Analog Science Fiction and Fact 12/01/10

by Dell Magazines

  “But I will be. Nothing can stop it, hard as I tried.” A short, hideous laugh escaped him. “I came so far, and it got me nowhere.”

  He lapsed back into tears. Despite her quiet disappointment that he could not be stronger, Marcia let him cry himself out. She needed the time to compose her own emotions, and her thoughts. When she was as sure of herself as she could be, she spoke.

  “Quintus Julius Americus, are you asking me to help you die?”

  He jolted upright, pulling out of her arms. He managed to compose himself and start to summon some bravery, but a gentle pat stopped him before he could speak.

  “No, I see you aren’t, and I’ll admit I’m relieved. So that leaves us with one good solution, Americus. I’ll have to marry you.”

  She shocked him again, but happily with none of the revulsion of last time. He needed three tries before he could stammer out, “What can you mean?”

  “I mean you will need someone to look after you in your decline, someone attentive and caring. Who else but me? But I am too practical a woman not to seek fair compensation.”

  Americus looked ready to bolt; perhaps it was only his stiff legs that kept him seated. “There’s no need for you to suffer on my account, Marcia. When the time comes, I will depart as I came. I’ll leave you no burden to bear.”

  “Oh, Americus,” Marcia said, “for all your intelligence, you still don’t understand us Romans. You’ve been a part of my household for over two years. We are in hospitium together; we have obligations to each other that cannot be cut loose casually. Certainly not when I won’t let them be.” She waited as he digested her words, and his itch to flee weakened.

  “I would care for you no matter what,” she continued, “but I appeal to that obligation between us, and to your sense of fairness. That, I know, is very strong. I trust, entirely, that you would never exploit the power you had over me as my husband.”

  He reached to clasp her hands. “I wouldn’t. Of course not.” He looked down at his hands, surprised at what they had done, though he didn’t let go. “But what else would you expect of me?”

  Marcia was halfway home. He hadn’t said no, she now needed to bring him to a yes. She opted for candor, knowing he’d respect that. “It’s simple. You would draw up a will, in which we would inherit everything. The money, the inventions, all of it. We would never fear poverty again. That is my price.”

  Americus pondered this. “I do know something of Roman law. As my wife, you could only inherit a third of my estate.”

  “That’s right. A third for me, a third for Aulus, and a third for Marcilla. Simple enough.”

  He nodded. “Yes. But then what about Alastor and Eudokia? And my workers?”

  “Oh—” She stopped herself just short of an unwise outburst. “You’ve been generous to them in the past, and I’m sure you’ll be likewise in the future. But on this point, I must insist.” She shifted her hands so they now clutched his. “I’ve hard a hard life, sometimes very hard. I’ve learned I must be practical—even now, when it would be so easy to give way.”

  The spoken plea lingered in her eyes. The surprise that came to Americus this time was a slow dawning. “My Marcia, I ... I never knew. I never imagined.”

  “Come now, you must at least have imagined. There’s been gossip in Narnia these two years, gossip I never really tried to deny.”

  “Oh, I heard that. I ignored it. Resentful women, maybe a few disappointed men.”

  Marcia smiled at that. “I have refused a few men in the last five years. But not today.”

  Americus began to smile, but it drained away. “I’m not sure what kind of a husband I could be to you.”

  “You would be the man you’ve always been. Kind to me, good with my children, excellent at—oh, wait. You mean sex, don’t you?”

  He spluttered, turning red. Marcia was amused at his reacting like a sheltered maiden, until she remembered his trading days. “Those Blue Fives. You wish you had them back now, don’t you?”

  “I—I—I confess, Marcia, I had those pills because I needed them myself, while Sofia was alive. Now ...” That smile, unbidden, crept back. “The change in diet, I suppose, has done me some good.”

  Marcia didn’t hide her smile, letting it shine like a lamp in a doorway, beckoning. He looked into her eyes with the warmth of a kindling desire ... until he turned to the ground, trying to look introspective.

  “My Americus, what holds you back?” She almost spoke Sofia’s name, but Marcia sensed she could not defeat this woman in a direct fight. She chose a more oblique approach. “Is it that you are forbidden to remarry?” She held his hand tight in both of hers. “Does your stern Christian god also demand that a widower must remain alone?”

  Americus raised his eyes toward the far distance. A minute passed in silence, then another. Marcia almost missed it when he began to squeeze her hand tighter.

  “No. He does not.”

  The wedding came within the month, on the earliest auspicious day. Marcia lent her tunica recta and flame-colored veil to Eudokia for her ceremony two nundinae later. And none too soon: Eudokia began getting sick in the mornings almost before the last garlands had been taken down.

  Much of the daily routine did not change. Americus walked into Narnia most mornings to work, making incremental improvements on his creations. Marcia arranged to be in town a few more afternoons to walk home with him. Now that she knew what she was looking for, she did see the progress of his infirmity: a twitch of the hand, a blank expression, a snappish reply.

  She did not see the despair.

  Perhaps the passing joys of a newlywed were making him forget his pain. Or perhaps all he had needed was someone else to support and fortify him, the one thing he had lost at the worst time. Whatever the case, he had gained from being a husband again.

  This balanced the scales, for Marcia could count herself satisfied to be a wife again. Sometimes very satisfied.

  Which made it all the harder on the January day when he disappeared.

  Nobody saw or heard him leave the house, and he never reached the workshop. By noon, Marcia had her servants, his workmen, and even some neighbors scouring town and country for him. She climbed down the valley, in the teeth of a biting cold wind, to search along the Nar herself.

  Had a fit of confusion seized him, sending him wandering? Americus’s wits had been weakening at times, but not deserting him. She did not believe it.

  Had his happiness been a sham, and he had finally mustered the courage to end himself? Now, while the pleasures of life still outweighed the pain? She could not believe it.

  Marcia stopped next to a large flat rock and scanned the banks of the Nar from town to shipyard. She could see one walking figure far downstream, but that full head of black hair could not be Americus’. She called his name, but only the echoes answered.

  A pair of jackdaws flew up the river, then separated, turning left and right. Her memory sparked, Marcia thought of that day again. Could it have happened? Could the river finally have diverged?

  Impossible. He himself had conceded his mistake. Besides, what new change had he wrought in the last four months?

  Marcia thought of Eudokia, how she was already showing. Her hand glided down her cloak, settling upon her belly. And she wondered.

  She would wonder the rest of her days.

  Copyright © 2010 Shane Tourtellotte

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  Novelettes

  Home Is Where the Hub Is

  Is an obviously better way always the best choice?

  By Christopher L. Bennett

  Nashira Wing fidgeted with the straps of her slinky dress as she signaled at the door of Suite 47. She practically jumped out of said dress when the door opened and a huge, slavering carnivore thrust out its head. “Are you room service?” it said. “About time. I’m starving.” Several snaketongue tentacles darted out to sniff at her limbs. “Are the exposed parts the ones that will grow back
? Don’t worry, my venom anesthetizes you.”

  “Ahh, no,” Nashira said, regaining her aplomb. She stared down banal and pointless death every day; at least the sight of a huge hyperdentate mouth got the adrenaline flowing a bit. “Sorry, I must’ve hit the wrong button. I want Room 4.”

  The beast—more properly, the Qhpong—reared its head and all its tongues back. “Oh, you must be David’s mating partner! Of course, I should’ve recognized the species. Hard to tell with your scent masked like that.”

  “Yeah, we’re funny that way.”

  The Qhpong looked her over again, with its eyes this time. “And so many exposed parts too. A pity. But never mind. I like that David. Such a polite fellow. And he smells delicious. You’re a lucky female.”

  “I am? Um. Sure. Yes, I am.”

  The Qhpong went back inside, muttering about calling room service and threatening to eat some of their parts without anesthesia. Nashira again hit the door signal, hoping that this time it would connect her to the right facet of the tesseract-shaped suite within. By now, thanks to the inept maintenance in this fleatrap hotel, virtually all of the suite’s other occupants had become aware of her frequent visits to David LaMacchia, and they’d become an object of gossip around Hubstation 3742. David liked it that way, but Nashira could do without the embarrassment.

  This time, the dimensional interface worked properly and David answered. “Oh, great, you’re here!” The young, sandy-haired American ushered her in quickly, shut the door, and activated the small cubic room’s privacy field. His eyes went straight to her purse. “Is that it?”

  Nashira glared. “What? No comment about the dress?”

  “What? Oh, you look gorgeous,” he said absently. “Now, come on, let me see the module.”

  Gorgeous? Nashira was too nonplussed to resist as David took the purse and rummaged through it, retrieving the gravitational sensor module she’d been smuggling aboard her Hubdiver ship for the past week. After a moment, she shook it off. Why should she care whether this feckless rube noticed her? She could do better any day of the week. Or she could if her arrangement with David didn’t require the pretense that their private meetings were of a personal nature. She sighed. What a waste of good perfume.

  All David cared about, of course, was his quest to crack the secrets of the Hub and thereby prove humanity’s worth to interstellar civilization. Not that Nashira couldn’t sympathize with his goals; if it were possible to predict which entry vector into that bizarre hole in reality would lead to which point in the greater galaxy, she would no longer have to risk her life testing Hub vectors at random in the remote hope of finding a useful one. But what David saw as the fresh, unbiased perspective of a new, young species, Nashira saw only as terminal cluelessness.

  And even David’s optimism could only take him so far. After a while, he groaned, tossing the instruments aside. “Still nothing.”

  “Don’t tell me that still surprises you,” Nashira said. “I’ve made more slow dives this month than a base jumper on Phobos, but the transition’s still as good as instantaneous. And even if it weren’t, the Hub leaks signal from every radiating body within a hundred kiloparsecs. There’s no way to tease any data out of that wall-to-wall white noise. What, you think you’re the first person to try it this way in sixteen thousand years?”

  “Nashira, if there were no chance, we wouldn’t have to put on this act. The fact that the Dosperhag want to stop us means there must be a way.”

  “You mean the fact they tried to bloody kill us.” The Dosperhag were generous enough as a rule, sharing the Hub they’d discovered with the races of the greater galaxy. But they could afford to be, given the immense profits they made from their stake in the single means of faster-than-light travel in the known universe. If someone cracked the secret of the Hub and used it to create an alternate means of FTL travel, the Dospers would lose their position of privilege. So their benevolence had its limits, as David and Nashira had learned the hard way.

  Nashira was startled by a chime at the door. “Oh, get that, will you?” David asked. “That’ll be Rynyan.”

  “Rynyan!” Nashira raced to the entrance and yanked the Sosyryn inside, looking around furtively. “What are you doing here?” she hissed as she shut the door.

  The tawny, leonine-faced biped absently preened his feathery mane. “David invited me.”

  “What?! Nobody saw you, did they?”

  “Oh, I just had a charming conversation with the Qhpong in Room 5. Don’t worry, I didn’t blow our cover; I told her I was here for a threesome.”

  Nashira winced, cursing under her breath in Cantonese. Putting up with David was manageable, but it meant putting up with Rynyan as well. The obscenely wealthy Sosyryn race prided themselves on their generosity and competed ruthlessly to out-donate one another; funding hopeless causes like David’s was a particular mark of prestige. Nashira didn’t mind Rynyan’s generous bribes for smuggling David’s equipment, but she could do without his supercilious attitude and his relentless come-ons. And she still resented him for jumping the claim on the greatest find of her career, cheating her out of her one chance at escaping this life. Only the fact that he’d inadvertently saved her life in the process kept her from ending his. Having no concept of failure or deprivation, though, Rynyan kept on cheerfully flirting no matter how often she shot him down. At least David’s inability to accept failure was due to good old human self-delusion ... though he would call it hope.

  Rynyan looked her over. “And she was right, you do look good enough to eat. What do you say we make me an honest Sosyryn? Although I could live with telling a small lie, if you’d rather we just had a twosome. Either way, I do need accurate details to post on my daily journal.”

  Nashira stifled a scream, causing David to look up in alarm. “That’s it! Risking my arse is one thing, but my reputation can’t take any more of this!” She stormed to the door. “No more fake trysts. If you two want to scan the Hub any more, you’ll just have to come on a dive and take your bloody chances along with me.”

  Perversely, predictably, David grinned at the prospect, leaping off the bed. “Great! I’ve been dying to get back into space! Can we go tomorrow?”

  She should’ve known counting on David’s sanity was a mistake. “If you don’t mind risking instant and horrible deaths, sure.”

  He shrugged. “You told me you scan for sabotage before every dive session now.”

  “There may be other ways they can screw us.”

  “Here at the Hub, with so many witnesses, they wouldn’t dare. And on the other end, they can’t do anything.” He smiled and took her hands. “Besides ... I trust you to take good care of us.”

  Her heart raced, and she cursed herself. How did he always manage to get through her armor? She turned to Rynyan. “Don’t tell me—you’re coming along too. Even though we could die.”

  “Oh, relax,” Rynyan replied glibly. “Death is something that happens to other people.”

  The call from Dosp came at the worst possible moment for Mokak Vekredi. Had it been any other caller, he would have told them he was on vacation. But his job, and thus the survival of his large and growing family (growing at this very moment), depended on pleasing his superiors. So he had his companions (he’d trained himself not to think of them as his children, lest he slip up and confess the relationship in public) help him over to the quantelope tank and then strive to conduct the ongoing operation as silently as possible—though Vekredi himself was the one who would normally make the most noise. “I’m—I’m here, Morjepas,” he managed to get out, keeping his gasps to a minimum.

  The quantelope turned its adorable little stubby-horned face toward Vekredi and spoke in a reedy Dosperhag voice, carried instantaneously across the light-hours from Dosp by the quantum link binding this ’lope to its entanglemate in Morjepas’s office. “Vekredi, are you all right?”

  “Per-perfectly! Aah!” He was grateful the small purple creatures could only mimic the sounds their entangl
emates heard and not reproduce the sights. “There’s ... unh ... nothing going on here! Nnn yaah!”

  “You’re giving birth, aren’t you?”

  “Why, sir!” he got out between grunts. “I have no comprehension ... what you mean. I’m simply doing ... paperwork.” The first baby came free and began emitting peeping cries. “Oh, pardon me, that’s a ... call I need to put on hold.” He gestured frantically at one of his companions to take the baby into the other room.

  “Oh, please,” Morjepas said through the ’lope. “Everyone knows Verzhik are prolific breeders. You’re not fooling anyone.”

  “Was there ... some specific reason you ... needed me, Morjepas?”

  “It can wait a few hours.”

  “No, really ... I’m not doing ... anything important.”

  The quantelope sighed. “Very well, have it your way. It’s about your report that the human LaMacchia is taking dives with Scout Wing again.”

  “Yes ... that is correct.”

  “You’re permitting this?”

  “I have no ... grounds for denying it. Aaah!” The second baby was reluctant to come out. Or maybe Vekredi was just too tense. This was an extremely private thing, only for Verzhik. Even the scrutiny of a quantelope was deeply humiliating.

  “That’s true,” Morjepas said after a moment. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance their relationship is actually sexual?”

  Vekredi’s cringe had nothing to do with his labor pains. What was private for Verzhik should be private for everyone, particularly for such disgustingly non-hermaphroditic creatures as humans. “I have no opinion.”

  “Well, we’re fairly certain it’s a cover for his continued investigations of the Hub. The dimensional walls in his hotel suite are thin, and our agent there has heard no sounds consistent with human copulation.”

  At this rate, Vekredi’s cringe muscles would be as sore as ... certain others. “Stipulated! Stipulated. What do you propose we do to deter them?”

  “Now, Vekredi, you know that the Dosperhag officially have no objection to Hub research.”