The Fifth Science Fiction Megapack

by Gardner Dozois

  The President had asked Dr. Piotr a question about the economic impact of speedy space travel, and the talkative scientist was off and away. “At FTL,” he said with enthusiasm, “the planets are just suburbs. We can colonize the solar system! No more of this three-years-to-Mars stuff. We’ve already gained so much from this one Fortie contact, I can’t wait to see what else is coming.”

  Every word was English, but Titus found he had no idea what was being said. He leaned nearer to Shell. “Do you understand him?”

  “Sure.”

  “I don’t.”

  She laughed. “And Piotr prides himself on being a populizer, too! Don’t disappoint him by telling him.”

  “Hamilton’s such a show-off,” Sabrina Trask muttered from beyond Shell. “Just because she taught economics and math at Stanford.”

  Titus wasn’t even sure what economics was. Something to do with money, he hazarded. Born to wealth, all he knew of money was how to spend it. He wondered what precisely Buck Rogers had lived on, and how he had got into the 25th century’s military. “Shell, how much education have you had?”

  “Me? Gosh, let me think—twelve years of school, four years college, medical school, another two for my communications doctorate… If you count the Fortie training, I’ve been in school just about all my life.”

  Dr. Piotr had finished his remarks, and the President applauded, saying, “Doctor, I swear if you ever want to quit the Paticalar business, I have a job for you in politics. You could sell shoes to snakes.”

  The doctor grinned, pinker than ever. “Once, Madam President, you might have tempted me. Now, I know the better part. This is where the fun is going to be.”

  “Gad, I envy you young people,” the Ambassador said. “Tell us more about the time business—what’s this new time window trick the newsies are chattering about?”

  Obligingly Dr. Piotr said, “Well, it’s disruptive and difficult to pull a real object or person through time. A perfect candidate like the Captain here is rare. It would be as much fun, and cheaper, to just pull light—images. I wouldn’t mind a photograph of a velociraptor, would you? We could make a fortune on the posters and screensavers alone.”

  This is beyond me, Titus admitted silently. He bowed his head to the inevitable. Buck Rogers was a cheat, the invention of some fantasizing duffer who’d never actually had to work with less than seventy percent of the knowledge necessary. Titus would live the reality, and he could acknowledge now that much of it would be forever beyond his comprehension. To swallow down the entire 21st century was too big a mouthful. His only hope was to select an area to worry at and, please God, to master.

  But which area? If he wasn’t going to explore, then what? “Lash, what am I going to live on? They must have proved my will and settled the estate. I don’t suppose my heirs’ descendants, my great-grandnephews and so on, will want to part with the money even if there’s a bean left after all this time. Will you people support me until I die?”

  “A stipend’s in the works,” Dr. Lash said. “PTICA is responsible for your existence, Titus—you won’t starve.”

  “But I bet anything you like, you’re not going to want to live out your life as a couch potato,” Shell added. “I can’t wait to see what the newsies will say, about your re-conquering the American Colonies!”

  Dr. Lash shuddered. “I could wish, Titus, that you’d be more careful about what you say!”

  Titus ate steadily, thinking hard. His life had been handed back to him on a platter. But the President, of all people, had put her finger on the key question: what could he do with it? He knew how to fight, and he knew how to die. He had a sense there was very little call for such skills in the 21st century. As useful as knowing how to blow a duck call, he thought sardonically. Perhaps he could assist that young black at the museum.

  He had it now: enough information so that he could distinguish what was truly vital. Clear as day, Titus saw that if he didn’t carve a niche for himself, he would indeed become a couch potato—he was repelled without even knowing what that was. There was a higher fence to clear than just learning to exist here. The crucial battle lay not in the past, nor the present, but the future. From infancy, playing with popguns and wooden horses, he had always known what he would be: a soldier. Now in this strange new world this destiny was gone, and he was adrift. He could do anything he set his will to. But first he had to find a new destiny to replace the one he’d left behind in 1912. Else he’d become a pet, a parasite, leeching off the moderns for the rest of his useless life, trotted out for display every now and then to bark for the visiting brass.

  It reminded him of his first sight of the Himalayas, in India. Some dashed impressive mountains, but then the morning haze lifted for a moment, and the eye took in the colossal heights beyond, snow-capped peaks rearing up to pierce the sky. What he had thought was the real battle had again been nothing but the first skirmish. How much easier a sharp crisis would be! Walking to one’s end in a blizzard, perhaps. “May be some time,” indeed! This slow stubborn uphill slog would last till his dying day—in the spirit of locking the barn door too late, he swore that when he drew that final breath it should not be expended on feeble ironies that would come back to haunt him.

  Wars came to an end in a year or two. Even manhauling to the Pole and back had to be accomplished in six or seven months during the austral summer. But this was never going to end. It would call for more pluck and resolution and bottom than anything else he’d ever set hand to, because it would never be over. For a moment the prospect was unspeakably daunting, and he slumped over his empty plate. But with an effort he straightened. Stiff upper lip and all that. He had conclusively demonstrated, after all, that he could do anything he set his mind to. “I’ve survived far worse,” he said aloud.

  Dr. Lash glanced up. “What’s that you say, Titus?”

  No time like the present to begin. Titus gazed thoughtfully at the other man’s little machine, lying beside his plate. “Lash…what time is it?”

  CYBERPUNK, by Bruce Bethke

  The snoozer went off at seven and I was out of my sleepsack, powered up, and online in nanos. That’s as far as I got. Soon I booted and got—

  CRACKERS/BUDDYBOO/8ER

  on the tube.

  I shut down fast. Damn! Rayno had been on line before me, like always, and that message meant somebody else had gotten into our Net—and that meant trouble by the busload! I couldn’t do anything mor on term, so I zipped into my jumper, combed my hair, and went downstairs.

  Mom and Dad were at breakfast when I slid into the kitchen. “Good Morning, Mikey!” said Mom with a smile. “You were up so late last night I thought I wouldn’t see you before you caught your bus.”

  “Had a tough program to crack,” I said.

  “Well,” she said, “now you can sit down and have a decent breakfast.” She turned around to pull some Sara Lees out of the microwave and plunk them down on the table.

  “If you’d do your schoolwork when you’re supposed to you wouldn’t have to stay up all night,” growled Dad from behind his caffix and faxsheet. I sloshed some juice in a glass and poured it down, stuffed a Sara Lee into my mouth, and stood to go.

  “What?” asked Mom. “That’s all the breakfast you’re going to have?”

  “Haven’t got time,” I said. “I gotta get to school early to see if the program checks.” Dad growled something more and Mom spoke to quiet him, but I didn’t hear much ’cause I was out the door.

  I caught the transys for school, just in case they were watching. Two blocks down the line I got off and transferred going back the other way, and a coupla transfers later I wound up whipping into Buddy’s All-Night Burgers. Rayno was in our booth, glaring into his caffix. It was 7:55 and I’d beat Georgie and Lisa there.

  “What’s on line?” I asked as I dropped into my seat, across from Rayno. He just looked up at me through his eyebrows and I knew better than to ask again.

  At eight Lisa came in. Lisa is Rayno’s gi
rl, or at least she hopes she is. I can see why: Rayno’s seventeen—two years older than the rest of us—he wears flash plastic and his hair in The Wedge (Dad blew a chip when I said I wanted my hair cut like that) and he’s so cool he won’t even touch her, even when she’s begging for it. She plunked down in her seat next to Rayno and he didn’t blink.

  Georgie still wasn’t there at 8:05. Rayno checked his watch again, then finally looked up from his caffix. “The compiler’s been cracked,” he said. Lisa and I both swore. We’d worked up our own little code to keep our Net private. I mean, our Olders would just blow boards if they ever found out what we were really up to. And now somebody’d broken our code.

  “Georgie’s old man?” I asked.

  “Looks that way.” I swore again. Georgie and I started the Net by linking our smartterms with some stuff we stored in his old man’s home business system. Now my Dad wouldn’t know an opsys if he crashed on one, but Georgie’s old man—he’s a greentooth. A tech-type. He’d found one of ours once before and tried to take it apart to see what it did. We’d just skinned out that time.

  “Any idea how far in he got?” Lisa asked. Rayno looked through her, at the front door. Georgie’d just come in.

  “We’re gonna find out,” Rayno said.

  Georgie was coming in smiling, but when he saw that look in Rayno’s eyes he sat down next to me like the seat was booby-trapped.

  “Good Morning Georgie,” said Rayno, smiling like a shark.

  “I didn’t glitch!” Georgie whined. “I didn’t tell him a thing!”

  “Then how the hell did he do it?”

  “You know how he is, he’s weird! He likes puzzles!” Georgie looked to me for backup. “That’s how come I was late. He was trying to weasel me, but I didn’t tell him a thing! I think he only got it partway open. He didn’t ask about the Net!”

  Rayno actually sat back, pointed at us all, and smiled. “You kids just don’t know how lucky you are. I was in the Net last night and flagged somebody who didn’t know the secures was poking Georgie’s compiler. I made some changes. By the time your old man figures them out, well…”

  I sighed relief. See what I mean about being cool? Rayno had us outlooped all the time!

  Rayno slammed his fist down on the table. “But Dammit Georgie, you gotta keep a closer watch on him!”

  Then Rayno smiled and bought us all drinks and pie all the way around. Lisa had a cherry Coke, and Georgie and I had caffix just like Rayno. God, that stuff tastes awful! The cups were cleared away, and Rayno unzipped his jumper and reached inside.

  “Now kids,” he said quietly, “it’s time for some serious fun.” He whipped out his microterm. “School’s off!”

  I still drop a bit when I see that microterm—Geez, it’s a beauty! It’s a Zeilemann Nova 300, but we’ve spent so much time reworking it, it’s practically custom from the motherboard up. Hi-baud, rammed, crammed, ported, with the wafer display folds down to about the size of a vid casette; I’d give an ear to have one like it. We’d used Georgie’s old man’s chipburner to tuck some special tricks in ROM and there wasn’t a system in CityNet it couldn’t talk to.

  Rayno ordered up a smartcab and we piled out of Buddy’s. No more riding the transys for us, we were going in style! We charged the smartcab off to some law company and cruised all over Eastside.

  Riding the boulevards got stale after awhile, so we rerouted to the library. We do a lot of our fun at the library, ’cause nobody ever bothers us there. Nobody ever goes there. We sent the smartcab, still on the law company account, off to Westside. Getting past the guards and the librarians was just a matter of flashing some ID and then we zipped off into the stacks.

  Now, you’ve got to ID away your life to get on the libsys terms—which isn’t worth half a scare when your ID is all fudged like ours is—and they watch real careful. But they move their terms around a lot, so they’ve got ports on line all over the building. We found an unused port, and me and Georgie kept watch while Rayno plugged in his microterm and got on line.

  “Get me into the Net,” he said, handing me the term. We don’t have a stored opsys yet for Netting, so Rayno gives me the fast and tricky jobs.

  Through the dataphones I got us out of the libsys and into CityNet. Now, Olders will never understand. They still think a computer has got to be a brain in a single box. I can get the same results with opsys stored in a hundred places, once I tie them together. Nearly every computer has got a dataphone port, CityNet is a great linking system, and Rayno’s microterm has the smarts to do the job clean and fast so nobody flags on us. I pulled the compiler out of Georgie’s old man’s computer and got into our Net. Then I handed the term back to Rayno.

  “Well, let’s do some fun. Any requests?” Georgie wanted something to get even with his old man, and I had a new routine cooking, but Lisa’s eyes lit up ’cause Rayno handed the term to her, first.

  “I wanna burn Lewis,” she said.

  “Oh fritz!” Georgie complained. “You did that last week!”

  “Well, he gave me another F on a theme.”

  “I never get Fs. If you’d read books once in a—”

  “Georgie,” Rayno said softly, “Lisa’s on line.” That settled that. Lisa’s eyes were absolutely glowing.

  Lisa got back into CityNet and charged a couple hundred overdue books to Lewis’s libsys account. Then she ordered a complete fax sheet of Encyclopedia Britannica printed out at his office. I got next turn.

  Georgie and Lisa kept watch while I accessed. Rayno was looking over my shoulder. “Something new this week?”

  “Airline reservations. I was with my Dad two weeks ago when he set up a business trip, and I flagged on maybe getting some fun. I scanned the ticket clerk real careful and picked up the access code.”

  “Okay, show me what you can do.”

  Accessing was so easy that I just wiped a couple of reservations first, to see if there were any bells and whistles.

  None. No checks, no lockwords, no confirm codes. I erased a couple dozen people without crashing down or locking up. “Geez,” I said, “There’s no deep secures at all!”

  “I been telling you. Olders are even dumber than they look. Georgie? Lisa? C’mon over here and see what we’re running!” Georgie was real curious and asked a lot of questions, but Lisa just looked bored and snapped her gum and tried to stand closer to Rayno. Then Rayno said, “Time to get off Sesame Street. Purge a flight.”

  I did. It was simple as a save. I punched a few keys, entered, and an entire plane disappeared from all the reservation files. Boy, they’d be surprised when they showed up at the airport. I started purging down the line, but Rayno interrupted.

  “Maybe there’s no bells and whistles, but wipe out a whole block of flights and it’ll stand out. Watch this.” He took the term from me and cooked up a routine in RAM to do a global and wipe out every flight that departed at an :07 for the next year. “Now that’s how you do these things without waving a flag.”

  “That’s sharp,” Georgie chipped in, to me. “Mike, you’re a genius! Where do you get these ideas?” Rayno got a real funny look in his eyes.

  “My turn,” Rayno said, exiting the airline system.

  “What’s next in the stack?” Lisa asked him.

  “Yeah, I mean, after garbaging the airlines…” Georgie didn’t realize he was supposed to shut up.

  “Georgie! Mike!” Rayno hissed. “Keep watch!” Soft, he added, “It’s time for The Big One.”

  “You sure?” I asked. “Rayno, I don’t think we’re ready.”

  “We’re ready.”

  Georgie got whiney. “We’re gonna get in big trouble-”

  “Wimp,” spat Rayno. Georgie shut up.

  We’d been working on The Big One for over two months, but I still didn’t feel real solid about it. It almost made a clean if/then/else; if The Big One worked/then we’d be rich/else…it was the else I didn’t have down.

  Georgie and me scanned while Rayno got down to busin
ess. He got back into CityNet, called the cracker opsys out of OurNet, and poked it into Merchant’s Bank & Trust. I’d gotten into them the hard way, but never messed with their accounts; just did it to see if I could do it. My data’d been sitting in their system for about three weeks now and nobody’d noticed. Rayno thought it would be really funny to use one bank computer to crack the secures on other bank computers.

  While he was peeking and poking I heard walking nearby and took a closer look. It was just some old waster looking for a quiet place to sleep. Rayno was finished linking by the time I got back. “Okay kids,” he said, “this is it.” He looked around to make sure we were all watching him, then held up the term and stabbed the RETURN key. That was it. I stared hard at the display, waiting to see what else was gonna be. Rayno figured it’d take about ninety seconds.

  The Big One, y’see, was Rayno’s idea. He’d heard about some kids in Sherman Oaks who almost got away with a five million dollar electronic fund transfer; they hadn’t hit a hangup moving the five mil around until they tried to dump it into a personal savings account with a $40 balance. That’s when all the flags went up.

  Rayno’s cool; Rayno’s smart. We weren’t going to be greedy, we were just going to EFT fifty K. And it wasn’t going to look real strang, ’cause it got strained through some legitimate accounts before we used it to open twenty dummies.

  If it worked.

  The display blanked, flickered, and showed:

  TRANSACTION COMPLETED. HAVE A NICE DAY.

  I started to shout, but remembered I was in a library. Georgie looked less terrified. Lisa looked like she was going to attack Rayno. Rayno just cracked his little half smile., and started exiting. “Funtime’s over, kids.”

  “I didn’t get a turn,” Georgie mumbled.