Hugo Awards: The Short Stories (Volume 2)

by Anthology

  Mativi walked across the compound and yelled at the man in the Boeing. “louis, what the hell are your UxB monkeys doing?”

  Grosjean’s head whipped round. “Oh, hello, Chet. We’re following standard procedure for dealing with an unexploded weaponized gamma source.”

  “Well, first off, this isn’t a weapon – ”

  Grosjean’s smile was contemptuous. “It’s something that can annihilate the entire planet, and it isn’t a weapon?”

  “It’s thirty-nine things that can annihilate the planet, and they’re not weapons any more. Think about it. Would anyone use a weapon that would blow up the whole world?”

  Grosjean actually appeared to seriously consider the possibility; then, he nodded to concede the point. “So what sort of weapon were these things part of?”

  “Not weapons,” corrected Mativi. “Think of them as weapons waste. They were the principal components in a Penrose Accelerator.”

  “You’re making it up.”

  “You damn fool security guy, me weapons inspector. We’ve suspected the People’s Democratic Republic of Congo used Penrose weapons in their war with the Democratic People’s Republic of Congo for some time. They had guns capable of lobbing hundred tonne shells full of plague germs at Pretoria from a distance of four thousand kilometres, for instance. When we examined those guns after UNPEFORCONG overran their positions, what we found didn’t fit. They had magnetic accelerators in their barrels, but at the sort of muzzle velocities they’d have had to have been using, the magnets in the barrels would only have been any use in aiming, not in getting the payload up to speed. And the breech of each weapon had been removed. Something had been accelerating those projectiles, but it wasn’t magnetism, and it wasn’t gunpowder. The projectiles were big, and they were moving fast. You remember that outbreak of airborne rabies in New Zealand two years back? That was one of theirs. A Congolese shell fired too hot and went into orbit. The orbit decayed. The shell came down. Thirteen years after the war. Gunpowder and magnetism don’t do that.”

  “So what was it?”

  “A Penrose accelerator. You get yourself a heavy-duty rotating mass, big enough to have stuff orbit round it, and you whirl ordnance round those orbits, contrary to the direction of the mass’s rotation. Half of your ordnance separates from the payload, and drops into the mass. The other half gets kicked out to mind-buggering velocities. The trouble is, none of this works unless the mass is dense enough to have an escape velocity greater than light.”

  “A black hole.”

  “Yes. You have yourself thirty-nine charged rotating black holes, formerly used as artillery accelerators, now with nowhere to go. Plus another hole lodged precariously on the back of a tractor on the public highway halfway between here and Djelo-Binza. And the only way for us to find enough energy to get rid of them, I imagine, would be to use another black hole to kick them into orbit. They also give off gamma, almost constantly, as they’re constantly absorbing matter. You point one of those UxB defuser tractors at them and throw the safety on the gun, and – ”

  “JESUS.” Grosjean stared at the ground floor entrance where his men had been preparing to throw heavy artillery shells at the problem, jumped up, and began frantically waving his arms for them to stop. “OuI! OuI! arrÊTe! arrÊTe! And we thought getting rid of nuclear waste was difficult.”

  “looks easy to me,” said Mativi, nodding in the direction of the highway. Two trucks with UNSMATDEMRECONG livery, their suspensions hanging low, had stopped just short of the military cordon in the eastbound lane. Their drivers had already erected signs saying light heat here for dollars, and were handing out clear resin bricks that glowed with a soft green light to housewives who were coming out of the darkened prefabs nearby, turning the bricks over in their hands, feeling the warmth, haggling over prices.

  “Is that what I think it is?” said Grosjean. “I should stop that. It’s dangerous, isn’t it?”

  “Don’t concern yourself with it right now. Those bricks can only kill one family at a time. Besides,” said Mativi gleefully, “the city needs power, and Jean-Baptiste’s men are only supplying a need, right?”

  Ngoyi, still in the passenger seat of the Hyundai, stared sadly as his men handed out radionuclides, and could not meet Mativi’s eyes. He reached in his inside pocket for the gun he had attempted to kill Mativi with, and began, slowly and methodically, to clear the jam that had prevented him from doing so.

  “Once you’ve cordoned the area off,” said Mativi, “we’ll be handling things from that point onwards. I’ve contacted the IAEA myself. There’s a continental response team on its way.”

  In the car, Ngoyi had by now worked the jammed bullet free and replaced it with another. At the Boeing, Grosjean’s jaw dropped. “You have teams set up to deal with this already?”

  “Of course. You don’t think this is the first time this has happened, do you? It’s the same story as with the A-bomb. As soon as physicists know it’s possible, every tinpot dictator in the world wants it, and will do a great deal to get it, and certainly isn’t going to tell us he’s trying. Somewhere in the world at a location I am not aware of and wouldn’t tell you even if I were, there is a stockpile of these beauties that would make your hair curl. I once spoke to a technician who’d just come back from there…I think it’s somewhere warm, he had a sun-tan. He said there were aisles of the damn things, literally thousands of them. The UN are working on methods of deactivating them, but right now our best theoretical methods for shutting down a black hole always lead to catastrophic Hawking evaporation, which would be like a thousand-tonne nuclear warhead going off. And if any one of those things broke out of containment, even one, it would sink through the Earth’s crust like a stone into water. It’d get to the Earth’s centre and beyond before it slowed down to a stop – and then, of course, it’d begin to fall to the centre again. It wouldn’t rise to quite the same height on the other side of the Earth, just like a pendulum, swinging slower and slower and slower. Gathering bits of Earth into itself all the time, of course, until it eventually sank to the centre of the world and set to devouring the entire planet. The whole Earth would get sucked down the hole, over a period which varies from weeks to centuries, depending on which astrophysicist you ask. And you know what?” – and here Mativi smiled evilly. This was always the good part.

  “What?” Grosjean’s Bantu face had turned whiter than a Boer’s. From the direction of the car, Mativi heard a single, slightly muffled gunshot.

  “We have no way of knowing whether we already missed one or two. Whether one or two of these irresponsible nations carrying out unauthorized black hole research dropped the ball. How would we know, if someone kept their project secret enough? How would we know there wasn’t a black hole bouncing up and down like a big happy rubber ball inside the Earth right now? Gravitational anomalies would eventually begin to show themselves, I suppose – whether on seismometers or mass detectors. But our world might only have a few decades to live – and we wouldn’t be any the wiser.

  “Make sure that cordon’s tight, louis.”

  Grosjean swallowed with difficulty, and nodded. Mativi wandered away from the containment site, flipping open his mobile phone. Miracle of miracles, even out here, it worked.

  “Hello darling…No, I think it’ll perhaps take another couple of days…Oh, the regular sort of thing. Not too dangerous. Yes, we did catch this one…Well, I did get shot at a little, but the guy missed. He was aiming on a purely Euclidean basis…Euclidean. I’ll explain when I get home…Okay, well, if you have to go now then you have to go. I’ll be on the 9am flight from Kinshasa.”

  He flicked the phone shut and walked, whistling, towards the Hyundai. There was a spiderweb of blood over the passenger side where Ngoyi had shot himself. Still, he thought, that’s someone else’s problem. This car goes back into the pool tomorrow. at least he kept the side window open when he did it. made a lot less mess than that bastard lamant did in Quebec city. and they made me clean that car.<
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  He looked out at the world. “Saved you again, you big round bugger, and I hope you’re grateful.”

  For the first time in a week, he was smiling.

  SINGING MY SISTER DOWN

  Margo Lanagan

  We all went down to the tar-pit, with mats to spread our weight.

  Ikky was standing on the bank, her hands in a metal twin-loop behind her. She’d stopped sulking; now she looked, more, stare-y and puzzled.

  Chief Barnarndra pointed to the pit. ‘Out you go then, girl. You must walk on out there to the middle and stand. When you picked a spot, your people can join you.’

  So Ik stepped out, very ordinary. She walked out. I thought---hoped, even---she might walk right across and into the thorns the other side; at the same time, I knew she wouldn’t do that.

  She walked the way you walk on the tar, except without the arms balancing. She nearly fell from a stumble once, but Mumma hulloo’d to her, and she straightened and walked a straight upright line out to the very middle, where she slowed and stopped, not looking back.

  Mumma didn’t look to the chief, but all us kids and the rest did. ‘Right, then,’ he said.

  Mumma stepped straight out, as if she’d just herself that moment happened to decide to. We went after her---only us, Ik’s family, which was like us being punished too, everyone watching us walk out to that girl who was our shame.

  In the winter you come to the pit to warm your feet in the tar. You stand long enough to sink as far as your ankles---the littler you are, the longer you can stand. You soak the heat in for as long as the tar doesn’t close over your feet and grip, and it’s as good as warmed boots wrapping your feet. But in summer, like this day, you keep away from the tar, because it makes the air hotter and you mind about the stink.

  But today we had to go out, and everyone had to see us go.

  Ikky was tall, but she was thin and light from all the worry and prison; she was going to take a long time about sinking. We got our mats down, all the food-parcels and ice-baskets and instruments and such spread out evenly on the broad planks Dash and Felly had carried out.

  ‘You start, Dash,’ said Mumma, and Dash got up and put his drum-ette to his hip and began with ‘Fork-Tail Trio’, and it did feel a bit like a party. It stirred Ikky awake from her hung-headed shame; she lifted up and even laughed, and I saw her hips move in the last chorus, side to side.

  Then Mumma got out one of the ice-baskets, which was already black on the bottom from meltwater.

  Ikky gasped. ‘Ha! What! Crab! Where’d that come from?’

  ‘Never you mind, sweet-thing.’ Mumma lifted some meat to Ikky’s mouth, and rubbed some of the crush-ice into her hair.

  ‘Oh, Mumma!’ Ik said with her mouth full.

  ‘May as well have the best of this world while you’re here,’ said Mumma. She stood there and fed her like a baby, like a pet guinea-bird.

  ‘I thought Auntie Mai would come,’ said Ik.

  ‘Auntie Mai, she’s useless,’ said Dash. ‘She’s sitting at home with her handkerchief.’

  ‘I wouldn’t’ve cared, her crying,’ said Ik. ‘I would’ve thought she’d say goodbye to me.’

  ‘Her heart’s too hurt,’ said Mumma. ‘You frightened her. And she’s such a straight lady---she sees shame where some of us just see people. Here, inside the big claw, that’s the sweetest meat.’

  ‘Oh, yes! Is anyone else feasting with me?’

  ‘No, darlin’, this is your day only. Well, okay, I’ll give some to this little sad-eyes here, huh? Felly never had crab but the once. Is it yum? Ooh, it’s yum! Look at him!’

  Next she called me to do my flute---the flashiest, hardest music I knew. And Ik listened, who usually screamed at me to stop pushing spikes into her brain; she watched my fingers on the flute-holes and my sweating face and my straining, bowing body, and for the first time I didn’t feel like just the nuisance-brother to her. I played well, out of the surprise of her not minding. I couldn’t’ve played better. I heard everyone else being surprised, too, at the end of those tunes, that they must’ve all known too, too well from all my practising.

  I sat down, very hungry. Mumma passed me the water-cup and a damp-roll.

  ‘I’m stuck now,’ said Ik, and it was true---the tar had her by the feet, closed in a gleaming line like that pair of zipper-slippers I saw once in the shoe-master’s vitrina.

  ‘Oh yeah, well and truly stuck,’ said Mumma. ‘But then, you knew when you picked up that axe-handle you were sticking yourself.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘No coming unstuck from this one. You could’ve let that handle lie.’ That was some serious teasing.

  ‘No, I couldn’t, Mumma, and you know.’

  ‘I do, baby chicken. I always knew you’d be too angry, once the wedding-glitter rubbed off your skin. It was a good party, though, wasn’t it?’ And they laughed at each other, Mumma having to steady Ikky or her ankles would’ve snapped over. And when their laughter started going strange Mumma said, ‘Well, this party’s going to be almost as good, ’cause it’s got children. And look what else!’ And she reached for the next ice-basket.

  And so the whole long day went, in treats and songs, in ice and stink and joke-stories and gossip and party-pieces. On the banks, people came and went, and the chief sat in his chair and was fanned and fed, and the family of Ikky’s husband sat around the chief, being served too, all in purple-cloth with flashing edging, very prideful.

  She went down so slowly.

  ‘Isn’t it hot?’ Felly asked her.

  ‘It’s like a big warm hug up my legs,’ said Ik. ‘Come here and give me a hug, little stick-arms, and let me check. Oof, yes, it’s just like that, only lower down.’

  ‘You’re coming down to me,’ said Fel, pleased.

  ‘Yeah, soon I’ll be able to bite your ankles like you bite mine.’

  Around mid-afternoon, Ikky couldn’t move her arms any more and had a panic, just quiet, not so the bank-people would’ve noticed. ‘What’m I going to do, Mumma?’ she said. ‘When it comes up over my face? When it closes my nose?’

  ‘Don’t you worry about that. You won’t be awake for that.’ And Mumma cooled her hands in the ice, dried them on her dress, and rubbed them over Ik’s shoulders, down Ik’s arms to where the tar had locked her wrists.

  ‘You better not give me any teas, or herbs, or anything,’ said Ik. ‘They’ll get you, too, if you help me. They’ll come out to see and make sure.’

  Mumma put her hands over Felly’s ears. ‘Tristem give me a gun,’ she whispered.

  Ikky’s eyes went wide. ‘But you can’t! Everyone’ll hear!’

  ‘It’s got a thing on it, quietens it. I can slip it in a tar-wrinkle, get you in the head when your head is part sunk, fold back the wrinkle, tell ’em your heart stopped, the tar pressed it stopped.’

  Felly shook his head free. Ikky was looking at Mumma, quietening. There was only the sound of Dash tearing bread with his teeth, and the breeze whistling in the thorn-galls away over on the shore. I was watching Mumma and Ikky closely---I’d wondered about that last part, too. But now this girl up to her waist in the pit didn’t even look like our Ikky. Her face was changing like a cloud, or like a masque-lizard’s colours; you don’t see them move but they become something else, then something else again.

  ‘No,’ she said, still looking at Mumma. ‘You won’t do that. You won’t have to.’ Her face had a smile on it that touched off one on Mumma’s too, so that they were both quiet, smiling at something in each other that I couldn’t see.

  And then their eyes ran over and they were crying and smiling, and then Mumma was kneeling on the wood, her arms around Ikky, and Ikky was ugly against her shoulder, crying in a way that you couldn’t interrupt them.

  That was when I realised how many people were watching, when they set up a big, spooky oolooling and stamping on the banks, to see Mumma grieve.

  ‘Fo!’ I said to Dash, to stop the hair creeping around on my head from that
noise. ‘There never was such a crowd when Chep’s daddy went down.’

  ‘Ah, but he was old and crazy,’ said Dash breadily, ‘and only killed other olds and crazies.’

  ‘Are those fish-people? And look at the yellow-cloths---they’re from up among the caves, all that way!’

  ‘Well, it’s nearly Langasday, too,’ said Dash. ‘Lots of people on the move, just happening by.’

  ‘Maybe. Is that an honour, or a greater shame?’

  Dash shrugged. ‘This whole thing is up-ended. It’s like a party, but who would have a party in the tar, and with family going down? I don’t get it.’

  ‘It’s what Mumma wanted.’

  ‘Better than having her and Ik be like this all day.’ Dash’s hand slipped into the nearest ice-basket and brought out a crumb of coconut-ice. He ate it as if he had a perfect right.

  Everything went slippery in my mind, after that. We were being watched so hard! Even though it was quiet out here, the pothering wind brought crowd-mumble and scraps of music and smoke our way, so often that we couldn’t be private and ourselves. Besides, there was Ikky with the sun on her face, but the rest of her from the rib-peaks down gloved in tar, never to see sun again. Time seemed to just have gone, in big clumps, or all the day was happening at once or something, I was wondering so hard about what was to come, I was watching so hard the differences from our normal days. I wished I had more time to think, before she went right down; my mind was going a bit breathless, trying to get all its thinking done.