Analog SFF, July-August 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  His answer was a sudden howl of pain from O'Toole, who was dancing away from the third object, holding his right hand. “Sunnuvabitch!” he cried. “Sunnuvabitch, sunnuvabitch, sunnuvabitch!”

  “Heard you the first time,” Tirasi laughed, reaching for the golden object, cupped on a pedestal of pure white. “But we've known that about you for ... Bloody son of a bloody bitch!”

  Now it was Tirasi nursing his hand and dancing a little. Mgurk cocked his head, “Hey, that piece one budmash lotah.”

  Maggie B. pursed her lips. “I wouldn't touch that, cap'n, was I you.”

  January bent close to study the artifact. It was shaped like a discus bisecting an oblate sphere. Saturnoid, was how he would describe it. Many gas giants were saturnoid, some with quite spectacular rings. January wondered if this were a compressed gas giant. At least it won't be as heavy as the Midnight Egg...

  The surface had a cool metallic look, whether actually metal or not, and was smooth and shiny and golden. It seemed to glow from within, and waves of yellow and red and orange passed through it. “Those look like flames,” January said. “Was it hot?” he asked the two men, but another static discharge covered his words. “Did it burn you?” he asked when he could.

  O'Toole had calmed down somewhat. “Like a million needles sticking my hand.” Tirasi pulled a pyrometer from his scrip with his left hand and gave it to Maggie B., who examined the object's surface.

  “Ambient temperature,” the astrogator announced.

  That made the object rather more cold than hot. “It looks like it's burning up inside,” January mused aloud. But fire was a chemical reaction. It could not have continued for eon upon eon without consuming eons of material. Of course, maybe this pot is all that's left. There were chemical reactions that oscillated between different colors, and the appearance of roiling flames might be a consequence of such a reaction. But could such oscillations remain undamped over so long a time as these objects must have sat here?

  They called this one the Budmash Lotah, which Johnny explained meant an evil-doing brass pot in the Terran patois.

  January gave up. He could not grasp the natures of these objects. There was nothing in his experience from which he might analogize. Each was beautiful in some manner, but the only other thing they had in common was that they could not be moved.

  That's why all the other pedestals are empty, he suddenly realized. Whatever else was once here could be removed, and so they had been. But when? And by whom? Leaving, what? A display of ... immovable objects? Earth, water, fire...

  He wondered where the irresistible force was.

  “Hey,” cried Mgurk, “come-come, look-see.” The Terran was standing by one of the empty pedestals and passing his hand slowly through the air above it.

  “Now, what?” Tirasi complained. He and O'Toole joined the Terran.

  Maggie B. turned to the captain, who had not moved. “What is it?” she asked.

  January waited out a growl of static. “Something's missing.”

  “Holy Alfven!” said Tirasi, and O'Toole turned to the captain. “It's a fookin’ ghost.”

  “You have to look at just the right angle,” Tirasi explained when the captain and Maggie had joined them. “Johnny, stand away. The light has to be ... There, do you see it?”

  January nodded slowly. He could make out the billowing of yellowed clouds against a ruddy background, as if a slice of orange sky many leagues deep had been captured and set on a pedestal. “It's a whole-gram,” he guessed.

  “Yah?” said Tirasi as he viewed his gauge in disgust. “A projected image with mass?” He showed January the readout. "And with a temperature and"—passing his hand through the image—"with a texture. Cool, smooth, and I can feel that it's hollow.”

  “You can feel it,” Maggie B. said, “but you can't pick ‘er up.” Tirasi nodded. “Like grabbing smoke.”

  “Why am I not fookin’ surprised?” said O'Toole. He was answered by another outbreak of static.

  The second chamber was right beside the pedestal and January idly felt one of the soft, spongy leaves that ringed the entry. It seemed made of the same material as the door of the vault.

  At that point, Tirasi and O'Toole noticed their captain's possession of the sandstone block. “Well, now,” said O'Toole with a glower. “And are ye cutting us out on the only bit of loot we can actually walk off with?”

  January, surprised, looked at the sandstone block in his grip. It had fit his hand so comfortably that he had quite forgotten he was holding it. The stone was thicker at the ends now, and curved in a slight arc—and he had not felt even the smallest movement.

  It was an exceptional piece, he realized. An exception not only to the beauty of the other items, but also to their immobility. A cuckoo in the nest. And why wasn't it taken when the rest of this vault was plundered?

  Tirasi nudged the pilot. “Greedy sod, ain't he? C'mon, Slug, let's explore the rest of this place. Might be there's more stuff in the next room.”

  January suddenly knew. Those fleshy “leaves” were not the petals of a decorative flower that ringed the entrance to the second chamber. They were segments of another of those marshmallow doors. Something had pierced the door in the center, and it had peeled outward in pie-slice sections. From the arrangement of the pieces, the door had been pierced from inside the chamber. And there was nothing inside the chamber but an empty pedestal.

  “Wait!” he said, and to his surprise the others stopped and turned expectantly. January looked again at the shredded door. What had sat on that pedestal, sealed off from the other objects? The irresistible force? How long had the door resisted it? Millennia? Eons? But it had failed at last.

  Where was it now? It could not have gotten off-planet, surely. No, it must still be loose somewhere on this world.

  Waiting for a ship to happen by.

  “You're absolutely right, Bill,” he said. “There may be other relics somewhere in the complex, but for all we know that corridor...” Pointing toward the half-open door at the end of the room, half enticed by the dark at the end of the tunnel, half expecting something irresistible to come pouring through it. “...for all we know that corridor leads nowhere but to a dead end deep inside the planet. That would fit, somehow. But we need to get off this world, now.”

  O'Toole scratched his ear, cast an uneasy glance at the corridor, and said, “Sure thing, cap'n. But I hate to leave without getting something out o’ this.”

  The lack of objection surprised January. “Something's happening,” he told them. “Have you been listening to the static on the comm channels? It's getting stronger. There's a storm brewing, and a big one. Look.” He wanted desperately for them to understand. “We can't take these other things with us, but we can still cash in. Think what people would pay to come see them. They have to come through the tunnel, so we can control admission. But...” And here his voice became lower, more urgent. “We must leave now. We don't have the supplies to stay and explore every pocket in this entire complex. We need to get a stake, so we can come back and do this proper and controlled.”

  Maggie B. pursed her lips, thinking. “Who you thinking might stake us?”

  January took a deep breath. “The Interstellar Cargo Company...” He hesitated, waited for the objections; then, when none were forthcoming, stammered on, “The ICC's a damned pack of jackals, and ships like ours only get their leavings; but we may be able to work out a deal with them. If we're going to do a seismic survey, map the complex, conduct a grid-by-grid search in an orderly manner, document our discoveries, we're going to need more resources than the poor old Angel can earn in our lifetimes.”

  A moment of silence passed. Then Maggie B. said, “Right, then. There'll be time between here and the Jenjen to cook up a plan to protect our rights.”

  Tirasi nodded. “An’ we'll be able to show ‘em that thing—” He indicated the now S-curved sandstone block in January's hand. “—and the videos we took of this place.”

  “But i
f ye show ‘em yer rock,” O'Toole warned him, “be fookin’ careful, or they'll be taking it off ye. That bein’ yer honor's very own stone, not theirs.”

  The display of unanimity and agreement was so unexpected that January waited a moment longer for the objections. Then Johnny Mgurk cried, “Chop and chel, sahbs. We go jildy. Hutt, hutt! Big dhik.” And the spidery little man led then up the tunnel.

  January half-expected to find the main door now shut, trapping them inside, but it was still rolled into its slot in the wall. The five of them tumbled out into the rocky cleft, blinking at the light, noticing that it was already dimmer.

  Through the growing static on the radio, he heard Micmac Anne calling. “...swer me! Angel ca ... Jan...! C ... in, Amo...!”

  January flipped the responder. “Tell me thrice,” he said three times. The ship's intelligence could create a coherent sentence by splicing the fragments that got through the random static.

  “Amos!” said the reconstructed Anne. “There's a storm coming your way, a big one. It started over your eastern horizon, and we've been tracking it since ... There's lightning. Lots of lighting. Lots of big lightning. I've never seen anything like it. It's coming right down on you. Amos, get out of there now!”

  They had already reached the excavation site. Maggie B. began to mount the backhoe, but January said, “Leave it. You heard Anne. The wind won't be much at this pressure, but the sand can clog our breathing masks. And the lightning...”

  He could hear it now. Thunder like galloping hooves. Underneath—a steadier tympani of deeper booms, like the lumbering gait of a giant. Black dust clouds loomed on the eastern horizon and lighting flashed within them like fireworks. The clouds seemed a-boil, rolling toward them. Johnny began to run toward the jolly-boat. “Shikar storm!” he wailed. “Hutt, hutt!”

  “Shut yer food-hole, ye Terry slob!” O'Toole cried, bounding past him to the gig. Terasi had fallen behind, staggering with the molecular sieve in his arms. “Drop it,” January ordered him. “Drop it and run for the jolly-boat.” The system tech threw his precious machine to the sand and sprinted.

  Maggie was already firing the jolly-boat's engines when O'Toole and January reached the gig. O'Toole popped the hatch and clambered in. January paused at the foot of the ladder and looked behind. Terasi and Mgurk were sealing up the jolly-boat. He nodded and entered the gig.

  “We'll worry about our orbit after we have one,” he told O'Toole, as he slid into the number two seat. “Lift! And lift now!”

  So, they did.

  Both boats reached the stratosphere ahead of the advancing storm front. Lightning crackled below them. Yet part of the storm had broken through the tropopause—lowering thunderheads looking for all the world like billowing giants made of smoke. A tremendous bolt arced upward into space. O'Toole cursed.

  “Climb, Slugger,” January told the pilot. “Climb as fast as you can. Climb, even if you dry-tank the gig. Annie will pick us up in the lighter if she has to.”

  “Aye, cap'n.” Sweat was pouring off the man. His fingers might leave dents in the pilot's yoke. “We're heading east to west, an’ that's a bad climb f'shure; but we're stayin’ ahead o’ those sand clouds. ‘T isn't ourselves I'm worrying over, y’ follow, but what that jolly-boat is a slow climber.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “So far, so good.” O'Toole gusted a sigh and seemed to relax microscopically. “But that's what Wheezer Hottlemeyer said whan he was after passin’ the second floor, and him falling out av a noine-story buildin’ at th’ toime.”

  And a skybolt turned the viewports blue. The gig shuddered, and one of the panels sparked and died.

  “Are we hit?” January cried, half rising in the two-gees. “Did it get us?”

  O'Toole laid a beefy hand on January's wrist, touching the sandstone as he did. “Don't ye be worryin', cap'n darling'.” And January relaxed, weirdly comforted, confident now in the pilot's abilities to see them through. “Aye, an’ there's the jolly-boat, too!” the pilot cried, a triumphant shout, finger stabbing the 360-sensor display, piercing its ghostly green wireframe images. “Hoigh, th’ Roger. All bristol, down there?”

  “Hoigh, Aloe,” Maggie replied. “Skin of the teeth here, Slugger. There was one bolt, I thought it was gonna peel the paint right off the skin, and leave its autograph. Hell, mebbe it did. Storm's well below us now. Looks like we made it, you damned Paddy! Now we gotta find the Angel.”

  “Shure,” said O'Toole, “an’ ut'll be a story for to tell our grandkids.”

  “I don't even have kids yet,” Maggie said.

  “Well, then, let's you an’ me make some while there's still time!”

  The pilot and the astrogator instructed their respective boats to lock onto the New Angeles, plot a suite of orbits, and report back with projected transit times and air and fuel usage. When the engines cut out and the gig entered low orbit, O'Toole grinned and turned about to face January.

  And the smile faded. Slugger clasped his fists together into a ball and shuddered. “She can joke, but I know how close that was.” He sucked in a deep breath. “It weren't normal, cap'n. That storm. It was coming at us east t’ west, an’ that's aginst th’ prevailin’ winds. Yessir, ‘t was, and I nivver heard tell uv a storrum doin’ that. An’ maybe a planet dry like that an’ all can work up a monster static charge, but, Jaysus, cap'n, that storrum was bigger'n the planet, I'm thinkin'.”

  January glanced that the prehuman artifact in his hand. It was twisted along its length like a screw. He had ordered the others to abandon backhoe and molecular sieve, but he had hung on to this. It really was quite pretty when you got used to it.

  “I'm guessin’ th’ toorist attraction notion is off th’ table now.”

  January laughed with nervous release. “By the gods, yes. But, maybe we can sell this ... this dancing rock for enough to replace the gear we abandoned. Looks like Hogan'll have to cannibalize the ship after all. I don't think we should go back and try to salvage the equipment.”

  “Jaysus, no! I'd ruther be back home on New Eireann awaitin’ for th’ Big Blow. Our equipment'd be all lightning'ed over by now, anyways, the backhoe and Bill's toy. Nothing lift uv thim but slag. But I shure hope the storrum didn't hurt those other things—the Midnight Egg, the Slipstone, the whatever heathen name Johnny gave the pot...”

  “The Budmash Lotah.”

  “Yeah. I don't know for why Johnny don't speak fookin’ Gaelactic like th’ rist uv us.”

  “I don't think they were hurt, the Unmovable Objects. And, Slugger? I don't think that was a natural storm, either. I think the prehumans made something they had second thoughts about and they locked it away forever, but...” The gig's orbit, looping around the planet had brought them back up over the site, but January saw nothing out the viewport but a black, writhing mass covering a quarter of the planet. Maybe, it was fading, settling out now. He couldn't tell.

  “But?” O'Toole prompted him.

  “But even forever ends.” And he relaxed in his harness, stroking the lovely sandstone, thankful that they had escaped the Irresistible Force.

  Copyright (c) 2008 Michael F. Flynn

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  * * *

  Short Story: A PLETHORA OF TRUTH

  by Bond Elam

  The methods of science have a wide range of applications—some of them, anyway. And sometimes with surprising results.

  Pastor Billy knew he was in trouble the moment he heard that his cross-town rival, Reverend James Wheelwright, had begun streaming his Good-News Roundup over the Internet. Not only would Reverend Jim continue to draw from their shared base of Sunday-morning TV viewers, he could now reach out to a whole new reservoir of recruits through their computers, handhelds, and in-car navigation systems.

  Of course, Pastor Billy, who was no slouch himself when it came to soul-saving, struck back hard and fast. The following Sunday morning, during his regularly scheduled Prayer-O-Thon from the Tri-Cities Arena, he unveiled a tech
nological breakthrough of his own—what he described as the most important advance in heavenly communication since Moses discovered the burning bush: the world's very first hotline to God.

  The bright red phone, a traditional desktop model, rested on the coffee table between Pastor Billy and his co-host, Mary Lou Gilbert. As usual, they were seated in the two upholstered chairs that had been arranged living-room style in the elevated wrestling ring at the center of the arena. Around them, their five-thousand-member congregation peered down from their seats in hushed anticipation.

  “Why, it's just like that phone President Reagan used when he told Mr. Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down his wall, isn't it?” Mary Lou marveled, pressing her hand to the bosom of her flowered yellow frock. As she leaned forward to examine the phone, the camera closed in on her face, catching the tip of her tongue, which tended to poke out the corner of her mouth whenever she concentrated. The image was relayed to the four large monitors suspended above the ring, giving not only the folks at home, but everyone in the arena a chance to see just how taken she was with Pastor Billy's exciting new innovation. “And all you have to do is just pick it up?” she asked, blinking up at him with her thick, dark lashes. “He's right there? Just waiting for you to call?”

  “It's like I've been telling our viewers for years, Mary Lou,” the pastor said. “The Almighty is always ready to hear our prayers. All we have to do is call.” He spread his palms, lifting his gaze out over the heads of the congregation. With his long blond curls cascading down over the shoulders of his purple robe, he looked like a modern-day prophet who'd descended from the heavens to lead his flock to the Promised Land.

  “And He answers Himself?” Mary Lou asked. “Him personally? He doesn't have an angel, or some saint or somebody, screening his calls?”

  “Every time,” the pastor said. “He likes to field His own calls. He says it helps Him feel closer to His constituents.”

  “But what if He isn't home? I mean, what if He's in the Holy Land or something? You know, smiting Philistines or turning sinners into pillars of salt?”