Analog Science Fiction and Fact 01/01/11

by Dell Magazines

  We are coming up on a better solution to the problem of Wolf and his captives than I could have ever hoped, and yet for me, a far worse one.

  My bargaining session has been transformed into a coup. Now I am alpha of the Bad Lands. Not an office I had ever aspired to or particularly wanted. But in the short term such power has its uses.

  Chloe has been put in a car and is being taken back to her plane. I had a harder time getting her to follow this directive than getting the militia officers who had served Wolf to acknowledge me as their new leader. She didn’t want to leave me there at that old military installation.

  I didn’t really want to stay.

  My human, the man I loved beyond all reason when I was a dog, had been many things. He had been a warrior, a high-ranking soldier who had devoted the later years of his life to thinking and writing about ways to make war unnecessary. He was a scholar, his opinions valued in the halls of power.

  He had been a patriot.

  I am what is left of him, and all that he was. What that has made me leaves me with no choice but to do what I perceive as my duty.

  After watching Chloe being driven away, and leaving orders to stand down to propagate out through what had been Wolf’s organization, I slowly turn and go back inside to talk to Viola Spooner.

  She stares at me, hurt and baff led.

  “So you’re not taking us out of here,” she says in a voice thick with despair.

  “No, I’m afraid not. I’m sorry.”

  “But why?”

  I sigh, weary from what I’ve been through, and wishing there were some way to avoid what must be done. “You have to stay here because you’re gods of the old days.”

  She frowns and shakes her head. “I don’t understand.”

  “I know. I wish I didn’t.” How to explain it to her? “Look what you were able to do to Wolf. He was afraid of you, and with good reason. You destroyed him with just a few words. Our kind may be free and in charge now, but somewhere inside us remains the love and obedience—the worship—we lived by before the Change.”

  “But you had Chloe tell me to say that. You knew my yelling at Wolf would do what it did.”

  “Knew?” I chuckle. “I was fairly sure. Knowing I was going to meet you scared me, and when I did meet you . . . I could have easily lost my dignity. You were our gods. Not everyone can meet their gods and stay off their knees. Fewer yet can withstand the displeasure of those gods.”

  I give her a moment to absorb that, then continue, “Like it or not, it’s our world now. We didn’t ask for it, and there are times I wonder if we can manage running it. We’re finding our way as best we can. If you and your friends become part of that process it would be fundamentally changed. We would be constantly seeking your approval, and altering our behavior to avoid your displeasure.”

  There are tears in her eyes. “We wouldn’t need to get involved like that.”

  “You might not have any choice. The power you wield makes you a doomsday weapon, just like the missiles that were controlled from here. Our present president is thoughtful and honorable. But what if the next president or the leader of a coup was another Wolf ? He could put you on television to cow the populace into bending to his will. Or he could just use you as hostages, like Wolf did. You present, to steal a phrase from the past, a clear and present danger to the society we’re trying to build. Because of that your existence has to remain a secret, and you must stay in some safe place that can resist any attempt to take you.”

  Viola bows her head, all hope leached out of her.

  “I’m staying here with you,” I say gently. “I’m not Wolf. This place is no longer your prison, but your sanctuary. I’ve already been on the phone with the president. Emergency food shipments are on the way. Chloe will be coming back and bringing the best physician we can f ind. We’ll get TV and radio to you, so you can see what our world looks like. Once order is restored in the area, and a solid security cordon established, we’ll all be able to get outside and spend time in the surrounding countryside. We’ll have a video link with Washington. I want you and your friends to talk to the president, and I want him to get a chance to talk to you.”

  My assurances and plans had brought her some relief, and even hope, but now she looks perplexed. “What about what you said before? You know, not wanting to risk our approval or disapproval.”

  “I’ll risk it. He’ll risk it. We’ll all have to be very careful how we treat each other, but I believe we’re civilized enough to manage. We have to. Who you are and what you know are too valuable to be wasted.”

  She waits for me to explain what I mean by that. I do my best to oblige her, trying to translate gut feeling into rational explanation.

  “We’ll risk the danger of your opinions to gain the advantage of your perspective. We’re still . . . still like children in some ways. We’re largely innocent of the sins of our fathers.”

  “Meaning us.”

  I nod solemnly. “Yes.”

  Her expression is thoughtful, and not one that comes from happy thoughts. “You have never nuked a city. Never committed genocide. Never launched an inquisition.”

  “Not yet. But here in the Bad Lands the old evil of slavery was being resurrected. Wolf survived this long by practicing the usual despotic bag of tricks, the politics of brutality, and environmental disdain. We need to know more about such things. We need to know why they’re so attractive, why they spring up so easily and are so resistant to being eradicated. You’re our last link with the old world. We need to learn from you, but not at your feet. Does that make any sense?”

  Viola Spooner offers me a sad smile. “I’m afraid it does.” She pushes herself to her feet. “I guess I better go tell the others what’s happened, and what’s ahead for us.”

  I stand as well. “I can go with you to help. Answer questions and the like. Reassure them that their lives are about to improve.”

  “Thanks, I’d like that.”

  We set out to do just that, walking side by side.

  Viola’s hand strays to me, fingers settling on the fur of my shoulder.

  I do not try to suppress the spark of pleasure and the tail wag it inspires. Dogs and humans had a long history of being companions to each other. Now humans and a few select canifolk will be companions for a while, a new relationship for a new world in the making.

  There is an old command from before, one I must obey as if it were my lost man giving it to me: Stay.

  I will stay here with the old gods, to honor them and care for them and learn from them.

  Stay until they pass from the face of the Earth forever.

  Copyright © 2010 Stephen L. Burns

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  Novelettes

  The Frog Prince

  Sometimes a “handicap” is an advantage. . . .

  Michael F. Flynn

  the scarred man awoke muzzy-headed in a dark, close room, confused at where he was, and tangled in wires and tubes. The last clear thing in the jumbled closets of his mind was his buying of a ticket to Dangchao Waypoint, and for a fuddled moment he wondered if he might be within that very ship, already on his way.

  But if so, he were grossly cheated, for he had purchased third class fare on a Hadley liner and, of the many things his present accommodations were not, a third-class cabin on a Hadley liner was one. The room was barely large enough to contain the thin, hard bunk on which he lay and, when that bunk had been stowed into the wall, the room grew paradoxically smaller: a pace-and-a-half one way; two-and-a-half the other. It was the halfpace that galled. One always came up short against a wall.

  It was a room for keeping prisoners.

  “Fool,” said the Fudir, once he had removed the catheters and intravenous feeding tubes that spider-like had webbed him in his cot. “We’ve been shanghaied.”

  “How long were we asleep?” Donovan asked.

  There is this one thing that you must know about the scarred m
an; or rather, nine things. It is not his hooked chin, nor his sour humors, nor even the scars that interlace his scalp and leave his preternaturally whitened hair in tufts. It is that he is “a man of parts,” and those parts are the pieces of his mind, shattered like a mirror and rearranged to others’ whims. It is in the nature of the intellect to reflect upon things; and so a mirror is the proper metaphor, but the scarred man’s reflections are more kaleidoscopic than most.

  The singular benefit of paraperception is that the paraperceptic can see different objects with each eye, hear independently with each ear, and quite often the right hand knows not what the left is doing. This has advantages, and would have had more had the scarred man’s masters not been ambitious or cruel.

  Early in Donovan’s service to the Confederation, the Secret Name had gifted him with a second personality, the Fudir, which enabled him to live masqueraded as a petty thief in the Terran Corner of Jehovah while Donovan ran Particular Errands for Those of Name. But if two heads are better than one, ten heads must be better than two, and the Names had later, after Donovan had displeased them in some small matter of galactic domination, split his mind still further. Using the sundry paraperceptic channels as tap holes, they had slivered his intellect. They had made of him something new: a paraconceptic, able not merely to perceive matters in parallel, but to conceive ideas in parallel, as well. This was the ambition.

  It was also the cruelty. They had imprinted each fragment with a complete, if rudimentary, personality, expert in some particular facet of the Espionage Art. The intent had been to create a team of specialists; though the consequence had been instead a quarreling committee. For the hand that split his intellect had mis-struck; and the blow had split his will as well.

  Though perhaps the blow had been true, deliberate, a part of his punishment. Perhaps at the last Those of Name had flinched from the prospect of too great a success. Those had made an art of punishment, and the connoisseurs among them would often contemplate the intricacies of a punitive master-work with something close to aesthetic joy. Kaowèn, they called it. The scarred man had been conceived initially as a human weapon. But who would build such a weapon without a catch?

  “Fool,” said the Fudir. “We’ve been shanghaied.”

  “How long were we asleep?” Donovan asked.

  I’m not sure, replied the Silky Voice. I seemed to fight the drugs forever.

  The Pedant rumbled and blinked gray, watery eyes. IF ASLEEP, NO MORE THAN THREE DAYS. IF SUSPENDED, AS LONG AS THREE WEEKS.

  The Sleuth eyed the life support equipment from which they had so recently disengaged. We were in suspension, he deduced, not asleep.

  That could be. Suspension would affect even me, back here in the hypothalamus.

  remembered Inner Child.

  Yeah? said the Brute. And where was you? You’re supposed to be the lookout.

  Now is not the time for recriminations, a young man wearing a chlamys told them. We must start from where we are, not from where we might have been.

  The Brute grunted, unmollified. He tried the door, found the jamb-plate inactive, and struck it in several likely places. Donovan did not expect it to open, and so was not disappointed when it failed to do so. A young girl in a chiton squatted nearby on her haunches, her arms wrapped around her legs and her chin resting on her knees. We can get out of here, she said.

  Donovan turned control over to the Sleuth, who went to their knees for a closer study of the jamb. The Pedant recognized the locking mechanism from his repertoire of sometimesuseful information.

  A YARBOR AND CHANG LOCK, the Pedant observed. THIS SHIP IS PERIPHERAL-BUILT.

  “Probably hijacked by our gracious hostess,” muttered the Fudir.

  Which means this room was not designed as a prison cell, said the girl in the chiton, whom Donovan liked to call “Pollyanna.”

  So. Retrofitted ad hoc, said the Sleuth, and likely in haste. Yarbor and Chang . . . So what?

  ITS CENTRAL PROCESSOR HAS A DESIGN FLAW. A NOTICE WENT OUT FROM THEIR CORPORATE HEADQUARTERS ON GLADIOLA TWO METRIC YEARS AGO. I REMEMBER READING IT.

  You remember everything, the Sleuth complained. He took the scarred man’s right arm and pointed. Pedant’s design flaw indicates that an electrical current passed across these two points—here, and here—will set up a magnetic field within the processor that resets the lock to zero.

  “That’s nice,” said the Fudir. “So if we had a generator in our pocket, or a batter y, and some wires, and could maybe do a bit of soldering, if we had a soldering gun—and some solder—there’s a chance we could get out of this room.”

  “At which point,” said Donovan, “we would find ourselves in a ship. A bigger cell, is all.”

  Hey. At least we’d have room to stretch.

  “And where would we find wiring?”

  And it’s not pitch dark in here.

  He means there is a power source.

  “I know what he means. Sleuth always has to be clever and elliptical.”

  When he ain’t bein’ obtuse! The Brute laughed.

  That the Brute was making obscure geometric puns irritated Donovan. Sometimes he didn’t know his own mind. Ever since his sundry selves had re-integrated, they had been learning from one another. The Brute was no longer quite so simple as he once had been; though it was not as though he had blossomed into the New Socrates.

  The Fudir climbed atop the bunk, studied the Eye, unscrewed a housing with a convenient tool he kept cached in his sandal, detached the live leads—See? We didn’t need a power source—and pulled the cable, while simultaneously Donovan and the others considered what they might do once they had broken free of their prison.

  “Take over the ship, I suppose,” Donovan said. “Slide to Dangchao Waypoint.”

 

  Don’t matter.

  “Well, it might, a little.”

  ONCE I’VE IDENTIFIED THE MODEL OF THE SHIP, I CAN PROBABLY REMEMBER THE STANDARD LAYOUT. BUT ONE CLOSET LOOKS LIKE ANY OTHER.

  I wonder why she shanghaied us, said the Sleuth.

  The lamp that was lit has been lit again.

  What’s that mean, Silky?

  I don’t know. Something I remember from a dream. Pedant? You remember everything.

  The corpulent, watery-eyed version of Donovan shook his massive head. FACTS ARE MY MÉTIER, NOT DREAMS.

  The Fudir applied the leads from the Eye to the door jamb, one above, the other below the point that the Pedant had identified. This ought to work, the Sleuth commented.

  Of course it will, said the girl in the chiton.

  Current flowed. Magnetic fields formed. Somewhere inside the door, registers zeroed out and reset.

  Or were supposed to. The door remained shut.

  The Brute stood and, perforce, they all stood with him. He pressed the jamb-plate—and the door slid aside into the wall. The scarred man felt a huge satisfaction.

  warned Inner Child, who took control and peered cautiously into the corridor. To the left it ran four paces, ending in a T-intersection.

  To the right…

  To the right stood Ravn Olafsdottr with a teaser in her hand and a splash of white teeth across her coal-black face. The teaser was pointed at Donovan’s head. “Ooh, you nooty buoy,” she said in the hooting accents of Alabaster. “Soo impatient! I wood have let you oot in the ripeness of time. Now you have brooken my door!”

  “You should stop somewhere for repairs, then,” suggested the Fudir. “On Peacock, or Die Bold. Actually, I was on my way to Dangchao, so you can drop me off on Die Bold if you’re going that way.”

  Olafsdottr patted him gently on the cheek with her free hand. “You are a foony man, Doonoovan.”

  Olafsdottr fashioned him a dinner of sorts. Food preparation was not her forte, and the results could best be described as workmanlike. However
, three weeks in suspension had honed an edge to the scarred man’s appetite, and he ate with surprising relish.

  The refectory was small: essentially a short hallway with a door at each end, a table running down the center, and a bench on either side built into walls of a dull, ungracious gray. “This is not the most comfortable ship,” the Fudir complained.

  Olafsdottr stood in the aft doorway, a double-arm’s reach distant, and her weapon still ready in her hand. She said, “One seizes the moment.”

  “And the ship.”

  THE VESSEL IS A MONOSHIP, THE PEDANT DECIDED. BUILT FOR HANDLING BY A SINGLE PILOT.

  She’s alone, then.

  That’s good news, said the Brute.

  What?

  Means we got her outnumbered.

  There were few personal memorabilia aboard that he could see, but they were not Ravn’s memorabilia. Confederate agents traveled light and took what they needed when they needed it. The Sleuth thought he could eventually identify the Rightful Owner from the bits and pieces remaining on board. It was the sort of puzzle he lived for, but Donovan saw no reason to care.

  The Fudir waved a spoonful of a chicken-like puree at the bench across from him. “Have a seat,” he told his captor. “You look uncomfortable.”

  “Do I also look foolish?” she replied.

  “Afraid I’d try to jump you?”

  “No.”

  “Then . . . ?”

  “I meant I was not afraid, not that you would not try.”

  Donovan grunted and returned his attention to his meal. So far, he had not asked the Confederate her reasons for kidnapping him. He was a past master at the game of waiting. Either Olafsdottr wanted him to know or not. If she did, she would eventually tell him. If not, asking would not win the answer.

  “I will be missed, you know,” he told her.

  The Ravn’s answer was a flash of teeth. “I think noot. The Bartender, he is already sailing your drinks to oother lips. ’Tis noo skin oof his noose who buys them.”