Analog SFF, July-August 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

* * * *

  Tegan echoed the question, once the police were gone.

  “He must have,” I said. “That's why he was giving away all his dogs. That's why he couldn't take the egg, or bottle-feed the puppies. He knew he wouldn't be there to take care of them."

  “But how could he know?"

  I shrugged helplessly. “He was Ernest,” I said. “He wasn't like anybody else."

  “No,” Tegan said. “No, he wasn't."

  We sat in silence for a moment, thinking of Ernest. The officer had said he'd looked peaceful. Looking back, that seemed right. Ernest had said he and Stranger were alike. They'd both known that their time had come, had accepted it calmly, had made arrangements for their dependents to be cared for....

  Those fifty little dogs were mine, now. What was I going to do with them?

  “Dr. Clayton?” Kami said apologetically, breaking the silence. “Mrs. Gallegos is asking about the notice Mr. Davenport put up, about his dogs."

  “Asking? Is she still here?"

  Kami nodded. “She was awfully shaky, so she thought she'd better sit down for a while before she tried to drive. That's when she saw the notice."

  I felt a stir of hope. Was it possible that I might now have only forty-nine little dogs to find homes for? Of course the fifty I'd started with was only an estimate, and I'd forgotten to count the three newborn puppies, but however many I had now, one less would surely be an improvement.

  “Oh,” Kami went on, “I almost forgot. The lawyer for your insurance company is on the phone."

  Ah, yes. There was death all around me today, but life, and lawsuits, still trundled determinedly on.

  * * * *

  On Sunday, Tegan and I took the egg to Howard's place.

  “Tegan!” Lynda said happily. “Look at you. I love your hair."

  I loved Tegan's hair too, not least because it signified the recovery of her usual bright self. She hadn't gone back to the magenta spikes, but had moved on; her shoulder-length hair was now colored in vivid tabby stripes.

  Together we hauled out the big bucket containing the egg and lurched down the slope with it to the bank of the pool. The monsters all hovered eagerly at the pool's edge, eyeing it with fascination. Curious splashed out of the water, heaved himself onto the bank with his flippers, and poked a fin into the bucket to touch the egg. Tegan's dog Mick, who had come along for the visit, ran a few laps around the pool, a black-and-white streak, and then jumped in.

  “So how many dogs do you have now, Michael?” Howard asked.

  “Forty-five,” I answered.

  “Good Lord. Where are you keeping them all?"

  “In the barn, mostly.” Yesterday afternoon had been a truly surreal experience, driving out to Ernest's place in a borrowed SUV stuffed full of pet carriers, with Mrs. Gallegos in tow. I saw the notice first, so I should get first pick, she'd said, and had proceeded to take over the entire adoption process. She'd selected Topaz for herself, and had then photographed all the other dogs (there had been forty-nine total, not counting the newborns), contacted the newspapers, and printed flyers to put up all over town. It seemed to be her way of dealing with her grief, and I hadn't been about to interfere. Three more dogs had been adopted this morning, and I was expecting a flurry of queries come Monday.

  Even more startling, Aaron had decided to adopt Tootsie's puppies and had volunteered to take over all the rest of the feedings himself. At this rate I'd be back down to my usual two tortoises by the end of the month.

  Almost down to that. There was the egg, of course.

  As if it knew we'd arrived at the pond, the egg began to rock back and forth in the bucket. I reached in instinctively and pulled it out to hold it in my lap. The shell suddenly split, all the way across the egg, and a tiny face with huge luminous eyes peered out. I peeled away the shell and the beautiful little creature curled into my hands, her long sinuous body graced with ethereal fronds. She was a perfect miniature of her mother, just as I'd known she would be. The others had wondered if there would be more stages in the life cycle (the sea monsters had several, between egg and baby monster), but I had known better.

  The little creature looked at me for a moment, fronds waving around her face, and I got to my feet and carried her to the water's edge. Curious hovered solicitously beside her as I released her into the water, and the two of them disappeared together beneath the surface. The other monsters proceeded to chase Mick out of the water, and the dog made an undignified scramble, tail between legs, to flop down by Tegan's side.

  I let out a sigh of relief. “She's going to be fine,” I said. “Perfectly safe, with all these uncles and aunts to look after her."

  “She?” Tegan looked at me quizzically.

  “Well, she, um—looks like her mother,” I said weakly. I didn't know how to explain how sure I was that the little one was female. Somehow, it seemed that she had told me. “In fact, I think I'll call her Junior."

  “I wish her mother could have lived to see her,” Tegan said wistfully.

  “Yes. But Ernest was right, you know. She was old, very old, and it was her time. We're used to thinking that any animal of breeding age can't be so very old, but it doesn't seem to be so with these creatures.” A thought struck me, and I turned to Howard. “That's it, Howard,” I exclaimed. “That's what happened to the monsters’ parents. I don't think they were ill at all. They were old, and they were wasting away just like Stranger did. They came to you so that you'd take care of their babies.” What a relief it was to realize that; for years I'd been afraid that the parents’ “disease” might crop up in Howard's monsters, and that I wouldn't have the faintest idea what to do about it. A great burden lifted, and I felt as if I might float away on euphoria.

  Junior and Curious suddenly appeared again, and I waded out happily to join them, with Tegan at my side.

  * * * *

  We were all sopping wet on the drive home. Tegan dried her striped hair vigorously with a borrowed towel, then shook it out, and Mick, very muddy as well as wet, tried to climb into my lap.

  “We've got quite a collection now, haven't we?” Tegan said. “Forty-six dogs counting Mick, two tortoises, and Junior. We'll have to find a place with a really big yard."

  We? Find a place? My heart started beating faster. “We're not likely to find a place to keep Junior. I think she'll need to stay fostered out with her aunts and uncles. And I'm really hoping to find homes for forty-five of the dogs."

  “Forty-four,” Tegan said thoughtfully. “I think I'd like to keep Tootsie. Mick gets along with her nicely. My apartment definitely isn't going to be adequate anymore."

  “I'd like a bigger place too,” I said, reaching over Mick to take Tegan's hand. “I'd like a place that's ours."

  “Good,” Tegan said simply. “That's settled, then."

  I was floating for the rest of the drive back to town, and scarcely even noticed the heavy traffic that appeared as soon as we reached the city limits. The county fair was on this weekend, and everyone in town seemed to be out and about. Maybe Tegan would like to come with me to the fair, as soon as we'd changed out of our wet things and dropped off Mick. Maybe after that we could go out to dinner and celebrate.

  “Look out!” Tegan yelped, pointing ahead.

  Someone had slammed on the brakes several cars ahead of us, and each successive car screeched to a frantic halt in a relentless chain reaction. I slammed on my brakes too, but the truck plus the vet box had a considerable mass, and I couldn't stop in time; with a thudding crunch I hit the bumper of the car in front of me. It was hardly fair, as I hadn't even been speeding, but nothing was going to disturb me today.

  Even after the car door opened, and Donald Miller stepped out and fixed me with a furious glare that promised yet another lawsuit, it was still the best day of my life.

  Copyright (c) 2007 Amy Bechtel

  (EDITOR'S NOTE: Michael and the monsters have appeared previously in “Little Monsters” [November 1989], “Business as Usual” [July 1991], �
�Strange Things” [June 1992], “Yellow and Orange Blues” [May 1998], “As Time Goes By” [July/August 1999], “Sea Changes” [April 2002], and “Language Lessons” [October 2005].)

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  * * *

  THE CAVES OF CERES

  by JOE SCHEMBRIE

  * * * *

  Illustrated by Vincent DiFate

  "Either-or” debates often forget there may be other possibilities....

  * * * *

  As Roger Thomas flew his flivver through the caves of Ceres, a wall of rock popped into the headlight beam and he stomped the retro pedal. The helmet glass of his space suit automatically tinted with the flare of the rocket exhaust. Around the curve came a robot hauling wagons of ore. With a pulse of his side thrusters, Roger squeezed by. He ignored the sparks as an outcropping scraped bumper metal.

  The tunnel opened into a cavern. The flivver settled with a ballistic spray of dust. Excavators resembling mechanical dinosaurs chewed rock while a humanoid robot glared with expressionless lenses at the human pawing under the vehicle's netting.

  “Drill fuses,” Roger said, flicking a package with a spin.

  The robot caught clumsily. It flashed an authorization code into Roger's computer tablet and promptly about-faced.

  “You're welcome,” Roger said.

  He thrust the way he'd come. His dash-mounted laser-ring gyro-map showed a blip ascending toward the Rift mouth. Seconds later, he pulled into a cavern as large as Manhattan Island. Along the frost-encrusted walls, men and machines enacted an arcane choreography upon scaffolding as slender as knitting needles.

  A space suit with the blue-and-white Ceres Mining logo on its chest bounced over.

  “Hey, Grady,” Roger said. “Got a big one from your corporate slave drivers."

  Grady Olsen gestured at the bumpers. “Looks like you've got some new bruises too."

  “Either I drive faster than the robots do, or go home."

  “You could also rejoin CM."

  “That's going backwards."

  “How you exit a dead end."

  Roger unnetted a refrigerator-sized box. Not a lumbar-popper in Ceres's .025 Earth-standard gravity, but cumbersome. Grunting, Roger dumped the load onto a pallet.

  Suddenly, Grady touched his helmet. “Hey, Roger, just got a message from my supervisor's office. Hal Winkler wants to contact you, urgent."

  Roger glanced at his computer tablet, whose long-range communications functions were useless in the caves. “Wink? What for?"

  “Something about a guide job. You're conducting tours now?"

  “If it floats food above the table. But why is Wink drumming business for me? I haven't been in his place for months. He overcharges, you know."

  “And waters the beer. I'm just the messenger. By the way, you didn't forget?"

  “Do I ever?” Roger made a slow-motion football pass with an airtight container. “Synthetic pastrami and artificial rye. Hope you didn't want the other way around."

  Grady snatched the sandwich. “I owe you."

  “Big time."

  Authorizations traded, Roger returned to the main shaft. He hovered, pondering whether to continue his rounds or see Wink. They weren't buddies, but Roger couldn't picture Wink pulling his leg.

  Merging into the surface-bound traffic, Roger weaved among transports and ore carriers until he burst from the Obarator Rift. He headed over Planum Ferdinandea, increased his velocity by three hundred meters per second, and inserted into equatorial orbit. A star gleamed in the black sky above the geometrically patterned lights of Schroter Base. Alphaville Station resolved into a cylinder of multitiered windows pirouetting with a counterweight of slag at the end of a two-kilometer tether.

  Roger matched orbital and rotational vectors and plunked onto the landing platform. While his legs adjusted to the full-Earth spingrav, he eyed his flivver.

  One headlight was broken from that cave-in last week in Tunnel 18A. The passenger-side rear strut was crimped from when he had flown too fast through the fog in those new tunnels at the nine-thousand-meter level ... well, the damage hadn't mattered until he wondered how a customer might react.

  Sighing, Roger headed for the mall deck airlock.

  * * * *

  The dining room of Wink's Interplanetary Bar & Grill was jammed with the usual suspects—miners, prospectors, technicians, drifters, quasicriminal low-lifes. Fitting comfortably into the middle of that milieu, Roger entered unnoticed.

  Hal Winkler, looking more a waiter than the station's foremost entrepreneur, held a towel and had his sleeves rolled to display his skull-and-crossbones tattoo. As Roger neared, Wink spoke to someone at a table. With a jolt, Roger realized the person seated was female.

  She wasn't bad looking: young, blonde, a smooth olive complexion with a nose that seemed to actively tussle between half-Aztec broad and half-Irish upturned. Her liquid eyes were wide and riveted on what Wink was saying.

  Once Roger was in range, Wink slapped him on the shoulder.

  “Rebecca, this is Roger Thomas. Roger, this is Rebecca Sanchez."

  “Thomas,” Rebecca said, her clear diction tinged with a Texan drawl. “Your last name is Thomas."

  “Yes.” Her steady gaze almost compelled him to apologize. “I understand you're needing a guide."

  Over folded arms, she stared.

  “Can I sit?” he asked.

  With her nod, he slid into the chair. He became conscious of the sidelong glances from the other patrons. You'd think they'd never seen a woman before, Roger thought. And here there'd been one on the station only last month.

  Wink hung over them. Rebecca forced a smile.

  “If you don't mind...."

  “Oh, sure. I'll leave you to business."

  Once they were alone, she gave Roger a gaze that felt like she was memorizing his facial pores.

  “Well,” she said. “So what's the message?"

  “The message,” Roger said slowly.

  “Didn't my father tell you?"

  “I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about."

  Her smile faded. Beads of moisture welled. “You don't know. I came all the way out here and—and—"

  Roger heard the background chatter diminish. Glances turned to glares. He knew what they were thinking. It was his barroom fantasy, too, to be the shining knight who saved the noble lady from the boorish knave.

  “Hey,” he said softly. He offered her a napkin and she dabbed her cheeks. “This must be mistaken identity, that's all. So you're looking for a Roger Thomas?"

  “Actually, someone named Tom."

  “Just Tom?"

  She breathed deeply. “I suppose there are lots of Toms out here."

  “I'm afraid so. Ceres isn't one little outpost anymore. It has several communities, thousands of people."

  “There's no directory?"

  “If there was, we'd swing the publisher by the neck at ten gees.” He paused. “Although, come to think, there is one listing.” He brushed away her computer tablet. “You can't access via Asternet. It's private."

  “I'll pay for your trouble."

  Placing his hormones in standby mode, he took a financially appraising look. Her coveralls were not designer label. She was barely beyond her teens. And if she had paid for passage from Earth, she'd likely be low on funds. But for some reason, possibly that his hormonal-mode regulator seemed inoperative after ages of disuse, he trusted her.

  “It's a deal.” He noticed a handmade, long-necked bottle by her elbow. “Shall we toast?"

  “Not that stuff.” Rebecca laughed. “My father is an amateur winemaker, and it's one of his more, uh, creative attempts."

  “Oh, sentimental value—"

  “No way. It's just that I was to meet Tom at the storage room that my father leases here on the station. While I was waiting, I unlocked the room, and it was stacked to the ceiling with these bottles. I had a sip, and—well, I wouldn't want to afflict you."

  “Rebecca ... I as
sume you can't contact your father to ask about Tom."

  “My father isn't ... available.” Her faced showed pain, then managed another smile. “How about I buy what you like?"

  She signaled Wink. Roger requested a light beer. Wink did a double back and said, “Hey, Rog. Noticed your flivver's kind of beat up. Why don't my garage ‘bots do a go-over while you're here?"

  “I'm short on cash."

  “Your credit's good."

  Wink grinned at Rebecca. But Roger knew Wink had never extended credit to anyone. The shining knights were just stumbling over one another today.

  * * * *

  Rebecca had an upset stomach, common for those new to shifting gravity fields. After she returned from the infirmary, Roger helped her rent a suit. He noticed how confidently she snapped the limb segments onto the torso.

  “You've done this before?” he asked.

  “I practiced during the trip from Earth."

  He gave her credit for effort, and points for not commenting on the flivver's condition, which looked the same after Wink's servicing as before. The retro pedal was still sticky, too. Roger wondered what Wink would charge him for.

  They jetted into a higher orbit. Soon, while transiting the interior plain of Piazzi Crater, they observed a twin sunrise.

  “Solar mirror?” she asked.

  “Yep. The Piazzi Concentrator."

  “It looks huge."

  “Ten klicks."

  “Ten square kilometers?"

  “Ten klicks diameter. About eighty square."

  “How much thermal power is that?"

  “Around Ceres, solar intensity is roughly a gigawatt per square klick."

  "Eighty gigawatts?"

  “Yep."

  “That's incredible! Back home, Austin has been trying to get permits to build a one-gigawatt nuclear plant for years now! And here you just float some tin foil!"

  “Well, actually, it's aluminum-coated Mylar, weighs over a thousand tons, and maneuvers with minirockets. But yeah, power's cheap out here. Your family lives in Austin?"

  “Just myself, these days."

  In the midst of Piazzi's bowl, a third sun glowed orange, then white-hot. They lowered their visors.