Nebula Awards Showcase 2006

by Gardner Dozois

  “Madame,” said Helva, realizing that perhaps a female voice might carry more weight in this instance than Jennan’s very masculine charm.

  “Who spoke?” cried the nun, startled by the bodiless voice.

  “I, Helva, the ship. Under my protection you and your sisters-in-faith may enter safely and be unprofaned by association with a male. I will guard you and take you safely to a place prepared for you.”

  The matriarch peered cautiously into the ship’s open port.

  “Since only Central Worlds is permitted the use of such ships, I acknowledge that you are not trifling with us, young man. However, we are in no danger here.”

  “The temperature at Rosary is now 99°,” said Helva. “As soon as the sun’s rays penetrate directly into this valley, it will also be 99°, and it is due to climb to approximately 180° today. I notice your buildings are made of wood with moss chinking. Dry moss. It should fire around noontime.”

  The sunlight was beginning to slant into the valley through the peaks and the fierce rays warmed the restless group behind the matriarch. Several opened the throats of their furry parkas.

  “Jennan,” said Helva privately to him, “our time is very short.”

  “I can’t leave them, Helva. Some of those girls are barely out of their teens.”

  “Pretty, too. No wonder the matriarch doesn’t want to get in.”

  “Helva.”

  “It will be the Lord’s will,” said the matriarch stoutly and turned her back squarely on rescue.

  “To burn to death?” shouted Jennan as she threaded her way through her murmuring disciples.

  “They want to be martyrs? Their opt, Jennan,” said Helva dispassionately. “We must leave and that is no longer a matter of option.”

  “How can I leave, Helva?”

  “Parsaea?” Helva flung tauntingly at him as he stepped forward to grab one of the women. “You can’t drag them all aboard and we don’t have time to fight it out. Get on board, Jennan, or I’ll have you on report.”

  “They’ll die,” muttered Jennan dejectedly as he reluctantly turned to climb on board.

  “You can risk only so much,” Helva said sympathetically. “As it is we’ll just have time to make a rendezvous. Lab reports a critical speed-up in spectral evolution.”

  Jennan was already in the airlock when one of the younger women, screaming, rushed to squeeze in the closing port. Her action set off the others and they stampeded through the narrow opening. Even crammed back to breast, there was not enough room inside. Jennan broke out spacesuits for the three who would have to remain with him in the airlock. He wasted valuable time explaining to the matriarch that she must put on the suit because the airlock had no independent oxygen or cooling units.

  “We’ll be caught,” said Helva grimly to Jennan on their private connection. “We’ve lost 18 minutes in this last-minute rush. I am now overloaded for maximum speed and I must attain maximum speed to outrun the heat-wave.”

  “Can you lift? We’re suited.”

  “Lift? Yes,” she said, doing so. “Run? I stagger.”

  Jennan, bracing himself and the women, could feel her sluggishness as she blasted upward. Heartlessly, Helva applied thrust as long as she could, despite the fact that the gravitational force mashed her cabin passengers brutally and crushed two fatally. It was a question of saving as many as possible. The only one for whom she had any concern was Jennan and she was in desperate terror about his safety. Airless and uncooled, protected by only one layer of metal, not three, the airlock was not going to be safe for the four trapped there, despite their spacesuits. These were only the standard models, not built to withstand the excessive heat to which the ship would be subjected.

  Helva ran as fast as she could but the incredible wave of heat from the explosive sun caught them halfway to cold safety.

  She paid no heed to the cries, moans, pleas and prayers in her cabin. She listened only to Jennan’s tortured breathing, to the missing throb in his suit’s purifying system and the sucking of the overloaded cooling unit. Helpless, she heard the hysterical screams of his three companions as they writhed in the awful heat. Vainly, Jennan tried to calm them, tried to explain they would soon be safe and cool if they could be still and endure the heat. Undisciplined by their terror and torment, they tried to strike out at him despite the close quarters. One flailing arm became entangled in the leads to his power pack and the damage was quickly done. A connection, weakened by heat and the dead weight of the arm, broke.

  For all the power at her disposal, Helva was helpless. She watched as Jennan fought for his breath, as he turned his head beseechingly toward her, and died.

  Only the iron conditioning of her training prevented Helva from swinging around and plunging back into the exploding sun. Numbly she made rendezvous with the refugee convoy. She obediently transferred her burned, heat-prostrated passengers to the assigned transport.

  “I will retain the body of my scout and proceed to the nearest base for burial,” she informed Central dully.

  “You will be provided escort,” was the reply.

  “I have no need of escort,” she demurred.

  “Escort is provided, XH-834,” she was told curtly.

  The shock of hearing Jennan’s initial severed from her call number cut off her half-formed protest. Stunned, she waited by the transport until her screens showed the arrival of two other slim brain ships. The cortege proceeded homeward at unfunereal speeds.

  “834? The ship who sings?”

  “I have no more songs.”

  “Your scout was Jennan?”

  “I do not wish to communicate.”

  “I’m 422.”

  “Silvia?”

  “Silvia died a long time ago. I’m 422. Currently MS,” the ship rejoined curtly. “AH-640 is our other friend, but Henry’s not listening in. Just as well—he wouldn’t understand it if you wanted to turn rogue. But I’d stop him if he tried to delay you.”

  “Rogue?” the term snapped Helva out of her apathy.

  “Sure. You’re young. You’ve got power for years. Skip. Others have done it. 732 went rogue two years ago after she lost her scout on a mission to that white dwarf. Hasn’t been seen since.”

  “I never heard about rogues,” gasped Helva.

  “As it’s exactly the thing we’re conditioned against, you sure wouldn’t hear about it in school, my dear,” 422 said.

  “Break conditioning?” cried Helva, anguished, thinking of the white, white furious hot heart of the sun she had just left.

  “For you I don’t think it would be hard at the moment,” 422 said quietly, her voice devoid of her earlier cynicism. “The stars are out there, winking.”

  “Alone?” cried Helva from her heart.

  “Alone!” 422 confirmed bleakly.

  Alone with all of space and time. Even the Horsehead Nebulae would not be far enough away to daunt her. Alone with a hundred years to live with her memories and nothing . . . nothing more.

  “Was Parsaea worth it?” she asked 422 softly.

  “Parsaea?” 422 came back, surprised. “With his father? Yes. We were there, at Parsaea when we were needed. Just as you . . . and his son . . . were at Chloe. When you were needed. The crime is always not knowing where need is and not being there.”

  “But I need him. Who will supply my need?” said Helva bitterly. . . .

  “834,” said 422 after a day’s silent speeding. “Central wishes your report. A replacement awaits your opt at Regulus Base. Change course accordingly.”

  “A replacement?” That was certainly not what she needed . . . a reminder inadequately filling the void Jennan left. Why, her hull was barely cool of Chloe’s heat. Atavistically, Helva wanted time to mourn Jennan.

  “Oh, none of them are impossible if you’re a good ship,” 422 remarked philosophically. “And it is just what you need. The sooner the better.”

  “You told them I wouldn’t go rogue, didn’t you?” Helva said heavily.

  �
�The moment passed you even as it passed me after Parsaea, and before that, after Glen Arhur, and Betelgeuse.”

  “We’re conditioned to go on, aren’t we? We can’t go rogue. You were testing.”

  “Had to. Orders. Not even Psycho knows why a rogue occurs. Central’s very worried, and so, daughter, are your sister ships. I asked to be your escort. I . . . don’t want to lose you both.”

  In her emotional nadir, Helva could feel a flood of gratitude for Silvia’s rough sympathy.

  “We’ve all known this grief, Helva. It’s no consolation but if we couldn’t feel with our scouts, we’d only be machines wired for sound.”

  Helva looked at Jennan’s still form stretched before her in its shroud and heard the echo of his rich voice in the quiet cabin.

  “Silvia! I couldn’t help him,” she cried from her soul.

  “Yes, dear. I know,” 422 murmured gently and then was quiet.

  The three ships sped on, wordless, to the great Central Worlds base at Regulus. Helva broke silence to acknowledge landing instructions and the officially tendered regrets.

  The three ships set down simultaneously at the wooded edge where Regulus’ gigantic blue trees stood sentinel over the sleeping dead in the small Service cemetery. The entire Base complement approached with measured step and formed an aisle from Helva to the burial ground. The honor detail, out of step, walked slowly into her cabin. Reverently they placed the body of her dead love on the wheeled bier, covered it honorably with the deep blue, star-splashed flag of the Service. She watched as it was driven slowly down the living aisle which closed in behind the bier in last escort.

  Then, as the simple words of interment were spoken, as the atmosphere planes dipped wings in tribute over the open grave, Helva found voice for her lonely farewell.

  Softly, barely audible at first, the strains of the ancient song of evening and requiem swelled to the final poignant measure until black space itself echoed back the sound of the song the ship sang.

  EILEEN GUNN

  Eileen Gunn is not a prolific writer, but her stories are well worth waiting for, and are relished (and eagerly anticipated) by a small but select group of knowledgeable fans who know that she has a twisted perspective on life unlike anyone else’s, and a strange and pungent sense of humor all her own. She has made several sales to Asimov’s Science Fiction, as well as to markets such as Amazing, Proteus, Tales by Moonlight, and Alternate Presidents, and has been a Nebula and Hugo finalist several times. She is the editor and publisher of the jazzy and eclectic electronic magazine The Infinite Matrix (www.infinitematrix.net), and the chairman of the board of the Clarion West writers workshop. Her first short-story collection, Stable Strategies and Others, came out in 2004; in addition to containing the Nebula-winning story that follows, the collection as a whole has been short-listed for the Philip K. Dick Award and for the James Tiptree, Jr., Memorial Awards. Gunn is presently at work on a biography of the late Avram Davidson. After brief periods of exile in Brooklyn and San Francisco, she is now back in Seattle, Washington, where she had formerly resided for many years, much to the relief of the other inhabitants.

  On “Coming to Terms,” this year’s Nebula winner in the short-story category, she says:

  “For a long time I’ve wanted to write a story about the emotional life of objects, and perhaps this is that story. As I have mentioned elsewhere, I started this story after helping Avram Davidson’s son Ethan pack up his father’s books and papers after Avram’s death. I finished it after the deaths of my own parents, and after packing up their possessions.

  “Avram’s books and papers were copiously and idiosyncratically annotated: in some sense, they knew that they would be read by someone other than himself after his death, and they reached out to that reader. I found this a very affecting experience, and it influenced me to take on the task of writing Avram’s biography. However, although Avram inspired this story, the characters in it are not Avram or his son. Nor are they me, except in the sense that all a writer’s characters are in some way a reflection of herself.

  “I ran this by several workshops and many tolerant friends. Thank you all: Your efforts bore some fruit.”

  COMING TO TERMS

  EILEEN GUNN

  The life leaked out of the old man. He lay in bed for more than a month, in hospital and nursing home, in worlds of pain. He fought first for control of his death, then for control of his life once more. Toward the end he gave up his desire for control, as much as he was able. He still issued every visitor a list of tasks, but he knew he had no control over whether those tasks got done.

  So, painstakingly, he combed the thatch of the past. He returned to the old mysteries and puzzles, and reflected at length on the lives and motivations of people long dead. He constructed theories to explain the petty cruelties of childhood bullies. He made plans to purchase a small house, to reclaim his land in Guatemala, to publish essays, fiction, fragments of prose. He ate bananas and rye bread and institutional meals, and put his teeth in when visitors stopped by. He resolved not to worry about things he couldn’t fix, and struggled to keep that resolution.

  Then the muscles of his heart, exhausted after three billion beats and weakened by pneumonia, diabetes, and the stress of a choleric temperament, paused just for a moment, and could not resume. A nurse called for help and, with a team of aides, brought him back. He squeezed her hand, his heart failed again, and they let him go. The tenuous flow of electrochemical impulses that made up his nervous system slowed and ceased, and the order that he had imposed on the universe started to disintegrate, releasing heat.

  His body cooled. A mortician came and removed it. A nurse’s aide gathered his belongings together, threw out a few unimportant scraps of paper, put the rest in a plastic bag. The bed was remade: someone was waiting for it.

  Friends came to visit, and found him gone. The news traveled, a spasm of regret at the disappearance of a keen mind, a brilliant wit, a generous friend. Kindnesses postponed would not be realized. Harsh words, whatever the source or reason, could not be unsaid.

  He died with a book newly released, an essay in the current issue of a popular journal, a story to appear shortly in a well-known magazine. He left a respectable amount of work and a stack of unpublished manuscripts made more marketable by the fact of his death. For days after he died, his friends continued to receive his cards and letters.

  After the passage of several weeks, his daughter, sorry about her father’s death but not pleased at having to shoulder the responsibility, came from out of state to pack up his papers and books and to dispose, somehow, of the rest of his belongings. She unlocked the door and let herself into the silent, stale-smelling apartment.

  The old man’s spirit was still strong; he had always put its stamp on everything of consequence in his possession.

  An umbrella with the handle carved into the shape of a goose’s head leaned against the wall inside the door. A tag hung from the neck. It read, in her father’s handwriting: “The kind gift of Arthur Detweiler, whom I met in the public library reading room on a rainy March afternoon.”

  She looked around the cramped two-room apartment. There were slippery piles of manuscripts and writing supplies. Heaps of clothes, towels, dirty dishes. A scattering of loose CDs across the top of his desk. Stacks of books, books, books.

  She had never been there before. Her father had moved, not long before his death, to this last remote way station in a lifetime of wandering. Too new to the old man to be called his home, the small flat was clearly in disarray. Some belongings were in cardboard boxes, still unpacked from his last move or the one before that.

  She had a fleeting thought that perhaps someone had broken in, to rifle her father’s few belongings, and had put them in the boxes to take them away. At his previous place, a kid with a knife had come in and demanded forty bucks from his wallet. It made her angry, the idea of somebody coming in and rooting through her father’s stuff, while he lay dying in the hospital. But then, she thought
, it doesn’t matter. He took no money with him, and he surely didn’t leave much behind.

  What he had had of value was his mind and his persistence and his writing skills, and those, actually, he had taken with him.

  The cleanup seemed daunting, too much for her to deal with all at once. Maybe she’d make herself a cup of tea first. If there was tea.

  In the kitchen, scraps of paper were taped on surfaces, stuck into openings, poked into canisters. A torn piece of lined yellow paper, taped to the front of the refrigerator, read, “This big refrigerator! What for? I’m an old man, I don’t cook.”

  You didn’t cook when you were younger, either, thought the daughter. A hotdog when she came for lunch, Chinese if she stayed for dinner. When she was a teenager, trying to create a normal life for this wayward parent, she had tried cooking meals for him when she came to visit, but he wasn’t patient with her mistakes.

  On the stove, a piece of paper was stuck on the front of the clock, obscuring the face: “Ignore this clock. The clocks on stoves are always wrong.”

  Squares of paper were taped all over the stove:

  “Mornings, I make myself a pot of coffee, if my stomach permits.”

  “A deep fat fryer! What are they trying to do, kill me?”

  “The oven needs cleaning. My mother used to get down on her hands and knees and clean the oven every week. She baked her own bread, and put a hot meal on the table every night. She made us oatmeal in the mornings, none of this toasted-twinkies instant-breakfast stuff. She sewed all her own clothes, and my sister’s as well. She’s been dead thirty-five years, and I miss her still.”

  The young woman sighed. In thirty-five years, would she miss her father? Maybe you miss people more as you get older—but she’d come to terms with his absence many years before.

  When he had moved across the country, in search of a job or a woman, she had completely lost the sense of being his child, of being under his protection. She didn’t miss him yet: it didn’t seem that he was gone, just that he’d moved on.