and up a
one-way street. Almost immediately, a siren sounds behind us:
the same cop that has followed us since we stopped the car in
the middle of Guadalupe at three o'clock in the morning.
Bobalouie, huge and imperturbably drunk, has been driving. He
pulls over to the curb cautiously. The stop lights at most of
the intersections are set to flash at this hour. Guadalupe looks
like a carnival with no people. None of us -- Riddle in the
front seat with his brother Bobalouie and me in the back -- say
anything.
Black cop, young guy, climbs out of his car and walks up to us,
the faint edge of uncertainty or fear showing around his eyes.
I'm thinking, this must be a textbook drill in the academy:
carload of drunks cruising deserted streets in the middle of the
night.
He asks for Bobalouie's license, which is forthcoming without a
word. He shines his huge cop flashlight on it. "Let me see yours
also, please," he says to Riddle. And then to me: "You too."
I reach for my back pocket.
"Hold it!" he says, thinking of guns, I guess, afraid he might
already be dead. He says:
"You guys get out of the car. All of you."
He tells us to stand on the curb. It is January 1, 1980, and
cold as hell. I'm wearing jeans and a shirt, no sweater or
jacket. I start to put my hands in my pockets.
"Don't put your hands in your pockets." Then he adds, "Please."
His politeness in the face of adversity is admirable. As I pull
my hands slowly out of my pockets, I think, I should write to
the mayor and commend this officer's damn fine manners. I forget
to note his badge number.
Next thing I know, Riddle is jabbering like Lear's fool. He's
saying,
"Lissen, sir, this is the way it is. . . We just drove all the
way across the whole fuckin' -- oh, excuse me -- the whole damn
state. All the way back from Big Bend. Ever been out there? Oh,
it's beautiful country, sir. And we've been drinking all day. I
guess I shouldn't tell you that, but it's true. Christ, you have
to drink when you drive out there in West Texas, you can't
survive any other way. Anyway, well, we've been looking around
for our friend's house. . ."
I tune Riddle out, I figure he's sealed our fate now. I stare
into the hypnotic spin of the red and blue flashers on top of
the cop car. For a minute I forget how cold I am. I figure if I
can keep still for a minute and not say anything, maybe the
cop'll throw Riddle in the can for standing there on the street
corner and trying to be honest and Bobalouie and I can go on
home.
Then, son-of-a-bitch if the cop hasn't cracked a smile. A smile!
And he's telling Riddle, "Well, I can see you fellas have had a
little too much to drink. Are you sure you can find your way
home now?"
I break for the car, my only hunch all night paid off. I had
followed my mind and kept quiet and not said one single thing.
Neither had Bobalouie, but then he hasn't said a word all night.
Now I'm piling back into the car hoping my beer isn't cold.
Yes. That part is exactly as I remember it. Just the same way.
They had driven all day from Big Bend, unhinged by the combined
forces of drinking, drugs and the long road through the vast
Trans Pecos. But I don't remember feeling nervous with the cop
there. Just cold. Cold as freaking hell.
"Brrr. I'm cold. Aren't you cold?"
"It'll be warm in a minute."
Bobalouie fiddles with the heater controls. We're still looking
for this woman Aurora's house. Some crazy artist friends that
Riddle says are the only people he knows who never go to sleep.
"But are you cold?"
"Naw, not really. Maybe a little in my toes. It was ten degrees
in the desert last night."
"What did you learn on your trip that you can use in your book?"
Book? I vaguely remember Riddle had it in his head to write a
book. A book about bird watching. He rambled about it for
months. He had written the first chapter, even: a whole chapter
on binoculars, how to pick them out, what the different lens
numbers meant. All that stuff that Riddle knew about. That was
why we gravitated toward him. He knew about things the rest of
us never even thought about. Science and nature and sports and
food. Solid, physical things which, at that time, we thought we
were too cerebral to think about. Things that I've learned to
appreciate more since then. I wish I had asked more about those
things when he was here, when I had the chance.
"What did you learn on your trip that you can use in your book?"
Riddle begins, "I learned that the second most abundant large
raptor in the desert is the Marsh Hawk. There are four orders of
hawkish predators with talons in the desert. They are one,
falcons; two, buteos- -buzzard hawks like the Red Tail; three,
the accipiters. . ."
I think about getting up to find a bird book to check this, but
keep reading instead.
"...the true hawks, they are built like buteos with tails; four,
kites, represented by one species, the Marsh Hawk. Doesn't it
strike you as odd, Stetson, that the most abundant hawk in the
Chihuahua desert is the Marsh Hawk? Yes, I can use all of that
in the book. I can make it a parenthetical remark. It was ten
degrees in the desert. Did I tell you that?" I nod, and he says,
"Well, did I tell you that my brother slept in the car? In the
car, that pigfucker."
Bobalouie looks over at Riddle and shakes his big head. Riddle
continues to rave at me over the back of the front seat.
"He took a hit of acid this morning before we started back. Ten
o'clock in the freaking morning. Do you believe that? We stopped
at this place in Sanderson. . ."
Sanderson. I keep a map of Texas tacked to the wall over my
desk. I stand up and check the tiny print of the index for
Sanderson. K-8. There it is, right where it's suppose to be.
Junction of 90 and 285, middle of nowhere.
"...for coffee and his eyes are little slits. I'm scared to
death he's going to freak out and push over a table or
something. Nothing but mobile homes out there in the middle of
the Trans Pecos, just a water tower with cars all around it and
that's the whole damn place and Bob's trying to start a fight."
Bobalouie turns toward Riddle and I actually think he is about
to say something, set the record straight, give his side of the
story, when Riddle says, "Here's the place. Pull in here."
I flip ahead to find the next part that makes any sense: the
part about Aurora. The painting was real. I remember that
exactly. And Aurora was her name. But I don't remember any of
the rest of it. Jesus. It's all in front of me and I have to say
it happened, but damned if I remember it. I especially don't
remember Bob being there with us. But he was with us all night
so he had to be. I just can't remember. What else have I
forgotten?
Riddle barges in without knocking. Nobody seems to mind. Several
people are sitting on the floor of the small living room, but
the only one I know is Aurora, a skinny woman with baggy jeans,
who is an art major at the University. This is a coffee crowd
and there are several cups sitting around their knees and ankles
and a big crystal ashtray full of butts. There is a cloud of
smoke in the air.
"Hi, everybody. Happy New Year! Riddle, I'm glad you came by,"
says Aurora.
"I thought it might be too late," says Riddle, pulling out a
cigarette.
"No, not at all. How was your trip?"
Riddle starts in on his familiar patter we've been listening to
all night so I take the tour of the living room. As I turn
around, I am facing a peculiar painting which I recognize at
once. It is a canvas, about three feet tall and two feet wide,
on which is painted a picture of a slatternly, sullen Latina in
a red, low-cut, sleeveless dress with shoulder straps. She is
barefoot and very brown. But what is very peculiar about this
painting is that the canvas has been extravagantly bowed outward
like a sail blown by a stiff wind from behind. The effect is
obviously meant to suggest an advanced pregnancy not only of the
woman but of the painting itself. I had seen the painting in a
student art exhibit a year before and I even remembered the
title: "The Holy Virgin."
"Do you like it?" Aurora says to me. "Steve painted it." She
indicates a quiet, lanky man in his early thirties sitting
cross-legged on the floor.
After a few minutes, Riddle glances at Bob, hulking larger than
life here in this close room and obviously out of place, and
decides it is time to go before something gets broken.
Before I know it, we're back in the car and on our way out to
Hill's Cafe on South Congress.
I get up and go check the phone book. I haven't thought about
Hill's for years. Still there. By then we were flagging. Deep,
deep tiredness was really beginning to set in, but in spite of
it, I remember Riddle was still geared up. I remember him like
he was still here, leaning over the back of the front seat
ranting about football.
I watch out the window as we roll lazily past the junk shops and
neighborhood bars that line the lonely streets east of downtown.
I notice an occasional straggler winding his way home from a
party, but otherwise the streets are quiet and the only cars are
the ones parked along the curb.
In the front seat, Riddle continues to rave at me, showing no
signs of tiring. He's onto football now, he says:
"I'm starting the eighties with absolutely no money in the
world. Do you hear me? No money! So you've got to do this. Go
down in the morning and get as much money as you can out of the
bank and put every penny on Tampa Bay in the NFC playoffs. I'm
golden on this, believe me. I've been predicting it since the
start of the season."
Something seems to flash by in the air between us.
"Did you see that?"
"See what?"
"Never mind. Finish what you were saying."
I'm not at all sure what this last part means, but that's what
it says.
"I would stake my reputation and my tattered copy of Tom Jones
on it if I'm not right."
"You mean that if I win this thing, I collect all of this money
and if I lose I lose my hard-earned cash and get some nasty old
doorstop of a book you want to get rid of anyway? Do I have that
right?"
Riddle shrugs hopelessly and says to Bobalouie: "What can I say?
No way he's going to take this deal. Can you believe it?" His
eyes trace the air in the car and he says to me: "Tell me what
you saw a minute ago. I think I just saw it again."
It's not here, but I remember saying to Bobalouie earlier in the
evening: "I really see you as a biker. A bad-ass biker bouncer
in some killer club on the eastside." And he got really mad. He
was downright indignant and mentioned it several times during
the evening. I think he thought he was a gentle, mellow type in
spite of his appearance. I meant it as kind of a joke, but he
took it entirely seriously. That might be why he doesn't say a
damn word until we get to Hill's.
Five in the morning in Hill's Cafe. . .
This is where I lose the thread. It all runs together. I wonder
when I typed this part. That night or later. Maybe I slept and
woke up and typed it the next day with noon coffee and loud
music. Or maybe I even had the damn typewriter with us in the
car that night. We did things like that then, fictionalizing as
we went along.
Five in the morning in Hill's Cafe, we are carefully attended by
a wizened old waitress in classic rhinestone cat's-eye glasses.
She seems to know Bob. We all order the same thing, down to the
dressing on our salads.
"You boys been camping, have you?" she says.
"Yes ma'am," says Riddle. "Big Bend National Park."
"Well, that's real nice. I love the desert, myself. Do a little
thing where I grow little cactuses and moss and things in little
logs I collect and hollow out."
We all nod at her and she smiles and goes off. We grin at each
other, but before we can even start talking again, she's back
with our salads.
"So what were you boys doin' out there? Just sight-seein'?"
I say: "They were collecting material for a book."
"You don't say," she says. "What kinda book would that be?"
Bob is staring at her with a distant, stoned look. I wonder if
he is awake. Riddle's digging into his salad. I say, "It's a
naturalist book about the birds and animals of the Trans Pecos
region."
"Izzat so?" says the old woman, visibly impressed. "I'll
gitchall some more ice tea."
Bobalouie points his fork at me and suddenly rumbles into speech
for the first time in hours: "Don't think you can bullshit that
old toadfrog. I'm tellin' you because I know. She don't hear a
damn word you're sayin." He spears a fork full of salad and
pokes it into his craw. "An she don't never change her underwear
neither."
Riddle laughs so hard he starts to choke on his salad. Bobalouie
has receded back into a Delphic silence, but he's watching his
brother choke with an amused grin, obviously pleased to be the
cause of such happiness.
The steaks arrive sizzling and they are just like we ordered
them: Bob's is well done, mine is rare and Riddle slices off a
piece of his, impales it on his fork and holds it out to me,
"Ahhh, medium rare. Just like a steak should be."
We devour the food without further talk and I'm wondering how
I'm going to pay for this twelve-dollar meal with three dollars
in my pocket. The waitress leaves the lime-green check face down
on the table and says, "Will they be anything else for ya'll
tonight?" We grunt no and she says, "Well, ya'll have a good one
now, y'hear."
Bobalouie pays for all of us without a second thought.
As we walk back out to the car, Riddle says: "You see there? My
brother just bought three steaks at Hill's. Over forty dollars
and he shrugged it off like you never would. That's why you owe
it to yourself to go down to the bank in the morning and get
your hands on every penny you have in the world and put it on
Tampa--"
Bobalouie interrupts Riddle, saying: "Can't you understand? He's
not going to bet on the game. He doesn't even like football."
"Like football?" says Riddle. "Who said anything about liking
football? I'm talking about a business proposition. You don't
think the people who own McDonald's eat there do you?"
The sun is coming up and I am very tired. I feel like lying in
the back seat, but Bob beats me to it, so I decide to drive. Bob
belches once and says, "What did you mean when you said I should
be a biker? I resent the hell out of that." Then he is asleep.
We climb out onto Congress Avenue on our way back to nowhere.
The cursor is blinking at me, waiting for me to add something.
What can I? All I remember of that night is what is written
there, which is to say that what I remember has become what I
wrote, whether that was really what happened or not. It wasn't
even that long ago, but it feels like another lifetime.
Why isn't Riddle here to remember for me? He could've remembered
-- he was good at little details. I should've asked when I had
the chance; now it's too late.
Riddle says: "Don't mind him, he's crazy. Did I tell you that he
just about got us into a fight? We stopped in this little town
called Sanderson and..."
He stops and looks at me. "Did I tell you this already?"
I look at him and say, "Yeah, don't you remember?"
"No. In fact, I don't remember a lot of this. Maybe I'm losing
my mind."
"It's just sleep deprivation," I say.
"Jesus, that's a relief, Stetson."
"Anyway, it was a long time ago," I say.
Riddle nods. "It sure as hell was."
We drive. After a few minutes, we are downtown and the sun is
rising on our right, big and orange. I remember suddenly that
there are things I wanted to know more about. I say, "Tell me
more about the hawks."
Riddle's face brightens and he says: "What I might not have told
you is that the most common raptor in the Chihuahuan desert is
the Marsh Hawk. Did I tell you that?"
Mark Smith (mlsmith@tenet.edu)
--------------------------------
Mark Smith has been writing fiction and non-fiction for over ten
years. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in _Window_,
_Spectrum_, _Malcontent_, _Epiphany_, and the
_Lone Star Literary Quarterly_. "Back from the West" is from
Mark's forthcoming collection of stories, _Riddle_, winner of
the 1992 Austin Book Award. Mark lives in Austin, Texas.
Just a Company Man by P.R. Morrison
======================================
The name's Kinkade... Sam Kinkade, Database Investigator. It
began on a summer day in '26... April, I think. I remember it
reasonably well because it was the first time in six years that
the solar diffusion index had fallen below 5.1 and allowed the
sun to be seen by the populace of L.A. Caused a lot of
confusion, as I recall, and a few cases of retinal scarring
amongst younger kids.
I'd stumbled into my office the night before with a dozen
Ukrainian slammers under my belt and tried to catch a few hours
sleep on the couch. It took all my willpower to prevent those
little dissidents from staging a counter-revolution when the
visiphone rang in the morning, raising me from
semiconsciousness.
I crawled to the visiphone, noting before I hit the accept
button that the call was being scrambled by the Federal Bureau
of Database Investigation. Sure enough, the craggy face of Rick
McLusky, the regional head of the FBDI sprang into view and
pierced my eardrums with its opening remark.
"Kinkade," he said, "we've got another job for you. A big one
this time."
"Great," I moaned in reply.
"What's wrong?" McLusky asked, clearly taken aback by my lack of
enthusiasm. "You sick or something?"
"Sort of. What is it anyway? I've got no time for damned FBDI
cases. You guys think it's big when some kid pisses on the
vidiscanner in the john at the hover-rail center!"
"No, Kinkade... this time it's different. This time we got a
renegade."
"So? Who hasn't? If I had 10 credits for every guy who had his
universal identifier cut out of his wrist I'd be sitting in the
Seychelles, lounging about on my gravity yacht. Look, can't you
see I'm having trouble mapping onto reality at the moment?" I
said, starting to look longingly at the vacuum sink in the
corner of my office.
"Cut the crap, Kinkade," McLusky said suddenly. "This is no
ordinary case. The guy was a dyed-in-the-wool Company man. Bluer
than a laser blast and twice as straight... until now that is.
The system hasn't recorded a transaction from him in over a week
and the Board want him found. They don't like unerased Company
men going renegade. It doesn't look good."
Although the rest of my body wanted to secede from my stomach, I
was beginning to get interested in this case. My only
reservation was that experience had taught me to avoid Company
business if at all possible.
"Look, McLusky," I said to the Bureau man, hoping to ease myself
out of this one, "You know me. I have the wrong psychprofile for
Company business and they know it. In fact, that's the reason I
left it in the first place. I can't tolerate their linearity.
Come to think of it... why can't they handle it themselves?
Internal investigations are always much neater. Hell, why
doesn't the Bureau handle it? Giving it to a private DI is a
risky business."
McLusky appeared as if he wanted to reach through the phone and
rip out my tonsils.
"Kinkade!" he roared. "You know damned well the Company threw
you out and you were lucky they didn't erase you at the same
time! The only reason they didn't was because they knew you were
the best DI they ever had -- screwy, but good. You've still got
your memories because they wanted to keep you as a resource --
to use whenever they needed some different kind of help."
Having got that out, McLusky began to settle down and his nose
looked less like an old Soviet distress beacon.
"Listen," he said in a subdued tone, "this guy is good... very,
very good. They can't trace him. You know how they think over
there -- in straight lines. But they think that your screwball
logic might be able to find him. And apart from that, it isn't a
request. You know your position. Your privacy level could be
lowered like that," he said, snapping his fingers sharply. "You
can only be monitored by level sevens right now, but in five
seconds you could be a level one again. You won't be able to
scratch your ass without the whole system knowing it."
McLusky was right of course. He knew it and I knew it. If they
busted me to that level, every toilet cubicle had to be opened
with my universal identifier, every food purchase involved it,
every Ukrainian slammer... all of it on the system and available
to anyone who wanted to look at it. It made me shudder.
"And remember this..." McLusky continued, "Tracking has been on
the increase lately."
That was the final straw. Tracking had become the pastime for
the modern pervert, invading lives and destroying them by
denying the most basic elements of privacy. If a tracker
selected me as his target, following me on the system wherever I
went... It would be a nightmare. Some of them even took delight
in predicting your movements and leaving obscene messages on the
systemlink they thought you would use next. I knew I couldn't
take that. Never again!
I rubbed my eyes, feeling very beaten all of a sudden.
"OK... I'll do it. Gimme his identifier and I'll see what I can
do. No guarantees, though. If this guy is as good as you say, he
might have already beaten the system."
McLusky nodded, apparently satisfied. As he tapped out the guy's
code I headed for some coffee and decided that tomorrow would be
a good time to start. In the meantime I had to rediscover what
it was like to be human.
The next morning I logged into my systemlink and entered the
identifier. He was a level six called James Tyler and he was
Snow White. A traffic camera had caught him six months ago
running a red light, but other than that there was nothing. The
map of his auto use showed that he hadn't visited any known
illegal establishments, but it did indicate a frequently visited
apartment north of the stratoport. Probably his girlfriend, I
reasoned. But then, who knew these days? DNA work regularly
transformed men into women or vice versa, or things in between.
I made a note of the address and traced the last transaction
he'd made. Two double scotches at a bar called the Purple Lizard
in the rundown part of the Southside. And had he been ripped
off! 20 credits each!
I grabbed my respirator, strapped on my blaster and headed for
the hover-rail station. The smell of hydrocarbons would do me
good.
To say that the Purple Lizard was a dive was like saying the
sewer treatment plant had an odor. It was the basement of a
rundown apartment building and it made you wonder where you left
your lice repellent. It was a strange place for a Company man to
visit.
As I descended the stairs a gigantic guy of Italian descent came
out of the shadows and blocked my path. From the way the guy
talked it was clear that he hadn't been behind the door when the
brains were handed out. It sounded as if he wasn't even in the
room.
"Sorry, mister," he said "but ain't nobody allowed ta have
blasters in the Lizard. So gimme it or else I gotta bust ya."
I briefly thought about blasting the guy, but I knew that
dinosaurs had small brains and you had to be a great shot or
very lucky.
I handed over my piece and brushed aside a piece of black
curtain, revealing the Lizard in all its glory. A couple of guys
-- probably unidentifieds -- were playing magnetopool and
drinking martian red. The bartender was an old guy with a lot of
facial scars and big hamfists. All of them stared at me as I
took my place at the bar.
"You got guts, anyway," said the bartender as I grabbed a stool.
"How's that?" I asked as I tapped a Cosmic Camel out of its pack
and placed it on my lips.
"Well, we don't like upper levels in here. And in a minute, when
me and those two guys feel like it, we're gonna bust your head
open just for the fun of it," he said, looking very happy as he
finished.
"Is that so?" I replied, taking a long drag on the Camel. "In
that case, I just hope you guys are wearing blaster jackets."
"What blaster? Joey got it outside. I watched him!"
"Sure, he got that one. But you see, my left hand hasn't been
the same since the assault on Petrograd. A fragmentation grenade
blew it off and I thought it might be handy -- excuse the pun --
to have a miniblaster installed in the cyber replacement. Got
the picture?"
The bartender clasped and unclasped his fists in suppressed
rage.
"You better not stay too long, mister," he said. "You can't
guard your back forever."
"Tsk, tsk," I said, knowing that I shouldn't push my advantage
if I was to get what I wanted. "Look, all I'm after is a little
information. See this guy?" I showed him a visifacsimile of
Tyler. "He was here a week ago. The system says at 6:30 on the
tenth. I just want to know what happened to him."
"Never seen him before," the bartender said. "We don't give
information to the Company anyhow."
"I'm not from the Company. I'm a private DI and the system says
he was here. I just want to know why."
I pulled out a gold Krugerrand and tossed it onto the bar.
"Trading in gold is outside the system and illegal," the barman
said, perhaps surprised that an upper level would be carrying
it.
"Well, I won't tell if you won't" I said.
"OK. He was here," the barman blurted out as he seized the coin.
"What happened to him?" I said, placing my hand on the man's
closed fist.
"We beat him up, same as we were gonna do to you. We threw him
out and that was the last we saw of him. That's it."
He had no reason to lie, so I decided to cut my losses and do
some thinking outside the confines of the Purple Lizard.
"OK... thanks," I said as I stood away from the bar and pointed
my hand at the barman's belly. I found the back door and as I
weaved through the garbage cans, I spared a thought for Joey and
his coming chastisement. The cyberarm was always a good con.
As I strolled up the street, donning my respirator, I thought
about what I had. Tyler was beaten up in a bar he wouldn't be
seen dead in. Why? He must have been meeting someone. Someone,
who could've protected him, but didn't show up.
But who was the someone? It looked like a dead end, so I took a
chair at a nearby diner and ordered a cup of coffee. Well, they
said it was coffee. It was black anyway. As I slowly sipped, I
wondered if I might be able to get a better angle with some
database interrogation.
Now, as all truly great systems men know, databases are very
fallible, capricious and unpredictable. Sometimes they go down
for no reason or function perfectly when they shouldn't, or
perform differently on tasks that are completely routine. The
true art of systems use is to regard them as very delicate
beasties. That was the secret of Sam Kinkade, plus a few tricks
I'd kept from the Company. I felt capable of working a little
magic, so I had the coffee credited and found the nearest
systemlink.
It was an old model; no voice recognition, just a battered old
keyboard. Still, it would do. I placed my wrist identifier over
the reader, logged in and looked at the systats. There was a lot
of activity and that would make tracing the system failure a lot
harder. I punched in the node and vector code of a program that
had cost me two thousand credits from an old, alcoholic systems
designer whose only memory after erasure was the location of a
very special, hidden program. That remarkable piece of code
caused the system to crash and in the last few moments of
sentience while the protection was failing, it copied the files
of anyone up to level eight. That should be high enough to get
what I wanted -- the files of Tyler's immediate boss; somebody
that even Tyler had probably never met.
I placed in a wildcard identifier for Tyler's superior. Then,
with trembling fingers (crashing systems still gives a thrill) I
executed the program and watched as the network with its
thousands of mainframes slowly died, wracked by the cancerous
spread of confusion that the program unleashed. Finally, on the
bitmapped image of the world map that showed the operational
status of the various nodes, the last pixel faded out.
Of course it would be restarted within minutes, with much head
scratching. But the fault would never be traced. The system was
too complex. It could never know which of the millions of
programs active at that moment, or what combination of them,
actually caused the crash. Meanwhile, I knew that the
information I needed would be safely in my disk area to peruse
at my leisure. All I had to do was wait for the inevitable
return of the system.
At that moment, I sensed something behind me and had half turned
around when the butt of a blaster smashed into my temple,
sending me crashing to the ground. As I lay there dazed, I was
vaguely aware of someone stepping over me and manipulating the
systemlink.
Suddenly, a blur of red hit him squarely in the back and he fell
heavily, rolling for some distance before getting to his feet
and running off. I was still pretty much out of it, but managed
to stand and lean on the wall. Next to the systemlink I noticed
an ice cool blonde in a red jumpsuit regarding me with some
concern.
"Are you OK?" she said in a very husky voice.
"So you're my savior," I said feeling like the cat who got the
cream. "What have I done to deserve this?"
"You're looking for a friend of mine I believe" she said. It all
made some sense now.
"So you're 1139 Catalonia Boulevard," I said, noting to myself
that James Tyler was a man of good taste.
"Yes. Pamela Aldiss is my name. Although you probably know
that."
"No, I didn't, actually," I said. "Although if I'd known you
could wear a jumpsuit like that, I would have made it my
business to find out."
"You're very flattering Mr. Kinkade," she said with some
wariness. "But I have often found that flatterers are no match
for karate."
"Yes, I noticed," I said, raising my hands in mock surrender.
"I'll keep it in mind."
She responded with a fleeting smile. "The most important thing
right now is to find Jim. Have you made any progress yet? The
FBDI said they'd engaged you yesterday."
I hated to disappoint her, but after rescuing me she deserved
the truth.
"Unfortunately... no." I said flatly. "But somebody else is
interested in this case. That guy could have killed me, but
didn't. He was more interested in what I was doing with the
systemlink."
She thought about that for a while, then helped me into her car
-- a gas turbined pink Maretta. I tried not to notice the
curvature of her legs as we tore down the high velocity lane of
the expressway, exchanging what little information we had.
"Jim was in the Global Division," she began, the past tense
bothering me at first. "He was involved in negotiations with
foreign governments... you know, installations, software
capabilities. It was tricky stuff. These days, no government can
afford not to be part of the system. Their commerce and trade
would suffer enormously. But at the same time, they've always
been concerned about who has the information and what they do
with it. Of course, anybody with any brains knows that the
Company has it all and it's probably just a matter of time
before governments cease to exist. Jim's job was to placate them
while it all happened."
"Hmmm," I replied as I patched into her car's mobilelink.
"What are you doing?" she asked, unable to take her eyes off the
road and focus on the dim display.
"Oh, just checking my creds," I replied, trying to suppress my
shock as I read the system output. "Where are we going anyway?"
"To my place."
I grinned. She scowled.
"Jim may have left a message there," she explained. "He can beat
the security monitors. The system told me where you'd left the
hover rail, so, while I waited for him to contact me, I thought
we could team up. OK?" she smiled, turning to me briefly.
It was an engaging smile, but one that didn't last. As I looked
down some text slowly assembled on the systemlink.
"It's for both of us." I said. "Tyler wants us to meet him at
the Stratopark. 82nd level in half an hour."
We left 50 meters of rubber as we did a 180 on the expressway,
the injectors shrieking with power. Pam knew how to drive. My
mind considered what else she was good at.
The Stratopark was windswept and although swirling with smog we
left our respirators off to help our visibility. It didn't take
us long to find Tyler. He was sitting on the bonnet of a Blue
Maretta. Blue for boys, pink for girls.
"Darling!" Pam exclaimed as she ran with open arms toward him.
"Not so fast!" Tyler said as he pulled out a pocket blaster.
Pam stopped short, the smile sliding off her face and falling
onto the concrete.
"So, you know," she said.
Tyler chuckled wryly to himself. "I had an idea. But I had to be
sure. Kinkade got the information I needed."
"You mean about Pam?" I said, starting to piece it together.
"Yes. You see, I was working in Moscow, placating what's left of
the government. You know, reassuring them about the system, but
at the same time, buying certain individuals, eliminating
others. The problem is, New Russia is a closed society. The
central executive is aged and almost inseparable in its
new-found hatred for the West. Buying them wasn't easy, hitting
them impossible. The Company was unhappy. So, sensing failure, I
allowed the executive to buy me. In exchange for a comfortable
mansion near the Baltic, I'll tell them how to use the system
and avoid being subjugated by it. Pam was to go with me. It was
all arranged. We were to meet a Russian operative at the Purple
Lizard and make good our escape. But both of them didn't show
and the local yokels took out their frustration on me."
"That much I can see," I said, noticing his bruises.
"Yes, but you also found out that Pam is really my boss and the
Company's best eliminator. She blew away my contact. I had
suspicions, of course. Pam was the only one who knew of our
rendezvous at the Lizard. And when the Russian agent who had
tailed you managed to get a glimpse of the systemlink you'd used
and saw it storing files on Pam in your area, I decided to have
a look for myself. I am a level seven, you know. I read them
just before I came here."
I screwed up my face at the thought of Tyler rummaging through
my love letters and other desiderata.
"Those files revealed the truth. You see, the Company has a nice
policy these days. It arranges for top executives to meet and
become involved with their best eliminators. It makes it neater
if the exec goes renegade. Lovers are much cleaner killers."
"True," Pamela said coldly. "And it would have been much
cleaner, Darling, if not for your contact. I had to garrote him,
but obviously I couldn't meet you covered in blood. You can
thank Russian training for your life."
"And I'm afraid that your life, my lover, has just about run
out," Tyler said with a smile.
"Sorry to disappoint you, Jim," she replied, unperturbed. "You
see, the Russians aren't here. Your backups are gone. Ten
minutes ago, we sold them an operations exec. A level nine man.
We sold him for you and a few million credits."
"You're lying! You couldn't risk the information."
"Unfortunately, I'm not. He's been erased. Of course, the
Russians don't know that. It was a very nice job. Bye-bye, Jim,"
she said, as she pressed one of her earrings. A second later,
Tyler's abdomen disappeared as a microgrenade from a sniper's
rifle punched through his body.
Pam walked over to the body, and felt for a pulse, always the
professional.
Then she pressed her fingers against her lips and placed them on
Tyler's cheek. She looked up and engaged me with those empty,
crystal blue eyes.
"And how is your memory, Mr. Kinkade?" she asked. "They said
that your involvement would bring him to us. All I had to do was
stick with you. They said it always seemed to happen that way.
'Screwball logic' was the term."
I blushed and stammered as I recalled the dismemberment of Jim
Tyler and observed the closeness of her hand to the two-way
transceiver in her earring.
"Frankly, I... I've had trouble with my memory lately... Miss...
Miss...?"
She smiled at me, crocodile-like, then got up and began to walk
away.
"Hey!" I yelled in sudden realization. "What about my creds? You
owe me."
She turned around, slowly reaching up to her neck, then chuckled
as she looked where I'd been standing.
When pressed, my impersonation of thin air is totally amazing.
The Long Way Home by P.R. Morrison
=====================================
Aegis propped himself up on one elbow and shook his head. He
looked out through the shattered remains of the assault craft at
the spinning emptiness of space and began to piece together the
most recent fragments of his memory. It was obvious: they had
been hit during the run-in and what remained of their ship --
barely a platform of jagged metal now -- was careening away from
the battle totally out of control. He checked himself for damage
and glanced around for the remainder of the squad. As he spotted
them amongst the debris and crushed metal, he emitted a status
request. It was a short blast of high intensity, high frequency
radiation that was able to overcome the most powerful of
tactical jammers. If any of the units remained functional they
would respond.
One by one, they stirred and gave their systats. The point unit,
a heavily armored cannon of limited intelligence had emerged
unscathed and steadied itself on its hydraulic legs. The three
utility weapon units were completely functional, but the two
flank units, agile and hence lightly protected, both reported
mobility problems. Aegis winced to himself as he traced the
communications unit's transponder to a mash of melted armor and
carbon composites. Without it, they were on their own.
Of course there was no question of what had to be done. Earth
had been expanding its frontiers for more than five centuries
now, and he had available to him the data from every engagement,
and every maneuver of all of the units that had survived those
encounters. It was one of the reasons that the cosmos had
yielded so totally before the forces of Man. But of course it
wasn't the only reason.
Carefully, he jury-rigged a controller to the remaining power
unit and with short bursts managed to slow the ship's spin to a
lazy roll. He looked wistfully for a moment at the fusion
weapons that flared occasionally from the battle more than a
million kilometers away. It would be a long wait.
And as he sat there for the moment, slowly contemplating the
enormity of space, it occurred to him that the correctness of
what he had planned was not immediately self-evident. He was
alone, apart from a mindless collection of assault units; alone
without power or communications. It could be decades before they
were found and already the loneliness had begun to eat at him.
He was an AEGIS -- Assault Engineer Grafted
Intellect-on-Silicon. He knew what he was and who he was because
they had been forced to tell him. The prototypes had all gone
insane until their identity had been established for them.
It had started during the initial expansion from Earth when
first contact was made and the casualties were without rival in
the history of human conflict. And so the clone factories were
initiated, each producing exact copies of military archetypes --
copies by the million. Pilots, gunners, commandos... whatever
was needed. The gene pool was scoured for the best of each and
their DNA was simply replicated ad nauseam. And it had worked
for a while... until the radiation levels of combat became so
unbearable that nothing evolved on Earth could tolerate them,
even with the best of protection. That was when the droids were
developed. Although they lacked the instincts of humans, their
artificial form of intelligence was sufficient for most
engagements and in their thousands, their sheer weight of
numbers was usually more than adequate.
For two centuries the droids had proved sufficient to push the
frontiers further from Earth. Yet it was not merely force of
arms that had determined the success of humanity. As the alien
breeds fled before it, it became clear to all observers that no
other species could match humanity for sheer destructive
ingenuity. One by one, the telepathic worlds fell after the
development of the mind insulator. The warrior races of Orion,
so proud, so filled with honor, were easily enslaved after their
king was captured, deprogrammed by the mind engineers of Earth
and instructed to capitulate. Even the spawn species of the
outer systems... creatures who bred in billions from
hermaphroditic spores, were destroyed in minutes as their suns
were extinguished by neutron inhibitors.
And behind all of this were the defense laboratories that
constantly devised new forms of death so that everything that
crawled, walked, flew, slid or even thought in ways that were
different from man's, was simply vaporized, diseased or
obliterated to extinction.
Aegis' mind chuckled to itself. It was ironic that for a hundred
millennia, man had sat under the stars and stared at them in
fear and trepidation, yet it was the rest of the Galaxy that had
most to fear from the malignancy that festered on the blue-green
planet.
Notwithstanding these successes, the search for the ultimate
tactical unit had continued. Although the droids were extremely
capable, they lacked the intuitiveness of humans, their
deviousness and the ability to lie and deceive. The clones on
the other hand, although possessing these qualities, were
physically unsuited to the heaviest engagements. The obvious
solution of course was to unite the best features of man and
machine -- the subtlety, deception, courage and survival
instincts of man, and the power, toughness and durability of
machine. Aegis and others like him were the result.
Eventually, the engineers had stumbled onto a technique that
allowed them to mind graft onto non-organic systems. The
possibilities for mating a good tactical mind with an android
body were only too apparent. But the early prototypes had been
disappointing. For whatever reason, it appeared that most minds
had an innate desire to define their own origin and that once
this was revealed to them, the reality of their death and
rebirth in silicon was often unacceptable and led to madness or
suicide. They had tried blocking memories at various levels, but
once more, it seemed that a vital component of mind function
involved a sense of identity and self concept. Although these
units did not go insane, they did not perform very well. It
became obvious that intuition and "humanness" was a property
that emerged from the whole system and not its components. And
although technology had made the copying of minds possible,
their manipulation of course, was still beyond the engineers.
Long ago, they had discovered that fundamental breakthroughs in
neuronal calculus were needed before the meaningful alteration
of the synaptic matrix was possible. These breakthroughs had
never happened.
In desperation, they looked for minds that were able to at least
tolerate the reality of rebirth and the loss of flesh, pulsing
blood and sexuality. They found one stored on a very old
holographic plate from the first century of expansion. Captain
David Boyd -- a former tactician with the Assault Corps had been
a volunteer for an early experiment in mind printing, and
although the medium was very crude, the engineers had finally
managed to recover the print.
Fortunately for the engineers, Boyd had quickly come to terms
with rebirth and what it meant. And as the synaptic matrix
meshed with the motor integration and sensor circuits of his
droid body, the true power of the man-machine synergy was
evidenced. One hundred Aegis units were now operating in Earth's
Armed Forces, all of them on combat evaluation before the big
production runs began and all of them possessing the mind of
David Boyd.
Of course, Aegis had been told all of this and more. He knew
that the Earth he had inhabited was now little more than a
blackened cinder of pollution and scrap metal. He could recall
his own death off the spiral arm of Orion, wounded and adrift in
a suit that was slowly depressurizing. He knew that his family,
the children he had watched come into the world, had been dead
for centuries. Their colony no longer even existed. He even
thought and communicated in a language form that was
unintelligible to the bulk of living humans.
And yet despite all of this, he had managed to define a purpose
for his continuing existence. He still felt a sense of duty, a
responsibility. He was after all, a soldier.
But now, as Aegis watched the Galaxy spin slowly beneath his
dangling feet, the sense of isolation was overpowering and a
feeling of horror rushed through him. He was a man, he thought.
A man who longed for other men, yet he was unlike any other man
that had ever existed. His mind stretched to the green forests
of an Earth that was long dead and he began to ache for it. He
wanted to feel the cool freshness of wind on his face, and not
the datalink from his armored exterior. He wanted another human
being to look into his eyes and fathom the depths they found
there. He wanted to view reality as humans saw it, not through
the infrared and ultraviolet intensifiers scattered about his
head. But above all, the dread of what he had become -- a
pathetic caricature of a human being -- wracked him with
emotion. The image of his dead wife twisted itself through his
consciousness and he felt his heart shift with anguish. He asked
himself how he could feel all of this when he didn't have a
heart, didn't have hormones or a nervous system. Then, as a sob
racked his mind, his body flinched and he touched his face where
he thought he could feel the tears welling up. He had known of
course that it was simply a mirage from an older, now
nonexistent body.
For some time he held his head in his hands and rocked back and
forth under the waves of grief, then attempted to gather his
thoughts as they ebbed from consciousness. It didn't take him
long to settle on his course of action. With a sudden resolve he
got to his feet and searched the survival pack for what he
wanted, flourishing it in triumph when his hand came upon it. It
was a solar sail. He knew that the thing had never been designed
for the purpose he intended, but he also knew that the only
thing he had plenty of, was time.
The sail was an ingenious invention. Although barely two
molecules thick, a standard pack would spread out to make a sail
with an area of hundreds of square kilometers. And this vast
area of composite material when filled with the solar wind --
the particles that emanated from the fusion hearts of all stars
-- could pull the remains of the assault craft from one star to
the next. It would take decades for the small acceleration to
build to an acceptable velocity, but Aegis knew that he could
remain operational for centuries by being trickle charged from
the available solar arrays. He even had the power packs of the
assault units to help pull him through.
And as he watched the sail billow with the output from some
distant solar flare, Aegis realigned the mounting device to
point them on a vector toward a distant red giant, knowing that
it would be the first tack of a very long voyage.
Then as he prepared for the first shutdown period, he
contemplated what he was about to do and the rightness of it.
Earth was a dream that no longer existed. But that didn't
matter. Earth was home -- the first home -- and nothing was more
powerful than the homing instinct. Besides, even now there was
the possibility that other Aegises were doing exactly what he
was doing; sailing, flying, hitch-hiking or walking their way
toward an identical past. Yet no matter what happened in the
end, no matter what reality dictated, he knew that he had to
chase the dream. After all, that was what being human was all
about.
P.R. Morrison (swkmorri@nuscc.nus.sg)
---------------------------------------
P.R. Morrison lives in Singapore. His stories have been
published in a Singaporean SF magazine, and "Just a Company Man"
won an SF writing competition in Australia.
FYI
=====
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