Jim Baen's Universe-Vol 2 Num 2

by Jim Baen's Universe! staff

  So we wound up having to relocate a ton of creatures after they saw the landscape that God intended to give to them, i.e. New Jersey. It made the exodus from Egypt look like a cakewalk by comparison, let me tell you. For a few millennia there, I was afraid the launch would collapse completely and we'd have to start all over. Since then, of course, the shifting of tectonic plates and subsequent earthquakes have continued proving my point (we so needed a better layout for the landmasses), but you don't say "I told you so" to Jehovah. You just don't.

  So, anyhow, we barely got past the firmament crisis, and God started naming things. He was off and running! "This is an armadillo, that's a slug, this is an avocado, over there is a ficus." He really had no gift at all for it. I'd realized ever since He named me Ishmael, shortly after creating me to help launch His grand plan, that we needed a better system. But then, suddenly, it was too late, we'd launched, and there was the Creator, naming everything in sight: "We'll call this part a penis, and that a vagina, and I think we should call this characteristic 'perspicacity.'" It was a disaster.

  I was meanwhile up to my supernovas in PR problems after someone on my staff leaked the bit about Eve being taken from Adam's rib. I blame myself. It was Yahweh's idea —I mean, honestly, most of Creation was His idea, I just guided the packaging, He really deserves a lot of credit for the Universe— but I should have seen the inevitable problems before we were blindsided by them: If Man was created in the image of Yahweh, but Woman was created from Man's rib, well, you're obviously going to have considerable problems perpetuating the species. Or even holding a decent conversation.

  The critics simply shredded us for this. The Lord God was devastated by some of those early reviews. And while I didn't disagree in principle with the comments, I thought their tone was way harsh.

  Look, it was an honest mistake. Also an isolated one. We didn't have this problem with any other species. But with His favorite creation (i.e. the one based on himself, thankyouverymuch), Yahweh got a little carried away. (He called it lyrical. I call it showing off.) Ergo the whole "I made your mate from your rib" stunt. Which was, even He has admitted since then, rather childish. And certainly shortsighted. Picture this: "Hello, I'm Adam. And this is my wife, Eve, who happens to be approximately seven inches long and has no orifices."

  This is why prelaunch planning is so important. Mistakes like this could have been avoided, thus sparing a certain deity the need to work so much overtime, under considerable pressure from the media, to completely redo one of Creation's most high-profile species.

  So, okay, God saw His mistake, and He went back and re-created Adam and Eve equally— thus leading to some confusing rewrites in Genesis that have still not been straightened out. (But don't even get me started on that.)

  Then the next thing you know, the Lord of Hosts said to me, "I don't like their design, Ishmael."

  "Don't call me Ishmael."

  "It's clumsy and inelegant. And have you noticed that they're not very bright? Especially Adam."

  "Nor is Adam's character all that one might desire," added Lucifer, joining us without warning.

  God's thoughtful frown became suddenly thunderous. "I told you to go away!"

  Lucifer smirked as he mimicked Adam: "'The apple? What apple?'"

  I advised, "Leave it alone, Lu," while God smoldered.

  But Lucifer never knew when to quit. Still mimicking Adam, he whined, "'The woman tempted me.'"

  "I thought snakes were a bad idea from the start," I muttered, remembering who had tempted Eve. "I hate snakes."

  "They're not so bad," Lucifer said, "But I really don't care for the name. Who thought up that one, I wonder?"

  And God cast Lucifer out of heaven. Just like that. "Hah! Maybe now," the Lord God said, "he'll stop getting into so much trouble."

  (Oh, yes, that certainly made the next few millennia trouble-free. Gooooood thinking.)

  "So, you were saying, Lord?" I prodded. "Something about Adam and Eve?"

  "I can hardly tell them apart from the apes," God complained.

  "But that was the plan," I reminded him. "And I think we wound up with a nice continuity to the whole primate look, right across the board."

  "I'm not satisfied," God said.

  Clients, I thought.

  "Why not, Lord?"

  "Adam and Eve seem somehow like eight-track tapes or the first Star Trek movie," God mused, "like we just haven't quite found our feet yet."

  "Feet were an excellent idea, Lord," I said encouragingly. "I'm so glad You added them right before the launch. I mean, imagine if everything in Creation had been like snakes. No feet." I shuddered. "Ugh!"

  And, to be clear, feet were totally the Big Guy's idea. What can I say? I work only with the best.

  "Mankind just seems like . . ." God shrugged restlessly. "I don't know. I just feel that they'll always be dismissed as My early work, you know? I should have done better."

  "But we— "

  "In fact," God said, still pondering His Creation, "many of these creatures don't look quite right to me. Perhaps . . ."

  "Yes, Lord?"

  "Perhaps you were right, Ishmael."

  "I'd prefer 'Rafe,' Lord. Or 'Thad.'"

  "Perhaps we launched Creation before it was really ready."

  "Oh. Gee. Y'think?" I said.

  "What is that tone in your voice?" God demanded.

  "It's something I just invented."

  "Hmm. Interesting. Shall we call it 'granola'?" God suggested.

  "I was thinking 'sarcasm,'" I said.

  "'Sarcasm'? Really?" God looked dubious. "Well, since you invented it, I grant you the privilege of naming it. But are you sure that's what you want to call it?"

  "If I may return to the point, Lord, I cannot deny that we launched Creation a trifle too soon, but— "

  "So I wonder if we should go back to the drawing board?" Yahweh mused. "Try for something better."

  "You mean . . . scrap Creation and start all over again?" I felt rather faint. We'd used up everything in the Big Bang. "I'm not sure we have enough cosmic matter left over to do that."

  "Couldn't we just reuse all the same matter and energy over again?"

  "Revert the entire cosmos back to its original inchoate form?" I said in horror.

  "Would that be a problem?" the Lord God asked.

  I thought of the eons of hard work and detailed planning that I had put into the Big Bang, and I knew I couldn't possibly do it all over again. At least, not without first taking a very long vacation in the sort of luxury resort that we'd neglected to Create yet. God just had no idea what that project had taken out of me. I'd rather give up my feet than destroy Creation and redo the whole job from scratch. Even if, as I was forced to agree, the cosmos would probably benefit from better planning on the next go-round.

  So I did the only thing that a being in my position could do: I soothed my client. "Yahweh, sweetie," I said. "These are natural second thoughts that any omnipotent Creator is bound to have after launching such a demanding and ambitious project. Okay, so there are a few design flaws we need to work out. But, come on, Big Guy, that was to be expected! How many absolutely perfect Universes can You name, after all?"

  "Well . . ."

  "God, I promise You, we can make the little fixes without reorganizing the whole cosmos— again."

  God bit His mighty lower lip. "So you . . . you think Creation is pretty good? I mean, you really like My work?"

  "Yahweh! Babydoll! I think Creation is brilliant!"

  "You're not just saying that?"

  The creative ego is so fragile.

  "God, I think Creation is going to run forever."

  "Yeah?"

  "Yeah," I said warmly. "So, buck up, Lord! No more nonsense about smooshing everything back into a handful of protoreactive microcosmic antimatter. Let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater!"

  The Lord Almighty frowned. "What's bathwater?"

  "It's something we should definitely Create before the plan
et gets any more crowded."

  "Ah!" God said. "One of those little fixes you mentioned."

  "Exactly," I said, relieved I'd got Him past the whole let's-scrap-Creation-and-start-all-over crisis.

  "But how are we going to fix Mankind?" God asked. "And some of these other creatures? And I'm not so crazy about some of the plants, either."

  "What in particular— ?"

  "Hey, I know!" God said. "Maybe we could make Mankind look more like ferns, and ferns look more like pachyderms, and pachyderms look more like rocks."

  I could see that the Maker of All Things was just running on fumes now and about to make some bad decisions on impulse. That kind of snap-judgment Creating had given us cockroaches and quicksand. When would He learn the value of planning?

  So, heading off trouble before it could get really cosmic again, I said, "Let's not do anything hasty, Lord. We've got all Eternity, after all."

  "Yes, but I . . . I . . ." God got distracted and peered off into the distance.

  "Is something wrong, Lord?"

  "Hmmm. What are Adam and Eve doing? How odd!"

  "Are they gathering food? Food was, by the way, a truly inspired notion, God. A first-rate improvisation!" Okay, so He's no planner, but I never said He didn't have talent by the boatload.

  "No, they're not gathering food . . ."

  "Building a shelter?" I stood on tiptoe, trying to see.

  "No . . ."

  I saw some movement in the distance, squinted, and recognized Adam and Eve. "Why, Lord, I think they're . . ."

  "They're . . . Yes, Ishmael, you're right. They're procreating."

  "Interesting," I said. "Although, perhaps . . . Do you think it looks a little . . ."

  "Ungainly?" God said. "Uncomfortable?"

  "Is that how they're supposed to look?" I asked.

  "Well, it's in accordance with the design."

  "Hmmm."

  "But it's a bit . . . It doesn't really . . . There's no . . ."

  "Yes, God, I see Your point."

  "And Eve looks positively bored," the Lord God noted.

  "Which can't bode well for procreation as a going concern."

  "We need to work on this," God said decisively.

  "Agreed, Lord," I said. "But, please, I beg You, let's do it intelligently. No going off half-cocked without a good design plan in place."

  "Oh, don't be such a wet blanket, Ishmael. Er, Rafe. Thad."

  I blinked away a sudden tear, touched by God's backing down on the name thing. "Oh, I guess You're right, Lord God Almighty. It's Your Creation, after all. If You want to play around with it, have a little fun, where's the harm?"

  "Just a few experiments," God assured me with a benevolent smile. "Some trial runs on a few modifications I have in mind."

  "As You wish, Lord," I said, giving in.

  I can't deny anything to my biggest client.

  That was many eons ago, and the Big Guy is still tinkering, always expanding and improving on His original material. And it's still the one, the only, the original Creation! The Lord God's work is always maturing and evolving, He doesn't rest on His laurels.

  (Oh, can I say "evolving" here? I hear there's been some controversy about evolution since we launched Creation.)

  * * *

  Dark Corners

  Written by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  Illustrated by Ural Akyuz

  The fighting had been going on for days. Outbursts of gunfire —six German soldiers dead in front of the Gare d'Orsay— a full-scale battle, complete with barricades that the French love so much, near the Eiffel Tower.

  Solae had come to the surface because he heard the Resistance and the Germans had brokered a truce. The Resistance needed the time to organize, to wait for the Allies to arrive. The Germans, who were beginning to understand that they could not hold Paris, needed time to make a plan.

  Solae needed food, so he had come to the only safe place he knew— a boulangerie on the Boulevard St. Germain. Most of the French were in hiding, not waiting in bread lines, and the Germans were at their posts.

  He'd thought he would be able to slip in and out, unnoticed.

  He had been wrong.

  Solae ran across the boulevard, a loaf of bread beneath his arm, panic in his throat. He was thinner than most, so thin that if he turned sideways, the less observant could not see him. But he could not turn now.

  The baker —a burly man who baked every morning for the Boche as if they were no different from the French he once served— was chasing Solae, shouting at the top of his lungs:

  "Foul boy! Thief!"

  Two storm troopers appeared from a kiosk, holding ripped posters telling Parisians to rise up against the Boche. The troopers looked ready for battle. They had shiny boots and shinier guns —and their eyes, that pale blue that the Boche seemed to worship— seemed even paler in the August sunlight.

  Solae grabbed his bicycle, also stolen, and pedaled as fast as he could, praying that the troopers would not follow in a car. Was a bread thief worth the gas? Surely there were other battles to fight, other people to attack.

  But he knew that the Germans —the filthy Boche— were like rabid dogs, unable to let go of anything once they sank their teeth into it.

  He pedaled hard, weaving in and out of the bicycle traffic. Despite the fighting, Parisians were still on the streets, going about their business, ignoring the war as best they could, just like they had these last four years.

  Behind him, he heard the roar of an engine. He glanced over his shoulder.

  The troopers had followed him. Theirs was the only car on the boulevard. Their helmets made their heads look round and comical, but Solae did not laugh at them.

  He had not laughed at the Boche for a long time, not since they put out the lights in his fair city. Not since his father's death.

  Solae pedaled faster, but he could not stay ahead of the car. It roared behind him, and it would only be a moment before it caught him.

  The bread was warm beneath his arm. Sweat ran down his face, and he wished, not for the first time, that he had the magic of his ancestors.

  He would make the Boche vanish. He would explode them, destroy their vehicle, wipe their race from the earth.

  But he could do none of these things. His people could do none of these things. The powers that had once belonged to faerie had faded centuries ago. When he was his most cynical, he believed that his people had had no great powers at all— that Faeryland and the magic that went with it were the myths the Real Ones believed them to be.

  The Boche sitting on the right aimed his rifle at Solae, and Solae's breath caught. He imagined light streaming from his fingers, destroying the rifle, destroying the Boche.

  But imagination did not make it so.

  Instead, Solae veered onto a side street, then another, his bike bouncing on the cobblestones. He was near the entrance his people kept hidden with their tiny powers.

  In one movement, he slipped off the bike and laid it against the closed and locked door of an empty shop. He gave the bike a longing glance —it had been by far the best bicycle he had stolen— then he slipped sideways.

  The Boche squeezed their vehicle onto the tiny street, the tires on the left side of the car riding on the curb. The Boche were laughing, calling out in German and bad French, promising le jeune a present if he but stopped for them.

  Solae knew what kind of present they would give him: a bullet in the heart. And no amount of magic could undo that kind of damage.

  The Boche did not seem to see him, even though one looked directly at him. Solae slipped around the corner and hid against a white wall covered with dead bougainvillea, until the Boche, their merriment gone, backed out of the street and left him alone.

  * * *

  Solae had not always stolen bread.

  Once the Real Ones of Paris thought him the favored son of a nightclub owner, a man who specialized in acts that had a touch of glamour to them— be it the way a chanteuse's songs seemed to com
e alive onstage or the way that a young dancer almost seemed to fly as she leapt into the arms of her partner.

  There had been magic during those nights. Not the magic of Solae's ancestors, but slighter magic, a bit of beauty that seemed to brighten the darkness.

  Not that there had been much darkness then.

  Less than a decade ago, when Solae was a little boy, he used to escape the smoke of his father's nightclub and climb onto the roof. There he looked at the lights of Paris— the arc lights illuminating the Eiffel Tower, the gargoyles of Notre Dame grinning in the lights on the dome, the lights of Sacré-Coeur on top of Montmartre, glowing like candles in the distance.