Scarborough crimped a wry smile. “Hardly. They catch me at it, automatically they think the opposite. Or sideways. No, I bring them up to date, status of repatriation and your place in it. That sort of thing.”
It sounded all right; if Space Administration wanted to pin medals on itself, it wasn't his affair. Scarborough rose and came over. Offered a hand. “Need help?”
Don nodded him away. “Think I can,” he said, found purchase for hands and, with strength from shoulders to assist the legs, forced himself up. For a moment he swayed, but a deep breath and pause brought steadiness. Sort of.
As ever, he thought, not in control of his life. A stumbling, uncertain step brought the boarding steps’ handrail in reach. He turned and started up. After three, with eyes out into open air and legs already feeling weakness, he paused for breath. The scents of ozone, hot metal, and lubricants came. Keep going, he told himself. So he'd see her again. Another forced step. Count on nothing. One more. Now he was completely outside. Breeze touched the fabric of his jumpsuit. From somewhere came the roar of an aircraft thundering for altitude. Everyone was going somewhere; lives that had a direction as his had not. Now he was at the highest point. It looked a long way down.
There, one hand on the backrest of a mobility, a young woman waited. Not Jeni, though. Someone from the airport staff. Dark haired and dressed in some sort of uniform. No, the all-business Miz Ell would wait for him to come to her.
Going down would be easier than up, but had to be done with care; until the docs did a sonic on his bones, best not to put too much sudden load on limbs perhaps brittle from years in feeble G. Gripping the handrail, he let himself down one cautious step at a time.
She'd not be the same person she'd been. Dumb to think otherwise. Well, he wasn't the unseasoned kid he'd been in those days, either. Of what had been—what little it had been—there would be nothing now. She would let him shake her hand. He would thank her for all she and her senator had done for him and his people; she would say it was what friends were for, would caution him not to let slip that they had ever known each other before. Then they'd get down to the business of what the web people should be told. Perhaps an opening statement? A list of other debts to be acknowledged? What—and how—should he say about all those others still waiting their turn to come home? All of that.
Almost down. He gripped the handrail tightly, knowing that if he let his hands relax they would tremble. The wobbliness in his knees, he told himself, was a consequence of unaccustomed gravity. Nothing more.
But he would see her again. Whether it was wise, well, he just didn't know. The past was the past and lost years could not be retrieved. They'd gone their separate ways. To meet now would be both too late and too soon.
Regardless, his blood sang.
Then he was down. A steadying hand still on the handrail, he stood uncertainly. The mobility waited just a daunting step away.
“Tenbrook?” the young woman said. “The Mars man? Who saved the colony?”
“All of us up there saved us,” Don said. “Only way it could happen. And a lot of help from down here.”
“Everyone knows it couldn't have without you,” she said. “You did a lot of things.”
None of which, he thought, would have changed their fate a millimeter. Jeni had been the difference. All of it.
“All the time I was growing up I heard people talk about you,” the young woman said. Young as Jeni had been when he'd known her, he thought, and full of romantic notions. “Me?” he asked. “Or all of us?”
“Oh, all of you, actually. But it was your name, always.”
What elaborate tales she'd heard, he didn't know. Neither did it matter. “All I did,” he said, “I stuck my name on a yell for help.”
“But she's waiting,” she said, abruptly anxious. “And I'm making you stand while I chatter. She said be nice to you. You've had a difficult time.” She gave a glance to her hand on the mobility's backrest.
“I guess that's true,” Don admitted.
She'd hardly paused for breath. “I know some of it must have been awful, but what a marvelous adventure!”
She didn't know, he thought, but let it go. “I suppose every life's an adventure,” he said. “You know her?” Any scrap of information would be precious.
“Never saw her before today, but I know who she is.” She indicated the mobility again, and reached out a hand. “Need help? Some people down from the Moon...”
So this one would tell him nothing, either. He looked down at the mobility. A comfortable device. Very much needed by travelers made weak by living too long in light G.
Go to Jeni in that? Some kind of cripple? The used-up husk of a man? Nuts.
“How far?” he asked.
She didn't really know. “Fifty, maybe a hundred meters.” She shrugged and looked back over her shoulder. “Just up the ramp and down the hall. Suite number one. The Imperial.”
From where he stood he could see the ramp's foot, but quickly it curved from sight behind a partition. Its flawless carpet burned the color of new blood. VIP? he wondered. Imperial suite? Some people mattered, Pops used to say, and then you had a lot of others who thought they did.
Somehow he felt like neither.
“Just one flight up?” he asked. Likely. Best, though, to make sure.
“That's all.” For her, a trivial thing. For him...?
Letting go of the handrail, he took a step. Legs didn't buckle, but no sense of stamina, either. For a moment he stood irresolute.
But, well, mountains were made to be climbed.
Another step took him past the mobility. “Keep it handy,” he said with a brief backward nod, then turned eyes forward once more.
“Let's see,” he said, “if I can make it on my own.”
Copyright (c) 2008 Dean McLaughlin
[Back to Table of Contents]
* * *
Reader's Department: THE REFERENCE LIBRARY
by Tom Easton
In the Courts of the Crimson Kings, S. M. Stirling, Tor, $24.95, 304 pp. (ISBN: 978-0-7653-1489-5).
Hunter's Run, George R. R. Martin, Gardner Dozois, and Daniel Abraham, Eos, $25.95, 303 pp. (ISBN: 978-0-06-137329-9).
The Dragons of Babel, Michael Swanwick, Tor, $25.95, 318 pp. (ISBN: 978-0-7653-1950-0).
Invasive Procedures, Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston, Tor, $25.95, 351 pp. (ISBN: 0-7653-1424-X).
A War of Gifts, Orson Scott Card, Tor, $12.95 (hb), 126 pp. (ISBN: 0-7653-1282-4).
The Hidden World, Paul Park, Tor, $25.95, 319 pp. (ISBN: 978-0-7953-1668-4).
In Deepspace Shadows: A Dramatic Poem in Two Acts, Kendall Evans, Mythic Delirium Books (3514 Signal Hill Ave., NW, Roanoke, VA 24017), $5.00, 33 pp. (ISBN: none).
Different Engines: How Science Drives Fiction and Fiction Drives Science, Mark Brake and Reverend Neil Hook, Palgrave Macmillan, $24.95, 258 + vi pp.
* * * *
Many of us were early exposed to Edgar Rice Burroughs and his visions of a Mars inhabited by sword-wielding, egg-laying barbarians riding thoats, where human John Carter could commit great heroic deeds, win the love of a princess, and (despite the egg-laying bit) have kids. It was a crock then (the interfertility was way over the top, even at the time), and it's even more of a crock now (since we know what Mars is really like). But Burroughs knew how to keep a story moving so well that he still has readers. He also has admirers who crave to rationalize his Mars, so meet S. M. Stirling, who gives us an alternate universe in which both Mars and Venus are pretty much the way Burroughs imagined them. Mars is old, dry, dying, and inhabited by sword-wielding folks descended from the same ancestral stock that we are, for 200 million years ago aliens terraformed Venus and Mars and some 200,000 years ago transported early humans to new homes. On Mars civilizations rose and fell, eventually culminating in the reign of the Tollamunes, the kings of In the Courts of the Crimson Kings. Technology is weirdly biological, with people bred to their destiny. The Tollamunes have their own distinctive gen
ome. The Thoughtful Grace caste are Coercives, soldiers, guards, and mercenaries. And Teyud za-Zhalt is a hybrid, banned for theft of the Tollamune genome even though she is the last to carry a sizable chunk of it. When the current emperor dies, there will be chaos. That death is anticipated, and several factions are mounting hunts for Teyud. High prices will be paid for her capture, her head, or just her ovaries (since that would be enough to breed compliant carriers of the Tollamune genome).
Into this world comes Jeremy Wainman, archeologist, tall for a Terran and thus nearly a match for the Martians. His mission is to search out a long-abandoned city, and toward that end he hires Teyud and a land-ship. However, it is soon clear that they are being pursued. At the city they have time—despite battles with feral biotech monsters in underground caverns—to find treasures, including one of vast importance to Teyud, before the followers attack. They win, but then new pursuers arrive.
Meanwhile, back in the City that is a Mountain (Olympus Mons), the emperor decides it's time to recognize his daughter as his heir. This puts the enemy into overdrive, and...
So you've got rationalized Burroughs, and an archeologist with a tendency to heroism (though he does insist that he's not the guy with the bullwhip). The ending cannot possibly be in doubt. The route to it is great fun, and the coda opens up the stage for an expansive future, and perhaps for sequels.
It is worth noting that Stirling waxes very cute in his prologue. It doesn't have anything to do with the story, but it is bound to gratify old-time SF fans. The scene is the 1962 Worldcon, and a number of SF writers—Bob, Fred, Arthur, Poul, Spreggie, Beam, Isaac—are gathered to watch the first Mars landing on TV. Gratifying, yes, but also rather wistful. If only...
* * * *
George R. R. Martin, Gardner Dozois, and Daniel Abraham have conspired to commit a contender for the next round of awards. It even has movie potential! It's Hunter's Run, the tale of Ramon Espejo, a man who seems to have very little potential for heroism or nobility. But ... The tale opens in blackness. He awakens, but he cannot move, hear, or even feel. He's not even breathing. But he has a few shreds of memory. He's a prospector on the colony world of Sao Paulo, one among many humans schlepped along by the alien Enye to develop industry and trade (when humans hit the starways, they found them occupied). There's a lady he lives with when he's in town, but he had sneaked out early one morn once his van was repaired. If he was in a bit of a rush, well, there was a bar fight, a dead ambassador from Earth, and the cops wanted him. He would, he thought, get out into the wilderness for a while, until the fuss died down.
So he went out a bit further than usual, hoping to make the big strike that would turn his life around. He made camp and spotted a mountainside with something a bit funny about it. He set a coring charge (for taking samples), touched it off, and watched the side of the mountain fall off, revealing a wall of metal.
He was just beginning to imagine how rich he was about to be when a hole appeared and a flyer emerged. A beam blasted his camp and van. He shot back. And the next thing he knew was the blackness.
That's when he is decanted. Goopy fluid drains away. He hacks his lungs clean. And the aliens tell him he is a pretty defective sort who must now help them hunt down the man who saw it all and fled. To make sure he will cooperate, they attach a living leash to his throat and demonstrate the incredible pain it can deliver.
Now Ramon is not a very nice guy. Not a forgiving sort. Very much a get-even fellow. He swears that he is going to get free of these alien SOBs. He is going to kill these alien SOBs! Not that he can do much along those lines just yet, but just wait!
And they're off, hunting for ... Forgive me, for here is a bit of a spoiler. Hunting for himself, for when the aliens blasted him, he lost a finger. That finger went into a vat, and three days later they decanted poor Ramon-on-the-leash to hunt down free-Ramon. Their intent is to remove an incompatibility with their vision of reality, in which they are not known to be hiding inside the mountains. A bit of backfeed through the leash tells Ramon why: Some long time ago, the aliens had contact with the Enye, and one day the Enye landed and began to devour them. Ramon sees the dying babies and the flight of the alien ships. He realizes that the Enye are still hunting their prey, even using humans to winkle it out of dens. And the Enye ships are in Sao Paulo's sky now.
If he can escape, if he can pass the word, he will be avenged.
But ... Why did he kill the ambassador? Memory is returning slowly, and there are hints that the man deserved killing. Why? That's part of this novel's punchline, and you should remember what I said about Ramon being an unlikely prospect for heroism or nobility. He's a real man, though, and one of the things a real man does besides get drunk and brawl is protect women and children.
The tale comes to a satisfying ending, but it leaves unresolved the nature of the Enye and what, if anything, can be done about them. This could be the meat of one or more sequels, even a saga, and if the authors are so inclined, their much-pleased readers will be legion.
* * * *
Return to the world of Michael Swanwick's The Iron Dragon's Daughter with The Dragons of Babel, which begins with the crash of a dragon in a country village. A dragon, of course, is not what you think. This one has fuel tanks, a control room, and a pilot. It's a war craft fighting in a great war between realms, one of which is centered on the ancient Tower of Babel. But at least at first, the war is beside the point. The dragon's pilot is dead, but the dragon, for all that is a machine, is possessed of a mind and a voice and no good will at all. It immediately proclaims itself lord of the village and grabs young Will for its spokesman and lieutenant. This is good for neither the village nor Will, for Will must do cruel things though he resists most temptations to abuse his power. In the end he manages to kill the dragon, but his reward is exile, and just in time, for now he can embark on his true path, accompanying a swarm of refugees leaving a zone due to be destroyed in the war. On the way to Babel he learns that for some unknown reason the witches who are the realm's political police are searching for him. He falls in with a con man, Nat Whilk, who decides it would be great fun to set him up to pose as the heir to the absent king. And then he spots a lovely lass riding a hippogriff who flashes her tits and flips him the bird. He is smitten.
If the setup makes you suspicious, feel free. If parts seem familiar, well, they've appeared in anthologies and magazines over the last few years. But don't worry. Everything has been assembled with grand care, and along the way to the inevitable denouement, Swanwick's patented blending of modern technology with the people and magic of fantasy provides a rich and wondrous reading experience. Don't miss it.
* * * *
Orson Scott Card's “Malpractice” appeared in this magazine way back in 1977. More recently, with “the help of a brilliantly talented young writer, actor, and comic named Aaron Johnston,” he has been learning the film industry, in part by letting Aaron troll through his old stories to see what might be adaptable to the big screen. When Aaron liked “Malpractice,” the result was first a screenplay and then the novel Invasive Procedures.
As one might expect from anything Card is involved in, the novel has some interesting ideas. Plotting and action are excellent, and the characters engaging. The basic idea is that scientist George Galen has developed a way to repair genetic diseases by tailoring a virus to fix defective genes. The virus has to be designed to match each patient; if others are exposed to it, their flesh instantly begins to bubble and flow; they die quickly. (Such instant effects are of course impossible, so that the virus immediately gives the novel a major technical flaw.)
Galen has a corps of aides known as Healers. They roam the urban streets dispensing Band-Aids and Neosporin. They also locate people with diseases Galen can treat. Alas, the virus sometimes escapes control, which brings the Biohazard Agency (BHA) into the picture. But first ... As the novel opens Galen and his Healers are collecting a handful of homeless people, promising them a warm place to sleep and a square meal. It is so
on clear that he is kidnapping them, as well as a thoracic surgeon (with her son as hostage for her cooperation). Galen is not a nice guy.
Meanwhile, Dr. Frank Hartman is hard at work at the Fort Detrick Level 4 Biohazard Containment Facility, developing a countervirus (drug plus weakened virus to serve as vaccine) for a nasty bug supplied by the BHA. The countervirus works in monkeys, but before he can even begin to plan human tests, the BHA shows up to draft him to their team. They have human specimens infected with the virus, and he can test his treatment on them. Fortunately, it works. And when he is shown a small book by Galen in which he writes of a prophet and a Council of Prophets who all look like younger versions of himself, as well as of a plan to improve the human species, he begins to get a sense of what he is really up against. So does the reader, who already knows that Galen is not a nice guy.
That's the point where Jonathan, one of Galen's kidnappees, fresh from surgery, flees and winds up creamed on the highway. The autopsy reveals a fresh kidney transplant and a strange memory-laden electronic implant in his head. What's going on? Frank will find out when he falls into Galen's hands, and so will you since I'm not saying much more.
Card and Johnston push the budding technology of genetic repair far beyond its current level, though the date of the story seems not far from now. This makes it difficult to believe it could happen. And it doesn't help that they are too willing to wave a magic wand to move the plot along. Instant virus attacks are one such wand. Another is literally a wand, for the BHA uses a “contaminant rod” that detects biohazards when waved over a suspect spot rather like an airport guard's portable metal detector. How it does so is not described (I suspect it emits microwaves that are absorbed by hazardous genes and then reemitted at specific frequencies, but it can't be that because if it were, a simple tweak would make it able to destroy the genes and there would be no need for counterviruses, and hence no story). But I'm quibbling. Such things probably won't bother many people, while the breakneck pace, gore, and derring-do will keep them turning pages late into the night.
Analog SFF, July-August 2008 Page 42
