Willful Child: Wrath of Betty

by Steven Erikson

  “Captain! An alien ship has just appeared in front of us!”

  “No way,” said Tammy.

  “Onscreen, Sticks!”

  No one spoke for a few moments, and then Hadrian grunted and tilted his head, and then tilted it some more, and then even more until he was more or less regarding the screen from a near-upside-down position. “Ah!” he then said, settling back once more. “Hail them, please.”

  “Yes sir,” said Eden. “They’ve answered! Converting signal now, sir!”

  On the viewscreen the alien ship’s bridge appeared. The strange aliens facing them seemed to be hanging from the ceiling. They had three eyes on long stalks, a large fleshy mouth with plenty of big squarish teeth, no neck and amorphous bodies looking something like a termite mound.

  The one in the center opened its broad mouth and spoke. “In the name of the Only Sane Empire, I, Captain Deluvian Scorn of the OSEF Crabby Geezer, greet you. Now kindly adjust the ecliptic plane of your vessel to comply with Imperial Standard. Unless,” he added with a baring of teeth, “you really are hanging from the ceiling of your bridge!”

  “Why, hello,” Hadrian replied. “This is Captain Hadrian A. Sawback of the AFS Willful Child of the Affiliation of Civilized Planets, presently complying with the ecliptic standard as agreed upon by all space-faring species in this part of the galaxy—”

  “Well,” snarled the alien captain, “your part of the galaxy has clearly got it wrong! We are on the proper ecliptic plane, as should be obvious! Whereas you are upside down!”

  “Hmm, I’m curious,” said Hadrian as he leaned back in his chair. “I’ve never before met your species, nor have I heard of your Only Sane Empire. You must have traveled a long way.”

  “This is an exploration vessel, of course,” Captain Scorn replied. “And that is why we carry the maximum capacity of armaments. We have already met one or two other species in this arm of the galaxy and they were idiots, indeed as idiotic as you! Examine your Fleet Records and you may identify us as the Contrarians.”

  “Oh, so you’re the Contrarians!”

  “No we aren’t! We’re actually the Compliants! Now, turn your damned ship the right way up!”

  “I’m sorry,” Hadrian replied, “we are bound by treaty agreements—”

  “We agreed to nothing! We’ve never even heard of you! Affiliation of Civilized Planets? What’s that? A recipe for disaster! For galactic war! An oxymoron times two! There is only one sane species exploring space, and we are it!”

  “Look,” said Hadrian, “I really don’t mind you appearing to us upside down—”

  “You’re the upside-down ones, and we mind!”

  “This is the stupidest First Contact I’ve ever experienced.”

  “We’ve experienced stupider!”

  “Tell you what,” said Hadrian, “how about we just go our separate ways—”

  “No! You go our separate ways!”

  “Uhm, sure, why not? Which direction would you prefer us to go in?”

  The eyes on their stalks blinked and waved about for a few moments, and then Captain Scorn said, “That depends. Which way were you going before we ran into you?”

  “Actually, we were just about to turn around and head back on our old bearing.”

  “No! That’s where we’re going! You must go the opposite way!”

  Hadrian sighed. “All right, you win. Oh, and by the way, when you detect that lone planet orbiting the brown dwarf, don’t go there. Don’t land there, and if you do land there, don’t go unarmed.”

  “We’re going to that planet! We’re landing there! Unarmed!”

  “Oh well. See you later, then.”

  “Not if we see you first! Captain Scorn out!”

  The screen flickered, the bridge disappeared and the upside-down ship banked and hit the afterburners.

  “Tammy,” said Hadrian. “I do admit to having been wondering…”

  “What?”

  “No traffic. We’re pretty close to Sol System.” He shifted slightly, “Comms, picking up any AFS chatter?”

  Eden frowned. “You mean, on any of the known frequencies, sir?”

  “Why, yes. But why not include the unknown frequencies while you’re at it.”

  “But—” Eden licked his lips, eyes darting, “I don’t know the unknown frequencies!”

  “Don’t you? Well, just the known ones, then.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Well?”

  “Sir?”

  “Any chatter on the lines?”

  “Oh! No sir, nothing.” He clutched at his head. “Darwin help me, the pressure!”

  Hadrian rose and walked over to his Comms officer. “Pressure freezing your brain, Mr. Eden?”

  “Yes sir. Sorry, sir. I don’t know—”

  “To make the Olympics, Mr. Eden, you must have done a lot of competing, winning more than losing, yes?”

  Eden nodded.

  “But sometimes you did lose, and ended up playing a few games in the consolation rounds.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Those were fun games, yes? Easygoing, relaxed, a bit of a relief despite the disappointment of not getting deeper into the rounds. In other words, no pressure. Mr. Eden, sitting here at Comms is your consolation round. Until I say otherwise, there is no pressure. Understood?”

  “Yes sir.”

  Hadrian returned to the command chair and sat. “Tammy?”

  “Captain?”

  Beta swiveled the upper half of its body 180 degrees to face Hadrian. “Captain, according to this instrumentation we are now entering Sol System.”

  “Thank you, Beta, excellent work, and now please turn back around since that’s making me slightly nauseated. Helm, let us roll in closer and then drop us into orbit around Terra. Now then, Tammy.…”

  “Well, it’s a thousand years into your future, remember.”

  “Yes, and?”

  Jocelyn Sticks gasped. “Captain! What’s happened to Earth?”

  “Obliterated!” snapped Tammy. “Surprise surprise! And yes, the Affiliation lingers on, clinging to a miserable existence, moribund, despondent, so dumbed-down they’ve actually slipped down the Sentience Chart to hover in the Not-Sure-Range. Pretty much powerless, universally ignored. Now then, Captain Hadrian, what do you plan on doing about it?”

  The globe on the viewer was all water, but that water looked sickly, lifeless.

  Hadrian rose and took a step closer, settling one hand on his Helm’s shoulder, eyes studying the ravaged, flooded planet. “So, Tammy, what happened?”

  “I have the event of Terra’s demise recorded,” the AI replied. “Would you like to see it?”

  “Hit ‘play,’ Tammy.”

  Music swelled. “Sometimes it’s hard to be a woman…”

  “Tammy!”

  “Sorry.”

  “I understand the curse of glitches,” said Beta. “Some women may tell you that beer bellies are sexy. They are of course lying. What is sexy is all that beer drinking.”

  The viewscreen shifted to a more distant shot showing the planet, in its usual muddy-brown blue-patched glory, with the moon alongside it, as well as a plethora of orbiting stations, ships, skiffs and skimmers. Then something enormous flickered into existence, looming over the planet, only to flicker out again, leaving the planet below utterly lifeless.

  “Tammy,” said Sin-Dour, “can you slow that down for the next pass?”

  “I could,” Tammy replied. “But you still won’t see anything. The unknown alien vessel is not coincidentally shaped like a giant shrimp. The ship arrived, sought to initiate communication with something in the planet’s oceans, failed, and in a fit of pique wiped everything out, and then left.”

  “Hmm,” said Hadrian, “a giant shrimp … but of course, there are no shrimp, giant or otherwise, in the Earth’s oceans. Not since the middle of the Twenty-First century, anyway.”

  “Well,” said Tammy. “Not precisely a shrimp-looking vessel. More specifically, a
krill-shaped vessel.”

  “Krill!” Eden’s eyes went wide, and he reached into a pocket and pulled out a vitamin bottle. “Sir, these pills are ‘Pseudokrill For Your Health’!”

  “And there you have the answer,” said Tammy. “Wiped out from the oceans long ago by overzealous health nuts who couldn’t leave alone the last thing in the ocean not yet exploited by humans. Resulting in the death of every living thing in those oceans.”

  “But the ocean is full of goldfish!” cried Joss Sparks.

  “Genetically modified goldfish that can survive in salt water, yes,” replied Tammy.

  “But … they’re so pretty!”

  “Indeed, a species that thrives on eating its own crap.”

  “What’s the time stamp on that event, Tammy?”

  “Eight months ago,” the AI replied. “Which is why your Temporal Agent knows nothing about it—it occurred after he was assigned to infiltrate this ship. The Affiliation is reeling, Hadrian, and this is one disaster it won’t recover from, and that’s guaranteed.”

  “You sound almost … pleased.”

  “Not pleased,” Tammy replied. “Satisfied. It’s called karma. All that brainless destruction of your own environment finally came home to roost.”

  “Hmm.” After a moment, Hadrian rose. “2IC, join me, if you will.”

  With Sin-Dour following, Hadrian walked to the games room that had once been his stateroom.

  Sin-Dour hesitated at the door. “Sir, does this seem the proper time for a game of Ping-Pong?”

  Hadrian ushered her in and then closed the door behind her. “Does it ever! But alas, we have to engage in a serious conversation.”

  “Sir?”

  “I know. It’s outrageous.” Hadrian collected up the Ping-Pong ball and began bouncing it up and down off the table. “I confess to some ambivalence,” he said.

  “Regarding what, sir?”

  “On some of this I’m guessing, mind you—but having said that, we know Tammy came to us from our future. Part of its mission involved getting me to save my parents. But there’s always levels hiding beneath levels when it comes to Tammy Wynette. I would hazard Tammy’s origin point is about … now.”

  “After the disaster befell Earth?” Sin-Dour mused. “Ah, I see.”

  “It’s not just our species getting progressively stupider,” Hadrian said, now pacing. “Or even the Terran Artificial Intelligences assuming all the industry, research and development, and everything else requiring more than half a brain. After all, all these humans must seem like stubborn children to AIs like Tammy Wynette. But that’s the thing with children, even obnoxious ones—if they’re yours, they’re yours.”

  Sin-Dour slowly nodded. “They need us to save Earth from this calamity.”

  “There’s no point in sending contemporary temporal agents back in time to fix things, because they can barely tie their own shoelaces.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, what are ‘shoelaces’?”

  “Never mind. The point is, the AI Collective needed people like us—”

  “Like you, you mean,” Sin-Dour interjected.

  “Us,” Hadrian insisted. “You know, I was expecting to find my inbox full of requests-for-transfer after my first week as captain of this ship, despite my efforts at hand-picking this crew. Instead, there have been only two. Adjutant Tighe, of course, and Buck. And now Buck is back, and it seems no one at Security HQ wants Tighe.”

  “Very well, sir,” said Sin-Dour. “Us. But sir, why the ambivalence?”

  “Because Tammy’s kind of right. Karma. There’s nothing more idiotic than ruining the long-term viability of a world for short-term gains, but it seems that it’s pretty much all we ever do.”

  “But you wanted to change this future anyway, sir.”

  “I know. That’s what makes all this so complicated.” He set the Ping-Pong ball down, and then sighed and tilted his head. “Well, Tammy? Is it time for us to do some time traveling?”

  “I have completed the necessary calculations,” Tammy replied, somewhat smugly. “Ready to load into astrogation. I have even selected the ideal location and time period for our arrival on Old Earth.”

  “Keep your digital finger hovering over that button, Tammy.” Hadrian went to the door, opened it and invited Sin-Dour to precede him.

  Arriving on the bridge, Hadrian said, “Eden!”

  “Pressure time, sir?”

  “No, just put me on ship-wide comms, please.”

  “Yes sir! Ready for you to proceed.”

  Hadrian walked up to stand beside the command chair. “This is your Captain speaking. We are about to engage in yet another perilous mission that may end up with all of us nothing more than a faintly glow smudge of space dust.” He paused. “Carry on. Sawback out.”

  SEVEN

  “Captain,” said Beta from her station, “is it my task to inform you that long-range scanners have detected a ship fast approaching?”

  “Why yes,” said Hadrian as he sat in the command chair, “it is.”

  “The sprig of parsley garnishing the plate experiences soul-crushing rejection if left uneaten.”

  “Indeed, thank you for that, Beta. Have you identified the vessel?”

  “The Contrarians again, sir, although I might be wrong.”

  “Oh, I doubt you are. Very well. Helm, invert our ecliptic plane, please.”

  “Sir?”

  “One hundred eighty degrees and be quick about it, before they get close enough to detect our orientation.”

  “How diplomatic of you,” Tammy said.

  “Done, sir!” said Jocelyn Sticks.

  “Good, we’ll wait for them.”

  “Once that’s done,” said Tammy, “we need to set a course for Sol, and then ramp up speed as we plunge straight for the fiery orb and what might at first seem to be imminent immolation.”

  “All in good time,” Hadrian replied.

  “The Contrarian vessel is in range for communications, sir,” said Sin-Dour from the Science Station.

  “Eden, hail the Crabby Geezer and open the link to our respective screens.”

  When the interior of the Contrarian vessel appeared on the viewscreen, the lumpy aliens with the three eyes and fleshy mouth were no longer hanging from the ceiling.

  “Hello again,” Hadrian said immediately, before Captain Deluvian Scorn could speak, “and I can’t say how pleased I am to see that you have adjusted your ecliptic plane to Galactic Standard. It makes things much easier, don’t you think?”

  “What? No, I was about to say the same—no, there must be some mistake!”

  “Well, we haven’t moved, and here you are again. Didn’t enjoy your visit to Wallykrappe then?”

  “They said ‘Have a nice day.’ It wasn’t a nice day! But we have not adjusted anything! It must have been—”

  “I understand that it’s not like you to make any adjustments to, well, anything—”

  “It is so! We adjust all the time!”

  “And as representative to the Only Sane Empire, you are proving a most exemplary emissary, Captain Scorn.”

  “I am not!” The lumpy captain shifted to gesture with one eye-stalk at one of its officers. “Helm! Flip us one hundred eighty degrees immediately, upon pain of tickling! We are establishing the proper galactic standard of ecliptic plane! These Terrans look horrible right side up!”

  Abruptly the scene on the screen inverted.

  “Aahh!” cried Scorn, “much better! Now, you will comply with our ecliptic plane at once, Homely Terran Captain!”

  “My but you are a changeable lot.”

  “We are not! In fact, we never change. It is the burden of sanity to be never wrong about anything. Those who oppose us demonstrate their insanity by virtue of opposing us.”

  “Sounds comforting, all that unshakeable certainty.”

  “No, it is terribly uncomfortable. Being always right is most burdensome, requiring exceptional fortitude, resolve, and the willingness to die in the name o
f sheer stubbornness.”

  “Sounds very … human.”

  “Nonsense!”

  “Really? Look at the planet below, now virtually lifeless. That used to be my homeworld. It was full of life and all of life’s myriad wonders. We redefined most of that and gave it a new name: resources. Which of course opened the door for the thorough exploitation of those resources. Until they were all gone. And here’s the kicker. While we were using everything up, we knew it! Did it stop us? No, of course not. So, Captain Scorn, don’t talk to me about sheer stubbornness.”

  “Hmmph.” One eye loomed closer on its stalk. “But you confuse the sheer stubbornness of your stupidity with the sheer stubbornness of our genius.”

  “Well,” Hadrian allowed, “you might be right.”

  “Of course I am right. Now, comply with our galactic standard immediately, or we will be most miffed.”

  Sighing, Hadrian said, “All right, Captain. You win. Helm, flip us around.”

  “Very wise decision,” Scorn said. “But not as wise as the one I am about to make. We’re leaving!”

  “Have a nice day.”

  The eye-stalks writhed in sudden frenzy. “It is not a good day!”

  “Sorry.”

  “You are not sorry!”

  “No, that’s true. I’m not.”

  “Which means you secretly are!”

  “Until we meet again, Captain Scorn.”

  “We will never meet again!”

  “Exactly.”

  “But you—I—you—bah!” The screen went blank.

  “Contrarian vessel is departing, Captain,” said Beta, “assuming that I am the one to inform you of such things.”

  “Indeed, thank you, Beta.”

  “Short people who walk under horses are advised to wear an umbrella-hat.”

  “I can fix that,” said Tammy. “You can order this robot to comply, you know, now that it’s a member of your crew.”

  “Oh relax, Tammy,” said Hadrian, “it’s only a minor distraction. Now, about journeying into the deep past … shall we get on with it? Helm, set a course for Sol, and push the pedal to the metal.”