Asimov's SF, December 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  * * * *

  After the milkily lit dream, the harsh ceiling lights burned Maitland's eyes. On the bunk across from his, Fisackerly was pulling off his boots. Without looking up he said, “Rise and shine, Sleeping Beauty. Your watch starts in ten minutes.”

  “Mm. Didn't mean to cut it so close.”

  “Well, be warned. The old girl's in a mood.”

  “She's always in a mood. She doesn't sleep right.”

  “Naw,” said Fisackerly. He stretched out on his bunk with his head cradled in locked hands and delivered himself of a sigh. “She was really hoping to find those damn aliens. So was I. But if they're not there, they're not there. It's just disappointment and boredom. We're just all disappointed and bored.”

  “Not me,” Maitland said, touching the dreamball suspended on the chain around his neck. “We get credit for the mission no matter how disappointing and boring it's been.”

  Although it was the end of King's watch and the start of his own, Maitland found her still on the bridge with Sutherland. Both slouched in their seats and looked tired. Maitland grunted a salutation as he entered, and they acknowledged it with quick, uncaring nods. King rose from the control console, placed her hands upon her hips, and arched her spine. Maitland lowered himself into the chair she had vacated and perfunctorily surveyed the display console's bank of readouts. Informality ruled. The mission had been so uneventful, so unproductive of results, and now that it was almost over seemed so barren of possibilities, that nobody bothered to ask questions any more.

  Four hours of this, Maitland thought, and then more eternal hours of this, plodding home to base at sublight speed. Forever, it's going to take forever. He absently fingered the dreamball, still on its chain around his neck.

  “Will you put that thing away?” King said, her wide mouth compressed into a hard line. She was a big-boned woman with a broad, not unhandsome face. “I told you before, I don't want you wearing it when you stand watch.”

  “Sorry,” he said, “forgot I still had it on,” and drew the chain over his head, coiled it in the palm of one hand, put the dreamball atop the coil. The dreamball was an eight-faceted crystal enclosed within a hollow glass sphere no bigger around than his thumbnail. He slipped it into its protective tube, put the tube into the breast pocket of his tunic, and forced his attention to the readouts. There was no sound save that of the ship itself.

  King's mouth softened. “I don't want you dozing off here and sleeping through some last-minute emergency.”

  “What emergency could that possibly be, here at almost the last minute?”

  “Any emergency. I want you ready to meet it, not wrapped up in some beautiful dream.”

  Maitland shook his head. “I save my beautiful dreams for when I'm off duty. And they are beautiful.”

  “Home, sweetheart?”

  “Can't beat the old standards. Don't you have someone back home on Earth?”

  “I'm not from Earth any more. Fleet's my home.”

  He gave her a good-natured smirk. “In that case you could definitely do with some beautiful dreams.”

  “If I have any beautiful dreams,” King said, “I want them to be real dreams right out of my own head.”

  “That's too random for me. Too chaotic. I'd rather have all the chaos edited out of my dreaming. I want sweetness and light and perfect love and terrific sex.”

  “We may need chaos in our dreams to remain mentally healthy.”

  “More than love and sex?”

  “You couldn't give me a dreamball. I'd toss it right down the chuck-hole. The dreamball's your personal property, of course. Use it in good health. Just remember, you're the junior member of this team, but as long as the four of us are on this ship together, right up to the minute we dock, we have to count on one another equally.”

  “Of course.”

  They said no more to each other, but though King was off duty she stood half the watch with him before retiring to her quarters. When Fisackerly relieved Maitland, he left the bridge and made straight for his cabin, and when he got there he gently, lovingly shook the dreamball out of its tube again, hung it around his neck, and lay down on his bunk.

  * * * *

  Perfect, yes, as always, save only for the tingle of the dreamball, so the moment and the setting and the dinner are necessarily excellent as well, and afterward, when he and Kimma step outside to bask in the regard of the Eye of Polyphemus, that, too, is exactly as it should be.

  Now the Kimma of the mirage, the Kimma inside the dreamball, leans against him provocatively and asks, “When will you get here?”

  “Not a second too soon to suit me. We're on our long slide in. We'll have to be debriefed, of course. All the usual rigmarole, make our report, maybe stand by for reassignment and new orders. But then I can come home for a while. I've got two weeks’ ground-time coming to me.”

  “Not a lot of time,” she says, with a mischievous lilt in her voice, “but I suppose it can be enough.”

  He holds her tightly. “It can never be enough,” and bends his head to kiss her, but suddenly she pushes him away and backs toward the door. Her expression seems puzzled.

  “Kimma?”

  “No.”

  He takes a tentative step toward her. She instantly assumes a defensive stance that would be ludicrous, given her attire and her coiffure, but for her face. Puzzlement is yielding to anger. She means business. He freezes, shocked. She means business.

  “I don't understand,” he says, “what's wrong?”

  “Everything,” she snarls, “this, all of this is wrong, everything,” and now comes a split-second when he is sure that, mirage or no, she has decided to go ahead and kill him, for he is rocked on his heels, the three moons explode into millions of white-hot fragments, the sky fills with flame, his ears with the sound of shattering, and then King slaps him again, hard. She has him by the hair above his left ear. “Will you snap out of it,” she bellowed in his face, “and listen to me?”

  He blinked up at her, shuddering. His hands moved across his perspiration-filmed torso, fingers groping for the round glass shell of the dreamball. It was not there. King swatted at his hand.

  “I tore the damn thing off and threw it away. Now come on, listen, get up!”

  Maitland made a maddened-animal growl in the back of his throat and tried to grab King by her throat. She put the palm of one big hand flat against his chest and shoved him back down on his bunk. He could only sprawl there, suddenly dazed, numb, turned to lead. King loomed over him, glowering and panting.

  “Try to pull yourself together,” she said, “because we've got a situation.”

  “Situation?”

  “Trouble. Are you listening? Do you understand? We've got trouble.”

  He managed a nod. His head was starting to clear. There was no subliminal hum of machinery now, but a sharp unwavering whine.

  “Come on,” King said, “let me help you up,” and got him on his feet. She put her shoulder under his arm and half-carried, half-dragged him toward the door. He let her bear his weight for a moment while he stupidly pondered the significance of the irritating whine.

  Then he started and looked at her and said, “We're braking. We're home.”

  “We're braking, but I don't know if home is still there. Come on to the bridge. Think you can make it by yourself now?”

  They paused to let him test his legs. He still felt weak in the knees, but he could stand and walk without support.

  “What's going on?”

  “Just a few minutes ago, Sutherland started picking up a signal from base. We're trying to get it all straight, but the colony seems to have been attacked.”

  “Attacked? Who—”

  “Don't know. Come on.”

  “But who—”

  “We don't know. Come on.”

  Sutherland and Fisackerly sat tensely in their chairs on the bridge. In the hard bright light their faces looked dead white and clammy with sweat.

  “What else's come
in?” King demanded.

  “Same as before,” Fisackerly said. “New Portland station. Just keeps repeating itself. We're building it up slowly on the readout,” and he pointed to a display.

  Maitland moved to stand behind King's seat and listened. The signal was all spitting and fuzz. He strained his ears, trying to shut out the noise, to hear past it, and thought that he heard a human voice speak the single word killed. Greenish-black block letters marched across the display screen:

  *** COLONISTS KILLED *** NEW PORTLAND STATION CALLING *** COLONY ATTACKED *** POPULATION CENTERS DESTROYED *** ATTACKING ARMADA TYPE UNKNOWN ORIGIN UNKNOWN ***

  “Origin unknown,” Fisackerly said flatly.

  Sutherland snorted softly. “Aliens.”

  “There are no aliens,” King said.

  “None we knew of,” said Fisackerly.

  “What,” said Maitland, “what the hell is this?”

  “We can't raise anybody else.” There was fear in Fisackerly's voice. “No one else seems to be transmitting. In addition to major population centers and the big mining settlement on Polyphemus, Fleet's supposed to have a couple of cruisers and deep-rangers stationed there. A lot of assorted ess-tee-el vessels, too. We haven't picked up so much as a beep from any of them. Nothing. Nothing from base, none of the proper calls for us to identify ourselves, none of the random traffic we should be picking up. Just this garbled signal.”

  Now Sutherland laughed shortly. “Aliens!”

  “Can't rule it out,” said Fisackerly.

  “Be serious,” King snapped. “Aliens attacking out of nowhere, for no apparent reason. Fleet searches all over this sector for decades and gets nothing more tangible than rumors and scary stories. Then all of a sudden, for no apparent reason, real aliens just come out of hiding and decide, also for no apparent reason, What the hell, let's go blast some funny-looking mammals out of existence. It doesn't make sense.”

  “It wouldn't,” Fisackerly said, “not to us, not if they were really alien.”

  “Fisackerly,” King said, “you're pathetic.”

  “Well, something sure as hell has blasted the colony out of existence.”

  Maitland asked, “What was Fleet doing the whole time?”

  “Getting blasted out of existence, too, it seems.” King clutched the back of Sutherland's chair. “I think we may be all the Fleet there is right now.”

  Everybody grew quiet. Maitland stood behind King's chair, still clutching it desperately, and thought about the beach, the house, Kimma in the house. The speaker continued to spit static and isolated words.

  “King, have you acknowledged?”

  “Of course. First thing.” King consulted the console clock. “Our signals should've reached them by now. We ought to get a response in another six, seven minutes. If they're able to receive it. If there's anybody there to receive it. They could all be dead now.”

  Sutherland muttered an obscenity in a tone laced with contempt. Fisackerly gnawed his thumb knuckle. King sighed and said, “We'll go on in and find out.”

  Sutherland looked up at her. “And then?”

  “And then we'll do the next thing we can think of to do. I want a message-and-materials module ready to go straight to Fleet Headquarters the instant we know what we're up against. We'll do a Polyphemus fly-by and then orbit the planet itself, make a complete survey, full scan. Weapons systems stay activated. Sutherland, program for extreme evasive action at the first hint of trouble. Booster-ram at hold.”

  “Hey!” Fisackerly yelped and pointed at the display. “We're getting a response.”

  They crowded forward.

  *** MADDUX *** READING YOU *** TERRIBLE *** ARRIVAL *** THANK GOD ***

  King swore. “Can't you bring it in any clearer than this?”

  “Nothing I can do this far out,” said Fisackerly. “Just have to keep them repeating it until we have enough to splice.”

  “Do that.” King moved away and ground fist against palm for a moment. She looked at Maitland and jerked her head toward the door. They moved away from Fisackerly and Sutherland and stood together just within the doorway

  “There's probably going to have to be a landing party.”

  He trembled slightly. “I'll get the shuttle ready for a drop.”

  King regarded him closely. She did not have to speak: the question was there in her face, unmistakable. He touched the spot over his breastbone where the dreamball had hung. The gesture did not escape her notice, and her noticing it did not escape his. He let his arm fall and said, “I have to be the one who goes down.”

  “Any of us could do it.”

  “You're in command.”

  She waved a hand at Fisackerly's and Sutherland's backs. “Either of them...”

  “This is my home world, not yours or theirs.”

  “Can you go down and face it?”

  “Stay up or go down, King ... if the planet's a cinder now, I'll have to face it either way, won't I?”

  She gave him a wan smile. “Okay. Okay. Full armor and flightpack. Get the shuttle and your gear ready, and then go to your quarters and get some rest. You probably are going to need it.”

  She raised her hand, index finger extended, and almost touched his breast.

  “Some rest, I said.”

  Maitland returned to his quarters and got down on his hands and knees to search for the dreamball. When he found it, he saw that the glass sphere enclosing the crystal had cracked when King flung it against a bulkhead, and when he has slipped the chain over his neck and stretched out on his bunk it immediately becomes obvious that the crystal must be damaged as well, that his careful tinkering has been somehow undone. Kimma of the mirage is as resistant to his advances as her real-life counterpart on the home planet. She will not let him kiss her or even touch her. It even seems for a moment that she has all she can do to keep herself from killing him with her bare hands.

  The setting is as uncongenial as she. Winter clearly is coming, not soon but too soon to suit him under any circumstances, for unlike Kimma he has always intensely disliked cold weather. This afternoon, the breeze blows in brisk and smelling of rain. Thunderheads mass over the horizon and will move inland by nightfall. He draws the cloak tighter about himself and wishes that Kimma had either thought to bring him some warm shoes or else would not insist upon standing at the water's edge. His feet are almost numb. She seems barely conscious of the cold waves lapping about her ankles. Of course. She grew up in the northernmost of the colony's cities, New Prussia, where they breed strong, thick-blooded.

  “I might have known,” she says. “I should have known. I gave you the dreamball as a token of friendship, and you perverted it.”

  “Kimma, please. When I get back—”

  She turns to him now, regards him without hostility, finally, but also without sympathy, without any expression at all. “What do you expect to find when you get back?”

  “You must still be alive, Kimma. You can't be dead.”

  “Must. Can't. You never goddamn learn.”

  “I have to believe you're still alive.”

  “You have to accept that I'm probably dead.”

  He feels like crying in frustration and hopelessness. He feels like falling down and clawing at the sand and letting the sea roll in over him.

  “It could have been so good between us,” he says. “We have so much in common, the same tastes in everything. We liked each other from the moment we met. We seemed to want the same things out of life.”

  “Seemed,” she says. “And of course you decided you were in love with me, and said as much. And got your heart broken when I said, Don't be silly, and went on doing whatever I was doing.” She kicks at a seashell. It skitters about a meter across the hard-packed sand. “Why is that so impossibly hard for you to accept? Why?”

  “Kimma, please understand. I was in love with you. I am in love with you, still. I'll always be in love with you. Why is that so hard for you to accept?”

  “Nonsense. You're in lo
ve with your pride, and I bruised it.”

  “I could have made you happy.”

  She shook her head, then nodded. “Yes. You could have made me happy, but you didn't. You just absolutely wouldn't. What a loss to us both. We could have been the best of friends, inseparables. But you wanted more of me than I wanted you to have. You wouldn't take No for an answer. You could be so tiresome at times. And then all this—” she gestured to include sea and sky and sand “—cruel, terribly cruel, and shameful.”

  “As cruel as you?”

  “Don't you realize how badly you used me? How much pain you caused me? And now this. Our perfect love!”

  “I never deliberately hurt you.”

  “Stop lying.”

  “I'm not lying.”

  “You are, to yourself.”

  “All I did—”

  “All you did,” she says, with considerable asperity, “was to try to make me feel miserably guilty at not being in love with you. All you did was to show me what an immature, self-absorbed, self-dramatizing bore you are. My God. Joining Fleet and running off to space because I wouldn't fall in love with you.”

  “I didn't run off !” His cheeks feel incandescent. “I was assigned to—”

  “You enlisted and got yourself assigned.”

  “Stop.” This hurts even worse than he would have imagined possible. “Please stop.”

  “I'll stop.”

  He glares at her. “All right. I got myself assigned. But what was I supposed to do? I couldn't stand the pain of losing you.”

  “Losing me?” Her cloak slips from her shoulder, exposing one lovely pale breast; she does not bother to retrieve the garment. “You never had me to lose. Oh, no, what you couldn't stand was not having things go your way. So you went off like a hero in a romance, the rejected suitor, pouting and whimpering and feeling very sorry for yourself on the inside. It gives you the opportunity to go around looking as if you've been kicked in the solar plexus. Wearing your sorrow like a sign. Oh, look, here's a young man who's suffered a grievous tragic hurt. You'd go away into space, and when you came home I would surely relent—”