Stephanie sighed.
Last week, while Jason had been engrossed by a video game, his alien had decided to rinse out Jason’s hair dryer. Without unplugging it.
Stephanie had insisted that Jason be the one to pull the wagon holding the corpse, despite her own alien’s repeated attempts to assume the task. And when they’d arrived at City Hall and eventually reached the front of the line, it was Jason who had to explain the circumstances of his alien’s demise to the local Syndicate arbitrator.
After listening to the teenager’s halting tale, the arbitrator—who bore a remarkable resemblance to a goldfish bowl overfilled with constantly roiling pink sand—asked to view the remains. Jason and Stephanie stepped aside.
The arbitrator roiled.
Stephanie glanced at her son. He shifted from foot to foot; she saw that he’d crossed the fingers of both hands.
Finally, the arbitrator ruled the death a case of self-negligence. Jason let out a loud, relieved sigh. No maltreatment penalty would be assessed against humanity.
The arbitrator ordered, per Syndicate law and custom, that a non-returnable replacement slave be transferred as soon as practical from the holdings of the Orelop Hegemony.
Stephanie winced at the term “slave.” Nobody she knew liked to use that word, regardless of its contractual accuracy. “Alien” wasn’t a huge improvement, but no one had come up with anything better; the aliens’ original name for themselves—along with their original language and culture—had been lost somewhere in the thousands of times they’d been transferred from one conquered civilization to the next.
Over the following week Stephanie had maintained a façade of sternness, and Jason continued to act appropriately abashed. Really, though, she’d envied his alien-free days. But now, she thought as she lifted the toaster to the counter, things were back to normal.
Her alien wobbled into the kitchen. It extruded an appendage to grab the dustpan from the corner and shuffled toward the scatter of burnt crumbs. “Sorr,” it said. “Y.”
As the alien circled around the crumbs, kicking them into the dustpan with its numerous feet, Stephanie gasped. On the alien’s rear surface a deep, vertical crevice ran from its bluish, lumpy tip to its heaving base.
“Is that—” she began. “I mean, are you . . . splitting?”
The alien paused. “Joy,” it said. “New. Me.”
Stephanie gaped. Aliens were supposed to fission only once every seventy years or so. Of course, you couldn’t really tell an alien’s age, but this one had been with her for just a few years, and they all seemed so childlike. . . .
Congratulations, she told herself. Soon the endless days of being followed everywhere by an idiot alien would be over.
By this time tomorrow, she could start getting used to the company of two idiot aliens.
“Great,” she said.
“New. Me,” repeated the alien. “Great.”
June 2213
Mustapha Jung-Su Dawson hated his job.
“Faster,” said the exercise bike, using its perkiest voice. “Dig!”
Mustapha gritted his teeth and pedaled harder. The harness holding him to the bike chafed his ribs.
“Say!” said the bike. “How about a cultural monitoring session while you enjoyably maintain your bone and muscle health?”
Mustapha grunted assent.
An image formed in the air before him. As it expanded into a monochrome view of the inside of a crowded subterranean den, Mustapha recognized first the hangings on the den’s walls, and then the two shaggy creatures—each bearing a remarkable resemblance to a long-haired koala with five legs and two eye-stalks—swaying from side to side in the foreground.
Renfriffree’s Den of Odorousness. Of all the programs emanating from the small, green planet that orbited 4 AU in-system of Mustapha’s ship, this was one of the more accessible. Slapstick, if you could believe Syndicate archives, was universal.
The episode diverted Mustapha enough that the bike twice had to remind him to keep pedaling. At the show’s end he unstrapped himself, grabbing a hand-vacuum as he floated from the saddle. For the next five minutes Mustapha chased sweat droplets around the cabin, cursing—as he did several times each day—the ridiculous prices that Syndicate civilizations demanded for the secrets underlying artificial gravity generation.
But for the moment, humanity could barely keep up with even its most essential expenses. Mustapha’s boss, for example, had paid so much for the coordinates of this solar system that afterward she could afford only a pair of single-person scoutships for the actual prospecting. So Mustapha was stuck here alone for three years while the other ship shuttled back to Earth and then returned with his relief.
Well, not exactly alone. Glued to the hull above the command console, a Syndicate arbitrator ensured that Mustapha adhered to all laws and customs governing first contacts. Its pink sands swirled vigilantly anytime Mustapha’s hand strayed near the knobs of his radio, or approached the switches that would deploy his cargo. Otherwise it seldom deigned to acknowledge his existence.
Now, pointedly ignoring the arbitrator, Mustapha strapped himself into the command chair and began to run through the past day’s recordings of technical, military, and political communications among the furballs. (Well, Mustapha had to call the five-legged locals something. And he certainly didn’t want to prejudice future negotiations by getting into the habit of using a term from any one of the planet’s multitudinous bickering cultures.)
A series of muffled bangs emerged from the hatch at the cabin’s other end. Mustapha pivoted, just in time to see the hatch squeak open. Through the opening oozed a clutch of slime-coated liquid globules. He watched for a moment as they wafted, undulating, out into the cabin’s air.
Mustapha turned back to the console, not bothering to sigh.
The furballs had invented nuclear explosives decades ago. They’d been launching ballistic missiles for five years now. So far, though, nobody seemed to have gotten around to combining the two technologies.
“Sorr,” said a voice from behind the hatch. “Y.”
Mustapha eyed the switches that would inf late his small fleet of “warships” and send them on their way.
He hoped the furballs would hurry up.
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Short Stories
Out There
Norman Spinrad
Answers don't always have the form the questioner might like....
After the successful launch of the biosphere probe, the Project Director, the Old Astronaut, and the Star Science Fiction Writer repaired to the nearest saloon, the Director to celebrate, the Astronaut to grouse, the Writer to reflect upon life, the universe, and everything, and after sufficient lubrication, all three missions seemed all too compatible.
“A few centuries to get there, and what, a few decades to get anything back? Everyone who worked on the project will be long dead by then, and no one’s ever going to be able to set foot there,” groused the Astronaut, “so what’s the point?”
“The point is astronomy,” the Project Director told him, “and you flyboys never seemed to get it. A thousand or so solar systems currently detected, a hundred or so extrasolar biospheres, and if the ratio holds, that means millions of them in the galaxy.”
“So what?” groused the Astronaut. “Not a peep from any of them. Assuming there’s anything anywhere out there to do the peeping.”
“Hence the probe program.”
“So what? One of them goes into orbit around a civilized planet hundreds of years from now, sends back the news, and no one from here is going to be able to get there and vice versa, unless the laws of physics get repealed, isn’t that right, Mr. Sci-Fi Guy? Hyperspace drives, wormhole tunnels, all your faster-than-light stuff is really out there with the flying dragons and unicorns, now isn’t it?”
“Uh . . . generation starships—” “A thousand years in tin-can submarines? Been, there, done t
hat. I rode one to Mars for a lousy year, and believe me, lousy it was. You or anyone else gonna condemn your umpteenth-generation descendants to that? You think they’d stay with the program that did it to them if they ever got anywhere? Would you?”
“Dispersion Theory,” muttered the Program Director.
No one had to explain that to anyone now. Even the supermarket tabloids had picked it up under headlines like VELIKOVSKI WAS RIGHT! Or THE COSMIC POOL TABLE or CREATIONISM PROVEN!
The galaxy was full of solar systems, but upon exploration and reflection, there was no reason for any of them to necessarily be stable. Gas giants sucked into tight spiraling orbits around their stars and evaporating. Planetoids, asteroids, comets, rocks, and pebbles bashing into each other to accrete into planets bashing into each other, knocking themselves out into the far reaches of interstellar space, and maybe one would-be solar system out of ten happening by chance upon the long-term stability like ours necessary for biospheres to have a chance to evolve, unless you believed that God was holding the pool-cue.
That was the bad news. The good news, at least to the science fiction writers who were making good use of it, was that it meant that the space between the stars was no empty void. Full planets ejected from solar systems, failed and otherwise, asteroids and smaller debris left over from their formation, Oort Clouds and Kuiper Belts intersecting and interweaving out there.
“It took tens of thousands of years and hundreds of generations for humans to disperse over this planet, by foot, by raft, by horse,” said the Project Director, “and no one who started any leg of the journey ever lived to see the end of it. Or knew what it would be.”
“So why did they—”
“One of the questions most of us sci-fi guys get asked is what does it feel like to write about all those wondrous futures you know you’ll never live to see—”
“I love that stuff myself,” said the Project Director. “I think it’s why I’m an astronomer. Same thing, now, isn’t it?”
“If it wasn’t, we wouldn’t have readers, and you wouldn’t even have the crummy appropriations you guys bitch about,” the Science Fiction Writer told him.
“So why do you write it and why do I read it and why have I dedicated my short life to beginning a collective search for knowledge I know I’ll never live to see?”
“Why did your ancient humans embark on the journeys whose ends they could never hope to see? Same answer.”
“Which is?” asked the Astronaut, seriously enough to order up another round.
“Because there isn’t any. I once spoke on New Caledonia at the western end of the great millennial spread of the Polynesians eastward across the vast and supposedly empty Pacific, and I was bombing out with the locals until it hit me. The wine-dark sea speckled with islands that had never seen the foot of man, the wine-dark sea of galactic space where, uh, no man has gone before—”
“The same thing!” the Astronaut and the Project Director exclaimed simultaneously.
The Science Fiction Writer nodded. “Canoes spreading the species to those isolated islands over the great ocean of water, generation upon generation, until they reached and created the beach at Waikiki. Humans oozing out light-year by light-year, generation by generation, planetoid by planetoid, until—”
“Until what?”
“There is no final what,” the Science Fiction Writer said. “That’s the nature of my game. If the Americas hadn’t been in the way, the Polynesians would have kept on going. The journey goes ever on, as it damned well better, or in the end neither will we.”
“That’s the nature of the human game, now isn’t it?” said the Astronaut, none too happy about it.
The Science Fiction Writer nodded. “Those are the cards we’ve been dealt, to see futures out there we’ll never live long enough to reach ourselves. A royal flush, they ain’t, but all we can do is play them.”
“Like it or not,” the Astronaut groused, “I guess we’ve gotta drink to that.”
And he ordered yet another round on his own tab, and they did.
Copyright © 2010 Norman Spinrad
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Short Stories
Non-Native Species
Inserting something new into an ecosystem generally creates at least two problems…
Janet Freeman
139 minutes after drop: Ki wanders the bush 1,206 meters from its drop site. Its hunger gnaws as it searches for food in the unfamiliar environment. Nothing looks, smells, or moves like the food in its lab cage. It concentrates intently as its intake analyzer evaluates each new organism for nutrition and hydration benefits. The omnipresent red dust clings to its skin and partially clogs its nitrogen intake pores. Irritating, but not consequential. The high oxygen content of the atmosphere still burns, but less than it did an hour ago. Adaptation sequencing is fully engaged.
Gen switched off the link recorder to separate his thoughts and sensory inputs from Ki’s. Using the link was uncomfortable, invasive, in conflict with his orderly approach to existence. But he tended to use it wide open anyway, drawn to Ki’s feral wildness, its wonder at experiencing a new world.
Yet the strangeness could be overwhelming. Even without the link, Gen felt its skin drying in the skewed spectrum of the Terran sun, an itchy awareness that crawled up his back and shoulders.
Or was it the skin in this new body as it rubbed against oil-based clothing? So many new sensations to sort out. He hoped he would have time to master them.
Gen suppressed the urge to squirm in his seat, to scratch against its rough fabric backing. Don’t attract attention. He chose to sit alone in the back of the tour bus for that very reason.
Glancing at the other passengers for clues, he saw they drowsed in the uncooled bus as it barreled along the road bordering vast cattle stations. On the right-side seats, sunlight flashed on the aqua-fuchsia cloth. Heads lolled with only occasional glances at the sparse vegetation.
He forced his body to appear as relaxed as theirs, but he couldn’t will his Observer senses to stop absorbing all the sights and sounds. He turned his gaze out the window.
Despite the tour guide’s repeated assurances, no kangaroos or camels appeared. Gen only caught glimpses of sheep and cattle in distant brown grasses. The guide prattled on about the poisonous cane toads brought to Queensland from Hawaii in the 1930’s to control the destructive cane beetle. Instead of eradicating a pest, they became one. Seventy years later they numbered in the millions.
Somewhere in front of him, a mid-frequency voice added, “Australasian history is filled with environmental disasters caused by people creating a new problem while trying to fix another.”
Gen twisted in his seat to see who was speaking. A human female (he assumed it was female, since it had enlarged glands on its thorax) with dark skin and curly coarse hair and small sparkly ears was talking to someone with excessive male facial hair seated across the aisle. The male didn’t look at the speaker. Gen’s implant said that meant the male either wasn’t listening to the speaker, or else found her sexually repulsive. Gen cleared his throat to get her attention. She turned to look toward the sound, and he smiled to show his appreciation for her insight. She flashed a smile back and continued.
“When Europeans arrived in New Zealand, for instance, only birds, reptiles, and bats populated the islands—no other mammals, except for the indigenous Maori people. The newcomers brought dogs, cats, and rabbits. Then they brought weasels and stoats to control the rabbits. The imported mammals hunted native ground-nesting birds to near extinction. Record numbers of species were exterminated by human lack of understanding.”
Gen shook his head side to side, human indication of disapproval. New world, same story. Well, the humans did better than Gen’s people did—they were still the dominant predator of their world.
The inattentive male stood up and moved to another seat two rows away from the female. She stopped speaking.
Gen turn
ed back to his window but found the scenery repetitive. He began mentally reviewing the recordings of the past few hours. Ki was adapting to this environment too fast! For the thousandth time, he wished his ancestors hadn’t changed that final gene sequence in Ki’s metabolic pathways. Can’t fix that now—too many Ki have cloned themselves. There had to be another solution.
The bus wound around a series of curves. Despite the tinted windows, the intermittent sunlight hurt his eyes. Evidently this variant of human wasn’t adapted to the spectral brightness under the ozone hole. He wished he’d taken more care when selecting a body. Surely some genotypes were more adapted to the environment than this one. But his selection had been driven more by compatibility with the Ki link than his own comfort. It was more important to know how Ki was adapting: what it saw, smelled, touched, ate.
He closed his eyes and hoped once again some toxin or creature deadly to Ki existed here. So many worlds fostered life based on what Terrans called DNA—a gift from the cloud. How many worlds had they infested with Ki? Even the Observers no longer counted.
He turned the link recorder on. Hunger and foul tastes immediately consumed him.
258.7 minutes after drop: Ki tangles with some red kangaroos, having assessed that their meaty tails hold essential proteins. It goes for the largest male in the troop first. The male rears back on its hefty tail and gives some nasty blows with its powerful hind legs, one claw inflicting a gash. Ki adapts, easily dodging the remaining strikes. Alarmed, the troop flees. It leaves behind a small joey in the panic. Ki kills it with one swipe. It’s now analyzing organs for other nutrients. The roo’s blood is warm and smells of metal, the flesh is fibrous and . . .
“G’day! My name’s Barina. What’s yours?”
Ki/Gen jerked back from the roo, startled. Then Gen’s own awareness took precedence and he switched off the link. He opened his eyes to find the female speaker sitting next to him in the back row of the bus.
Analog Science Fiction and Fact 01/01/11 Page 29
