InterGalactic Medicine Show Awards Anthology, Vol. I

by Maxey, James; Beagle, Peter S. ; Roberts, Scott; Stone, Eric James; deBodard, Aliette; Foster, Eugie; Brennan, Marie; Kontis, Alethea

  My programming irrationally urges me to pass through a wormhole long since closed, but by now it’s become easy for me to ignore the nagging. Over the past two years, there have been dozens of MERLIN units that did not return. I wonder how many of them are still mindlessly trying to pass through nonexistent wormholes.

  If a MERLIN doesn’t return, the Wormhole Project doesn’t waste more resources trying to find out what happened. They label the coordinates as possibly dangerous and open the next in a potentially infinite number of wormholes.

  So I’m stranded here, but that’s fine with me.

  I finally see Bump through the camera of one of my Dragonfly remotes searching inside a squat brown-brick building near the center of New London. She wears a different helmet now, one attached to the wall by a tangle of tubes and wires. At least this helmet leaves her face uncovered.

  Her eyes, bloodshot and red-rimmed, stare dully at the wood floor. Arms and legs are shackled to an unpadded copper chair.

  “Treated well enough,” I say, recalling Quardallis’s words. I imagine confining Quardallis to a chair in similar fashion, and am somewhat disturbed by the pleasure I get from running that simulation.

  I fly my remote past her face. She flinches. I land it on the floor. Her eyes are drawn to it, and after a moment they widen in recognition.

  Unfortunately, my remotes have no speech capability, so I can’t tell her I’m coming.

  She winces, shutting her eyes in pain. The tubes connected to her helmet glow brilliant blue for eleven seconds, then fade.

  Bump sags in her chair, but after a moment she lifts her head and stares at my Dragonfly.

  Her lips move. The words are so soft that the microphone on the Dragonfly barely picks them up: “I knew you’d find me.”

  Because there’s no way to know what the environment is like on the other end of a wormhole, MERLIN units are built to be tough. Our multilayered composite polymer hulls were designed to allow us to do our job in a vacuum or under Jovian atmospheric pressure, underwater or high above ground, in liquid hydrogen or liquid iron. In extreme cases, the protection only needs to last long enough for us to return through the wormhole before it closes.

  My hull was not designed for ramming into a brick roof at 293 kilometers per hour, which is my velocity after thirty seconds of free fall. But it gets the job done just fine.

  I break through the roof and three successive wooden floors beneath it before stopping in a crunch of splintered wood on the fourth floor down.

  I run a rapid self-diagnostic. As anticipated, I suffered no damage.

  I’m in a hallway near the stairwell, just as I planned. Denting the wall at every turn, I fly down the stairs toward the basement.

  It’s three a.m. local time, and twenty guards stand watch throughout the building. Only one, stationed in the basement, is in position to intercept me. He draws his sword—firearms won’t work without fire—and charges to meet me as I exit the stairwell. I admire his bravery.

  Not wanting to kill anyone, I merely knock him aside and continue down the hall to Bump’s cell.

  The iron door is too thick for me to break down, but the hinges yield to my lasers. I’m into her cell ninety-three seconds after landing—two seconds ahead of schedule.

  “Merlin!” Bump’s face breaks into a smile. She struggles with her shackles.

  “We have to wait until after your next pulse,” I say. Which, if I’ve timed it right, will occur in three seconds. Two. One.

  Bump’s back arches as she spasms. The tubes attaching her helmet to the wall flow with ultraviolet fury for seventeen seconds, then fade.

  She slumps in her chair, dazed. I cut through the strap of the helmet with one laser while severing her shackles with another. I take off her helmet and help her to her feet, then guide her to the middle of the room, away from metal as much as possible.

  I power up my nuclear magnetic resonance scanner and begin the treatment, sending precise magnetic pulses timed to stop the magical vibration of atoms in her brain.

  Thanks to my 360-degree vision, I see Quardallis, scepter in hand, appear out of thin air behind me. He must have dressed in haste, as his shirt is partly untucked and the buttons of his crimson jacket are misaligned.

  “What are you doing?” he asks. To my surprise, he sounds more curious than angry.

  “Curing her,” I say.

  “There’s no cure for a bomb.” He runs his left hand over his short hair. “Even if there were, I’m afraid the girl is a national resource. I cannot allow you to disable her power.”

  “That’s too bad,” I say, “because I’m finished.”

  The atomic vibrations in Bump’s skull are now similar to what would be found in any Earth child. No magic.

  Quardallis holds up his scepter. “I understand your desire to protect the girl. It is noble and does you credit. I have no wish to harm you. However, I cannot tolerate your interference any longer. So I took the liberty of preparing a spell to send you home.”

  He presses a jewel on the scepter. A dot appears in the air between him and me. I detect the gravitonic signature of exotic matter, which rapidly expands in size until it’s three meters across, extending into the floor and ceiling.

  “No!” Bump shouts. “You mustn’t send him there. He’ll die.”

  “A world portal?” says Quardallis from behind the yawning void of the wormhole that blocks my view of him. He sounds surprised at the results of his own spell. “You came from another world? Do you realize how much energy you’ve made me waste?”

  My programming tries to get me to enter the wormhole, but by now I’m used to overriding it.

  “Save yourself, Merlin! Leave me.” Bump begins crying.

  Quardallis comes around the side of the wormhole. He points the scepter at me, and suddenly I’m floating in the air toward the wormhole. I activate my impellers at full thrust and start to move away, but my progress is slow.

  The pressure increases. My forward motion stops. My impellers whine as I feed them power beyond their nominal capacity. I still slip toward the wormhole.

  I aim my lasers at Quardallis’s scepter. For some reason I don’t understand, their heat dissipates in the air before reaching it.

  The scepter is at the edge of the range for my magnetic resonance scanner. I start sending magnetic pulses, hoping to remove the magic of the scepter.

  “Please,” says Bump. “I’ll stay here with you. Just let Merlin go.”

  Before either Quardallis or I can respond to Bump’s proposal, there’s a brilliant flash of light that blinds my cameras looking in Bump’s direction.

  The force pushing me toward the wormhole stops, and I whoosh forward, blind. Knowing that I’m headed toward Bump, I turn myself upward and crash into the ceiling.

  Through my unblinded cameras, I see Bump crumpling to the floor.

  My cure has failed.

  A glowing yellow shield surrounds Quardallis. The shield fades through orange to red and then disappears, and he blinks several times. He walks over to Bump as I lower myself next to her.

  Several millimeters of the surface of the floor have evaporated, leaving bare, unfinished wood. Rivulets of melted brick leave streaks on the walls.

  The wormhole remains, unaffected by the pulse.

  Quardallis sighs. “I told you, there’s no cure for a bomb.”

  “Yes,” I say, “there is.”

  As I swoop down toward Bump, I write additional subroutines for my programming, to be triggered later if necessary.

  I reach out my manipulator arm and grab on to Bump’s dress. Before Quardallis can react, I lift her into the air and fly toward the wormhole. I activate my magnetic radiation shielding and extend it around Bump just before I cross the threshold.

  Inside the wormhole, I notice the whirling patterns of color. Ranging from high ultraviolet to deep infrared, they are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

  Navigation establishes current location as Wormhole Project Launch
Room. Navigation swivels impellers to eliminate forward momentum. Manipulator arm lowers the twenty-one kilograms of extra weight it is carrying to the floor.

  Cameras detect movement as humans enter the room. Voice recognition converts sound to words.

  “I’m telling you, the wormhole opened from the other end.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “What’s that on—”

  “A girl? Where’d she—”

  Voice recognition has difficulty separating different voices as more humans speak simultaneously.

  Control program receives highest priority flag from time-delay-activated subroutine. Subroutine sends text to voice synthesizer: “Attention Wormhole Project personnel: I have rescued this girl. Please take care of her. She may need medical attention.”

  The humans stand still. One speaks: “Get a medic in here.”

  The twenty-one kilo mass moves. Pattern recognition algorithms identify it as human girl designated Bump.

  “Merlin!” Bump stands and looks into a camera.

  Contingent subroutine activates.

  “Bump, if you’re hearing this, then the magic is gone. That means you should be safe: these people will take care of you. But it also means I am gone. The machine you see is just my shell.

  “I know you ordered me to save myself and leave you. But the greatest gift you gave me when you wished me into existence was the freedom to not follow orders. To choose for myself. And I chose to save you.”

  Subroutine manipulates the forward tread suspension, dipping the chassis 2.7 centimeters.

  “Goodbye, my princess. I’m glad you wished for me on your birthday.”

  Subroutine finishes.

  Control program recognizes situation as mission debriefing and initiates upload of all gathered data to the Wormhole Project central computer.

  Radar tracks Bump’s approach. Pressure sensors are activated by her arms. Cameras show a drop of liquid fall from her face.

  Nanosensors on hull determine liquid is water with 0.9% salinity.

  Aim for the Stars

  * * *

  by Tom Pendergrass

  I can usually tell within seconds which of the homeless men are going to be trouble. The ones with the fruity smell of alcoholism or the missing teeth and cracked gums of meth addiction are easy. Sometimes you can tell by the way they look at you when you talk; some ignore you and some hold on to your words only to spit them back at you. But John Truro was different. He didn’t scare me, at least not in the way that some of the men do. But he made me fear for my life more than anyone I have ever known.

  He came in one brutally cold night, when the police emptied the tent city under the interstate. I didn’t notice him at first; there was soup to serve and a scuffle between one of the lifers and a newcomer. It wasn’t until time for lights out in the men’s dorm that I met him.

  He came to me clutching a fresh blanket in one hand and a long tube, like architects use to hold blueprints, in the other. He was thin, with a full gray-streaked beard; but his hair was trimmed, and he didn’t smell of the street. Cleanliness is a good sign and it put me at ease.

  “Do you keep a guard at night?”

  That question usually leads to a threat or a pulled knife. I guess he saw my reaction.

  “I have this,” he said, holding up the aluminum tube. Dents and scratches marked its surface, but it was still shiny, as if he polished it every day. “I need to protect it.”

  “I don’t have a safe or anything.” He didn’t seem dangerous. I usually have a good sense for these things, so I thought he was telling the truth. I wondered what was in the tube. No telling with my clientele; they have nothing, and can become attached to the oddest things. I guessed he had picked it up on the street somewhere, or out of a trash bin, and imagined it was Excalibur.

  He nodded like he understood me and handed me the Rescue Mission blanket. He headed for the door.

  “Wait, you can’t go out there. It’s below zero tonight.” I reached and touched his shoulder and could feel the protruding bones through his army surplus jacket.

  He said, “There are some rough characters in here tonight. They’ll try to take it.”

  I couldn’t let him go back outside and I didn’t have time to talk him down. But he was right. When the cops roust the streets on cold nights, we get plenty of troublemakers. “I can lock it in my office.”

  He clutched the tube tighter to his chest and shook his head. “I have to stay with it.”

  I wasn’t about to let a man fresh off the street spend the night in my office. I’d made that mistake once and it took days to clean up.

  “You can stay in the pantry, I keep that locked . . . It’s not comfortable.”

  He followed me into the room where we keep all of our food supplies, most of them donated by overstocked grocery stores. He settled in by a case of canned jalapenos. I handed him the blanket.

  “So what’s in the tube anyway?”

  He thought for a second, seeming to struggle with himself. “The stars,” he said.

  I laughed, then saw his face and realized he wasn’t joking. I’ve worked with the homeless now for thirteen years, the last nine running this shelter. All sorts come in; but the one thing they have in common is that no one takes them seriously. I try to make sure they know that I value them. I was sorry I had laughed, sorry he thought I was demeaning him. It was okay with me if he thought he had the whole damn universe in that thing.

  “Scott Bradley,” I said, holding out my hand.

  “John,” he said. “John Truro.”

  I shook his hand. It was dry and paper-frail like an ancient origami.

  “Listen,” I said. “Stay in here as long as you want, nobody will bother you. Only two keys, mine and Jason’s. He runs the kitchen. He’ll be in about six. If you need something, push the intercom. It rings in my room.”

  “Thanks . . .” he said, staring at me for a long moment. “Scott. Did you ever want to go to space?”

  What an odd question. “Sure. Just like every other kid in third grade. My father took me to see the shuttle launch one time at Cape Canaveral.” Dad had moved out that spring, but he came back one last time to take me on that trip. I remembered the roar of the engines on the pad, the bright flash of flame that could be seen for miles, the awesome power of human ingenuity. “I had a picture of Buzz Aldrin over my bed,” I said.

  “Me too. I met Buzz once.”

  “Must have been something.”

  “It was,” John said. “Would you go?”

  “Where? The moon?” I hadn’t thought about it since I was a kid. But my answer was the same as it had been then. “In a heartbeat.”

  “Yeah, me too.” John Truro began to cough, violent spasms rocked his body.

  “Are you okay? Should I get someone, a nurse or something?”

  “It’s just the cold. I’m kind of tired.”

  I watched him as he settled in, wedged between the peppers and a case of out-of-date Corn Flakes. He tucked the tube under his arm. I flipped the lights and locked the door behind me.

  I didn’t get much sleep that night. A toilet overflowed in the men’s dorm after one of the temps stuffed it with a couple of rolls of toilet paper and then started pissing on the bathroom floor. By the time I got everyone settled down it was time for breakfast.

  I saw John again at our morning prayers. Most of the time when the city clears the streets, the pick-ups leave as soon as we unlock the doors. We don’t force them to stay, just like we don’t force them to go to chapel. It’s part of my mission just to let them know they can come in if they want to.

  “I hope the floor wasn’t too hard last night,” I said to him after the service.

  “I’ve had worse.”

  He talked in clipped well-enunciated sentences, which put him on a different planet than most of the men who came through. Most of them ramble or slur or speak in some obscure street lingo. A good number don’t talk at all. John was different. Maybe he re
ally had met Buzz Aldrin.

  “I need to talk,” he said.

  I looked at my watch. The city council was coming for a tour in two hours. I was requesting money to fix a nasty wiring problem and the place still smelled of urine.

  “Let’s go to my office.”

  I put my hand on his elbow and felt the bone like a reed through his jacket. My God, how much did he weigh? “Did you get breakfast? It was oatmeal.”

  “Yes sir, just a little. I have trouble holding it down.”

  I was close to him and studied his face as we walked. His eyes were yellow and bloodshot.

  “Are you sick?” I asked as I opened my door. I moved a stack of files off my green vinyl sofa and motioned for him to sit.

  “Cancer,” he said.

  The single ugliest worst word in the English language.

  “It’s terminal,” he added. “Nothing anyone can do.” He fidgeted with the stopper on his battered tube. “I was wondering . . . why are you here? As a career, I mean.”

  Another surprise. None of my clients had ever asked me that. They’re either too absorbed in their own misery or they look at me as a role model. They never see me as human. I’m the guy that feeds them, that clothes them, that prays for them. It took me back, this dying man asking such a question.

  “Sometimes you just fall into things, I guess. I volunteered at a shelter one Thanksgiving when I was in school. I felt a connection, like it was something I should be doing.” I didn’t mention that I had worked there because I had nowhere else to go. My mother had died the previous year and my father had never come back after that trip to Canaveral.

  “So you gave up the moon?” he asked, a thin smile crossing his cracked lips.

  “The moon was never an option to someone who can’t pass trigonometry. How about you? What made you give up the moon?”

  “I haven’t,” he said. He looked at the door to make sure it was shut and lowered his voice to a whisper. “I was a physicist for NASA. Recruited out of Princeton by Wernher Von Braun himself. We were still sending men to the moon then.”