Analog Science Fiction and Fact - 2014-04

by Penny Publications

  "You no longer need us!" She raised her arms, appealing to the crowd, and again the sound swelled around her. When it died, she continued: "In the forty years of time that have passed in the lockstep, populations have moved in, but they've also moved out. Emigrants have taken our practices to other worlds and other locksteps, and honed and refined them over countless centuries. Our culture has touched those of other worlds again and again, like a hammer tapping a bell. Every thirty years another note, a reminder of who we are and how we live, resounding through the fast worlds. How could we have guessed that the echoes from the previous note would still be sounding when the next was rung? How could we know that its peal would grow and grow, amplified by time, until today the guides have nothing to do—whole worlds of millions of people petition to join the lock-step, and they know more about how to live in three-sixty than we do!"

  Again Peter laughed. "It's true. Kenani and the others were having a bit of problem deciding how to tell us. But for a couple of years now, they haven't had much to do."

  "The guides, and our family's monopoly on the cicada beds, were necessary to stabilize our lockstep's culture and identity through its middle years," said Evayne. "But they're not necessary anymore. That is why you are here today. We may have begun the lockstep and we may have lived in it from the beginning, but you have lived with it longer! It's time you took the reins to lead us into the next era of lockstep time: the era of our full maturity as a civilization."

  There was more—much more—but Evie was just embellishing and amplifying her themes. Toby and Peter watched, and listened to the changing murmur and roar of the crowd, and eventually, to thunderous applause, Evie finished, and stalked majestically from the stage.

  "She's gonna want a drink after that," said Peter.

  Toby hardly knew what to say. "She... she really came around."

  Peter shrugged. "She's had six years to accept the idea—and to preach the new way on the fast worlds." He tilted his head and tapped his nose mischievously. "Lockstep time, Toby. Get used to it."

  He shook his head. "I'm... not sure I can."

  Peter looked serious now. "I've been wondering about that. Actually, we all have. You scared Evie, dragging her so close to real-time on Thisbe. Didn't seem to scare you, though. And my people tell me you've developed a fascination with the fast worlds."

  "Why wouldn't I? There's just so much out there!" Toby barked a laugh. "I mean, fourteen thousand years! Come on! I keep hearing about these amazing places, these incredible stories and histories. I want to see them all."

  "Why don't you then? Surely it's not us that's keeping you here?" Peter had his arms again and now looked down his nose at Toby, becoming in that instant the elder friend rather than the little brother who'd shared Evie's speech.

  Toby turned away. "I would," he admitted. "But you said it yourself. Lockstep time is tricky. If I step out of it for just a second..."

  "Everyone leaves you behind?" Peter shrugged. "You're right—you can't step in or out of lockstep time without damage. Still, if you want to see the Universe... you can return. Just be willing to pay the price.

  "Hell, maybe you should go. You could come back when you're older than me again, and kick my ass!" He laughed richly, and turned to go.

  "I've got work," he said as he crossed the marble floor; but then he seemed to remember something and looking back, said, "Oh, by the way. Package for you. It's in my study."

  With that he disappeared into a cloud of bots and human advisers who had converged on him from various directions. In a cloud of conversation, he left the airy chamber.

  Toby stared after him, mind blank; then he shook his head and put his glasses on. He needed the online maps to find his way around here.

  Peter's study was two levels down and half a kilometer away, through a maze of corridors and chambers. There were guards and attendants everywhere, but they all smiled and waved Toby through. More than a few of them must have guessed who he was, but apparently Peter didn't employ fanatics. (Or maybe they just stopped being fanatics after knowing a real-life McGonigal for a while.)

  He was distractedly focused on the map when he came around the last corner, and he'd passed so many people that at first he took no notice of two more. They were leaning on the gold wall next to the door to Peter's study, and it was finally their casual (and utterly out of place) stances that made Toby look up.

  "Shy! Jay!"

  Jaysir laughed. "You'd have walked right by us. What're yer watchin, Toby?"

  "Just lost. But I guess this is the right place." He didn't know whether to shake hands or what, but Shylif stepped into his hesitation and hugged him. Jay, as usual, just stood back grinning.

  "When did you get in?"

  "We hitched a ride with the Thisbe delegation," said Jay. "—No, no, we didn't stow away! They gave us a cabin. Even a bed for Shadoweye."

  Toby nodded, but impatiently went on to, "Did you find her? Is she here?"

  Jaysir and Shylif exchanged a glance. "We didn't exactly... find her," said Jay. "It's complicated. Why don't you take a look?" He nodded at Peter's study. Uncertain, Toby frowned at them and opened the door.

  Like the room where he'd watched Evie's speech, the study was round, but much homier. It was lined in imported wood and paneled with bookcases. The carpet was deep green, featuring a compass rose in gold; north pointed to a single vast desk with an incongruous, twentieth-century banker's lamp and blotter on it. Toby hadn't been here before, so it took him a moment to absorb the details—red leather armchairs, liquor cabinet—and then actually see what couldn't be a normal fixture of the place.

  A small cicada bed, the kind used for babies or pets, stood next to a large Martian globe. A small shape was curled up inside it.

  Toby took a hesitant step, then another, then one of those Martian bounds that could cover three meters; he flung open the bed's canopy and gathered Orpheus into his arms. Jay and Shy had followed him into the room, but Toby had all but forgotten them now.

  "You—you're..." The denner was asleep, or unconscious, and his fur felt very, very cold. Toby fell into one of the armchairs, wrapping himself around his friend and trying to will his own body heat into him.

  Thrum, thrum... there was the familiar vibration, coming from deep inside his own body. He hadn't felt it in a long time; he'd been using McGonigal beds to winter over since leaving Thisbe. He felt the strength of that signal building, though, like a call to Orpheus. I am here, I am here, it said.

  Faintly, he felt an answering tremor through his fingers.

  "He wouldn't wake up," someone said.

  Toby closed his eyes. That hadn't been Shylif, or Jay.

  "We tried, but he wouldn't answer our call. Even after we healed his wounds, he dove deep, to places we couldn't follow. Into an ocean of sleep..."

  Through tears, he looked up at Corva. She stood in a small doorway opposite the one he'd come in. Wrecks sat at her feet, his tail curled around his paws. "You disappeared," she went on. "I didn't know if your sister had killed you, or if you were on your way to Destrier like Halen said..."

  Toby stood, shooting an accusing glance at Jaysir. "You said you didn't find her!"

  The maker shrugged. "We didn't. She found us." Both he and Shylif were grinning shamelessly.

  Toby went to her. He couldn't let go of Orpheus, whose purr was strengthening, but he lowered his face to Corva's. They stayed close in that way for long moments, then kissed. "What happened?"

  Her mouth formed a rueful line. "I was traded. Me, in return for Thisbe being allowed to send a delegation to this conference thing." She wrapped her arms around him and put her head on his chest. He felt Wrecks doing a curling walk around his ankles.

  "That's just so Peter," mused Toby; but he wasn't going to complain this time.

  They stood that way for so long that Shylif eventually coughed discreetly, and Jaysir said, "We're... gonna be outside. If, you know, you need us."

  Toby was intently examining Corva's face; w
as she older? She seemed to guess what he was doing, because she said, "I've been back on lockstep time since you reset Thisbe's frequency. What time you and I have lost... well, we've lost the same amount, unless you've been down to real-time again...?" He shook his head.

  Orpheus purred in the warm space between her and Toby. She said, "What now? Are you the head the family? Are you really going to Destrier to wake your mother, like all the myths and stories say?"

  He laughed. "She's wide awake and eating cupcakes about three rooms over." Corva blinked at him surprise. "Long story. But no, I'm not the head of the family. Never wanted to be. And I don't want to the Emperor of Time, either."

  Corva gently disengaged herself. "But you are that," she said.

  He gave a short laugh. "Huh?" Corva Keishion was the last person he would have expected to say such a thing.

  She smiled at his discomfort. "No, really. You were supposed to make time come to an end, right? Well, you did—the old kind of time where the past pushes us into the future and farther and farther away from perfection. But remember, there's another kind of time, where the past doesn't push; one where the future invites us onward. Where it's not destiny that drives us, but hope. Hope and surprise."

  She stepped forward again. "You," she said teasingly, "were a surprise."

  He drew her over to one of the armchairs and they sat together; it was a tight fit. "If you say so," he said. "I hope you're not too serious about it. Poor Evie's running around to all the fast worlds trying to squash the family myths. I wouldn't want to add one more for her to chase down."

  It was on the fast worlds where the McGonigal stories had grown; it was ironic that it was in the lockstep that they would probably take the longest to die. They'd probably hang around for generations, long after the McGonigals were gone.

  She saw his expression and said, "I really was just joking. Sorta. I don't know."

  He nodded and sighed. "The only way I can live here is in disguise. Same with Mom. Neither of us is going to be able to have a normal life anywhere near Peter and Evayne. We can sneak around right now because of all the conference chaos, but that'll end. Then the cultists will start watching again."

  "We can go away," she suggested.

  "We?" He looked at her closely. "Do you really mean that?"

  She shrugged awkwardly, not meeting his eyes.

  "But what about your family? You worked so hard to return to them—"

  "—And I didn't," she said, looking down. "I never did. I knew it the instant I saw their faces that first day. When we got to my house. It was too late. I mean, they're still my family and I love them all, and I love the Halen I grew up with... but the change between us, it's, well, permanent. It doesn't matter now if I go away for a while. Different is different.

  "And that's made me wonder now, is there anywhere I can be at home now? Anywhere that time's not come unslipped. Toby, I thought about it for a long time and I realized... I'd never find that kind of time in a place. The only way to live in time instead of moving through it is to be experience things with somebody else. To share the moments."

  Toby nodded. She'd named the restlessness he'd been feeling for months now; that disconnect from his family, however much he loved them; the sense of skimming over the surface of the worlds he visited, however much he explored them.

  Squeezing Orpheus a little tighter to him, he said, "I know you were joking about the Lord of Time stuff—sorta kinda. That's the thing, though; somehow, the whole weight of it's rubbed off on me, just a little. Everywhere I go, just when I start to relax I'll come across one of those statues, or a damned fresco of me, or somebody'll say my name like it's a prayer. I'm having a little trouble being me, around here. I've been trying to escape it, but it's like a steady pressure in my skull....

  "The only way for me to come back to myself is going to be if I leave, at least for a while, for places where nobody's ever heard of me. And there are such places. There's other stars, and things beyond. I'd like to see them...

  "But I don't want to do it alone. "

  Corva, would you come with me to see the fast worlds, the Laser Wastes, the ancient suns and all those new Earths that they made while I wintered over?

  "I promise we'll only be gone for a night."

  "A night, or forever," she said, and kissed him. "Yes, I'll come."

  Orpheus opened one eye to observe this, then shifted into a more comfortable position and went back to sleep.

  * * *

  A Fierce, Calming Presence

  Jordan Jeffers | 8693 words

  Illustrated by Joel Iskowitz

  The Federal Ecologist stepped through the skimmer hatch, rubbing his eyes in the brightness. The Sun was much smaller in the sky here, naturally. Eight months ago, he likely would have thought the place dreary, but those eight months had been spent frozen in the blackness of arc-sleep, crossing the four AUs of space that lay between Earth and Ceres. His eyes still felt like they were covered with a thick veneer of glass, and everything seemed too bright.

  Still, it was good to step out into the morning light, as if from a normal night. A small delegation waited for him on the tarmac below. He recognized Mayor Herd and all three of Larus's major mining bosses. They were showing him a lot of respect. He was glad he was wearing his dress uniform, the green "E" of the ecology corps emblazoned across the starry blue field of the Federation.

  "Ecologist Hacker," Mayor Herd greeted him, touching fist to heart. She was a short, thick woman, with the pale skin and red hair common to most Cerens. "Welcome to Larus. It is a pleasure to have a representative from the Federation here."

  He touched his own heart in return. "Thank you, Mayor Herd. Please feel free to call me Hugh."

  Herd inclined her head, but did not offer her own name in return. Respectful, then, but not friendly. It was more than he'd expected.

  "May I introduce Boss Crowder, Boss Simon, and Boss Groper," she continued, indicating the men with her. Simon bared his teeth in a fake smile; Groper didn't even bother with that. Crowder's face was blank, his green eyes searching Hugh's face, as if studying it for imperfections. Hugh suppressed a shudder. The pale skin and red hair were strange enough, but green eyes...

  "We are enormously indebted to the magnanimity of the Federation," Boss Simon said. "I am certain your ecological expertise will not fail to succeed in the development of a not unsatisfactory solution to our ornithological quandary."

  It took Hugh a moment to work that one out. "I'll do my best," he finally offered.

  "You're open to aggressive measures, I hope," Groper put in. He was a thick, fit man, and carried a holster at his side. Empty, of course. Couldn't bring a weapon to a formal greeting. Though his choice to wear the holster empty said plenty.

  "The Federation is open to all measures," Hugh replied, his voice diplomatic. "Rare earth mining is an economic activity of planet-wide importance, and we will preserve it, along with the safety of your citizens, of course. But I will attempt a more... collaborative solution first."

  "Can't collaborate with dumb animals," Groper growled. Simon and Mayor Herd exchanged uncomfortable glances. "These attacks are slowing us to a crawl."

  "The Federation is thankful for your sacrifice," Hugh replied. "In fact, as a token of our appreciation, we have agreed to suspend all mining tariffs in Larus while I am conducting my investigation."

  That got them all to smile. A full suspension would mean nearly double the profit per day for the bosses, even with the reduced production. And since the local government took its taxes from the profits, the mayor's office would be getting a windfall as well. The psychologists had hoped the gift would make the bosses more cooperative, but Hugh figured it would probably make them just cooperative enough to keep him there as long as possible.

  "The Federation is generous as always," Mayor Herd said, genuine warmth in her voice. "I'm sure you're tired from your journey. If you'll follow me..."

  The five of them moved toward the skimmer port, following
Mayor Herd in an awkward, shuff ling group. Technically, Hugh should have been next in line after the mayor, with the bosses following behind at a respectful distance. But he said nothing, letting the three men flank him. Simon, Groper, and the mayor talked amicably with each other as they walked, apparently discussing plans for dinner. Crowder said nothing, his face still blank, staring straight ahead.

  A ground transport waited for them outside the port, standing maybe two meters tall, twin steel treads slung wide on either side of the cab. A group of about fifty locals stood nearby, kept at a distance by a dozen or so enforcement officers in dark blue. When the locals saw Hugh, they started to hiss, shaking a variety of homemade signs asking him politely to return to his place of origin as soon as possible. The nicest one read "F'the Federation."

  That was more like it.

  Mayor Herd accompanied Hugh to Larus alone. The transport seats were stiff, but comfortable enough, and Hugh had to fight to stay awake. It often took a full week to recover from arc-sleep; sudden drowsiness was common. He should have taken a stimulant.

  Small knots of protesters were strung out along the dirt track they followed into town. The men were dressed in tan and white working clothes, with brightly colored bands of cloth wrapped around their biceps, mostly red and blue with the occasional bright green sprinkled in. The women wore dark skirts, cut high in the front, above the knee, but falling to the ankles in the back. Hugh would have thought many of them quite pretty if they weren't whistling at him in a way that was just short of angry shrieking.

  He expected the mayor to apologize'or at least pretend to'but she said nothing, her hands folded in her lap. Hugh studied her for ten minutes, out of the corner of his eye.

  "What do the colored arm bands mean?" he asked, too loud.