Alt.History 101 (Alt.Chronicles)

by Ken Liu

  Then the bullet hit his friend, and a cloud of pink mist puffed out of the head wound, then bone and brain spat in a shower from the back of his head, covering Robert. But before he could be disgusted the bullet hit him in the chest, and he crumpled.

  Robert didn't remember any of what happened next, not for hours, maybe days. They got the bullet out, stopped his bleeding, and the rest of his squad chased the sniper off, though they never caught him.

  But the way Robert went white when telling that story, the way a man Hugh had seen dress-down military commanders show real, true, human fear – that moment had always haunted him – that flash.

  He saw a flash coming from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository and knew immediately what it was. He was already moving; he could make it in time. He had a split second to decide between intercepting the bullet, or going after the gunman. He flew towards Kennedy, and seemed to reason that he had a better chance at disrupting the round, or at least distracting the shooter. He'd only landed once, when hovering, and between the agents and people on the sidewalks there wasn't a lot of margin for error.

  Hugh turned his palms to adjust his pitch, while simultaneously cutting back the rockets; he was still coming in hot, from momentum alone, and would need one last blast from the rockets to counter it. It was probably going to smack him around inside the tin can, and he tried to prepare as he approached.

  He heard a crack an instant before the impact, and some animal part of his brain registered it as the report of the rifle. Then the bullet struck him, with enough force that at his slower speed it ripped him out of the air, sent him tumbling onto the asphalt beside the Presidential limo. He skidded several skips, before smashing into the rear of the lead car in front of the limo.

  Hugh's head rang. He'd been shot, but it didn't hurt, though just about everything else did from the crash. He realized the shot must have hit the suit but gone wide enough it didn't hit him inside. Idly he wondered how much force it would take to penetrate the suit's plating – almost definitely a rifle bullet; pistols wouldn't penetrate like that, at least not after a single shot.

  As he struggled to his feet, Hugh became suddenly aware that the world had gone quiet. Several men in suits – Secret Service agents – had guns drawn, and were pointing them at him.

  Had he been too late? Did the bullet strike him then hit Kennedy anyway? He scanned the limo frantically. There was Connaly, and his wife. The First Lady's head was down, but she was still moving. Then he saw Kennedy, trying to look at him without exposing himself. He couldn't tell from there whether or not he'd been hit.

  “Get down, on the ground!” One of the agents yelled. They were walking towards him. But ignoring the Book Depository.

  Hugh pointed at the building where the shot came from, and they raised their weapons. He couldn't see the shooter, but he knew about where he'd seen the flash. “On the ground, now, or we open fire.”

  “Not me, damnit!” Hugh yelled, but the noise was barely audible outside the suit. Hugh realized even if they could have heard him, they wouldn't listen. He was a monstrosity of metal, more than advanced enough to be terrifying. If he wasn't a Soviet assassin then his presence didn't make a hell of a lot of sense at all.

  He was keeping them from being able to do their job, and they were all sitting ducks. He moved his wrists to get the servos in the suit's legs to lower him to the ground, gritting his teeth, because that system's malfunction had crippled Bill in the last test.

  But one of the agents interpreted the gesture as hostile, and fired, and the others joined in. The volley of fire smacked against the large fuel reservoir on his back, and he felt fuel pour into a hole in his suit, which also meant it was pouring outside. The next shot would set him on fire, and he had enough pressurized fuel that he was a bomb – all the people within a block radius would be incinerated, including the President.

  Hugh adjusted his arms, and the rockets kicked him into the air. Another agent fired, and he heard the sound of fuel igniting. He kicked his thrusters into high gear, because he needed to get far enough away that the explosion wasn't going to kill everyone on the street.

  But there was still the problem of the assassin. Hugh knew the agents weren't going to catch on quickly enough to find him before he got off another shot. If he was flying a kamikaze mission, Hugh knew right where to aim the suit.

  Time slowed down. Hugh caught the glint of the sun's light off the rifle's scope. Then he watched as fire exhaled out of the muzzle, like the cough of a long, thin dragon. Maybe the bullet would hit him – maybe he was already dead. But the same was true of the shooter – he was a bullet, flying through the air with a trail of fire at his heels.

  Hugh crashed through the window – open, but not nearly open enough to let him pass without smashing through brick and wood and glass. Then he felt the weight of a body, soft but heavy, and then the both of them went skidding through crates and shelves of volumes. He did what he could to grab the other man, use him to absorb the impact, and make sure the bastard couldn't pick up the rifle and start shooting again. Hugh's momentum carried both men out the opposite wall of the building, and sent them ricocheting off the walls in the alley behind the depository.

  The suit was nearly out of energy. He needed to act quickly, or he was going to be stuck alone with the shooter. He tried to lift himself up off the ground. He saw what was left of the gunman, which was what you'd expect of a man hit with a man-sized cannonball. He was hamburger.

  Before Hugh could feel relieved, the trailing flames caught up to him, setting the whole of the suit ablaze. He winced, waiting for the explosion, praying the buildings could absorb the impact. It didn't come. The crash damaged the fuel reserve to the point where there wasn't enough fuel for a fireball. Though that didn't stop the flames. He needed to get the hell out of the suit before he cooked alive inside it.

  That required him to raise his arms. He tried, and both arms dropped painfully against his side. One of his arms was broken, or at least dislocated. The other had no power, and the strain of lifting the metal enclosure without mechanical assistance hurt just as much.

  His breathing was ragged, thin from the smoke. Hugh steeled himself, and lifted the metal arm. He screamed from the strain as his joints popped and crackled, and his muscles felt like they were tearing in half. But the suit recognized the gesture. Slowly, the plates started to shift. Very slowly.

  If he ran out of power before they finished, he had only made sure he'd burn alive faster thanks to the increased air flow. The smoke was intensifying. He started to hack.

  Another twenty seconds and he could crawl out – provided he could force his limp arm out of the suit. But he was out of air, nothing but smoke to breathe, and already he'd breathed too much of that.

  Finally the last plate moved out of the way; it stopped shy of moving full into place, but if he could just wriggle his arm... Pain shattered him from the arm, which he know felt confident was broken in at least three places, and he collapsed back into the suit.

  He was three seconds' crawl from safety, but he was too weak to even move the arm again, and the world was fuzzy and darkening.

  He was so close to freedom, he could nearly smell the fresh air beyond the smoke. He just needed a moment's rest. To gather his strength. Then he could make it out. Just a moment's rest, he assured himself, as he closed his eyes. Then he passed out.

  SEVEN

  Hugh woke to beeping. Everything that had hurt when he lost consciousness hurt about a dozen times more, and he groaned in agony as he opened his eyes. “Sorry about that, son,” a man with a gravelly voice said. “But we needed to talk, and I didn't think it'd keep. You can go back to your drug coma soon as we're through.” The voice sounded familiar, though he couldn't quite place it. His eyes were still blurry, and he couldn't wipe the sleep from them because one of his arms was in a sling, and the other throbbed enough he was terrified to move it, let alone test why it was bandaged.

  “Kennedy?” Hugh asked.


  “The President didn't make it, but not for a lack of trying. Which is why I'm here.”

  “Did the doctor say how bad I am?” Hugh asked.

  “Said you'll live. And you'll walk. Pain might be an issue; you got the hell kicked out of you pretty bad. But you didn't burn to death in that suit. For that, you got somebody to thank – but that can wait.”

  Even in the short, clipped sentences, Hugh recognized the voice from radio spots during WWII. “You're a war hero,” he said. “Maybe the war hero. Captain Jack Simon. Hardly recognized you without the spangled getup. But I heard you were in South America.”

  “I finished up my business there. Met an interesting young woman – an archaeologist – lot like her mother, though even more of a wild woman.” Hugh raised an eyebrow. “Don't give me that look. I'm happily married, and she was south of half my age.”

  “Wasn't judging,” Hugh said. “Met more than my share.”

  “But I'm just a soldier,” Jack said. “I fought for my country just like any other doughboy or G.I. with the tools the Army gave me.”

  “Yeah, but the Army gave you a sight better than a Browning and a chocolate ration.”

  “We all have talents, and the best we can hope for is to ply those talents in fighting for a better world.”

  “That's an awfully communist sentiment to be coming from America's premier patriot.”

  “Is it communist to help your fellow man? Communist to give your all to build tomorrow?”

  “Some would say yes.”

  “And I fear they've forgotten what it means to be American.”

  Hugh smiled, just a little; the scarring over the gash in his lip tore, and he moaned.

  “But I didn't come to talk philosophy. I came to ask a favor. Don't rebuild the suit. If you do, the space race becomes just another arms race – one with more explicitly militaristic ends.

  “I know it wasn't designed as a weapon, but it is one. You're Truman in 1945, and I'm asking you not to use the bomb. You built it. It worked. But if you use it, our enemies have no choice but to build their own. Your suit has the potential to turn every battlefield into Hiroshima, and to turn this cold war hot. It would hand whoever the next Nazis are their own atomic bomb – turn every single soldier into an army.”

  “It's civilian technology,” Hugh insisted.

  “That's wishful thinking, and you know it. No technology is strictly civilian. Your father's work on the Boeing 247 was rolled into the B-17, which you helped be replaced by the B-29, which was eventually reverse-engineered by Soviets as the Tupolev Tu-4. I'm not engineer enough to know how much of you or your pop ended up in that Russian bomber – but I know it's north of nothing. The road to hell is paved with the best of intentions.”

  “The Russians used the same R-7 booster to launch Sputnik as they used for their first ICBMs,” Hugh said. “You don't think the rockets and pods every other contractor is designing for Gemini aren't going to be vehicles for new nuclear warheads?”

  “We let that genie out of the bottle. That doesn't mean we should throw open Pandora's box. You're a smart enough man to know the difference.”

  Hugh sighed. “Even if I agreed, my company won't survive without Gemini.”

  “I know. Ian told me your company's finances are... troubled.”

  “Ian?”

  “The Brit who called from Berlin. You've sunk a lot of man-hours and funds into researching the suit. You need the contract – or an investor who won't mind that your company's foundering without it.”

  “That is just the sort of thing investors frown upon.”

  “And that's why I'm here. You know much about what I do?”

  “Punch Nazis? Though given that they're a rare breed these days, I assume water polo?”

  “There are more Nazis than you'd imagine, they're just dug in, now. Hunting them takes a goodly chunk of cash. When Ian found Mengele, I had a day to get to him in Argentina from Eastern Europe. He was buying a new set of passports to disappear again. Chartering a private flight alone, you can imagine. And there were a lot of palms to grease along the way.”

  “You didn't find Mengele.”

  “Didn't I?” Jack said, with a twinkle in his eye. “My point, is I have a discretionary fund. I've been using it to make the world a better place. This would be the same. Because even if your company goes belly up, your designs don't disappear. Likely somebody buys them at auction. Or worse, somebody buys you, contracts you to work along the same lines – maybe even tricking you to build the suit piecemeal without realizing it. No. The only way to know the suit isn't in the wrong hands is to make sure it stays in yours.”

  “So you'd be investing. And as an investor, you'd be all right with scrapping the suit designs?”

  “Scrapping? No. Just because it isn't going to fly, doesn't mean we can't use what you learned in making it to build better aircraft, maybe even bid on one of the Apollo modules – but with a more conventional design.”

  “I do business internationally. I can't guarantee that some piece of equipment we sell won't inadvertently end up in a Russian machine.”

  “But you can keep from doing business with the Soviets openly – or making it easy on them. That's all I'd want. And anything military, you give the American government first crack.”

  “We're out of the military contracting business,” Hugh said. “Too little cheese for too many rats to fight over.”

  Jack frowned. “Might be more cheese soon than you think.”

  “Vietnam?” Hugh asked, and narrowed his eyes.

  “I've said more than I should already. Suffice to say, if you weather the storm – which you can, with my funds – the outlook isn't so bad. I'd say it looks like we're going to be working together.”

  “It would seem so, provided I make it out of traction.” Hugh said, and smiled. “You really marry Rosie?”

  “She actually prefers Rose. And she's a hell of a gal, the kind men like you built planes for, to a have a canvas worth painting them on. She would have liked to be here; we both liked the President, and appreciate what you tried to do. But she's in Washington, meeting with the chair of the Rules Committee. He still has the Civil Rights Act bottled up.”

  “Smith?” Hugh frowned. “He's a segregationist.”

  “She's arguing for Title VII, particularly, protections for women. And when that woman wants something, I pity the man who's standing in her way.”

  Hugh laughed, and it caused pain to shoot up and down his body. He tried to hide it too late.

  “Right now, you need your rest,” Jack said. “I'll have one of the nurses turn your morphine back on. I'll be in touch.”

  “Wait,” Hugh said, fighting against the pain to stay conscious. “Who pulled me out of the suit?”

  “A Korean war vet, homeless. A mechanic.”

  “Hmm. Think we might be able to do something for that.”

  Jack smiled, just a little. “This might just be the start of a beautiful friendship.”

  About Nicolas Wilson

  Nicolas Wilson is a published journalist, graphic novelist, and novelist. He lives in the rainy wastes of Portland, Oregon with his wife, four cats and a dog.

  Nic's work spans a variety of genres, from political thriller to science fiction and urban fantasy. He has several novels currently available, and many more due for release in the next year. Nic's stories are characterized by his eye for the absurd, the off-color, and the bombastic.

  For information on Nic's books, and behind-the-scenes looks at his writing, visit his website at www.nicolaswilson.com

  Concerns of the Second Sex

  by Pavarti K. Tyler

  Because women in truth exist entirely for the propagation of the race, and their destiny ends here, they live more for the species than for the individual

  - Arthur Schopenhauer

  MR. ZHANG OPENED THE DOOR to my father’s sitting rooms and stared at the wall straight ahead. “The master is available for any visitors,” he said,
ignoring my presence, as was appropriate.

  My father sat in the red leather chair I remembered from my childhood. Six or seven years have passed since I last saw him, but his deep-set brown eyes and well-groomed moustache still intimidated me. My mother knelt on the floor beside him, her hair piled up on top of her head and wrapped with a long strip of orange cloth. She hadn’t cut it since she gave birth to my eldest brother and it now hung to the bottom of her back, heavy and hot.

  I lowered myself to the hardwood at my father’s feet and waited for him to speak. I wanted to touch the soft leather of his chair, to lift my eyes to gaze the shelves of books I would never be allowed to read, even if I could make sense of the symbols splattered across the pages. My shaved head, a symbol I had reached childbearing age but had not yet birthed a son, tickled my scalp. Only a week since my father’s wives stood stoically around me while First Mother cut down my locks tight against my scalp.

  “Helen,” my father said, and I chanced to look at him. “You’re the seventh daughter of my seventh wife. An inauspicious number. There have been no bids for your hand.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  A tear trailed down my mother’s cheek, dripping off her chin and splashing into the growing pond in the fabric folds of her lap.

  “I’m inclined to go against tradition and not send a child of mine—even an unmarriable girl—to the factories. Our family is far enough above that station, your presence would reflect poorly on your sisters and brothers as they near marrying age.”

  Unmarriable.

  I didn’t think I’d been deemed unfit, simply not yet chosen. But the impact of that word, its harsh judgment stung. Perhaps the right man didn’t yet know I existed. I never left the confines of this house, so how would anyone even know to ask for my hand? The mysteries of the adult world confused me.