Analog SFF, January-February 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  The only reason this wasn't the Marie Celeste27 was that the Space Authority had gotten tired of losing ships. Now, “pilots” were little more than glorified passengers. Wynsten's only job other than riding a mostly ceremonial herd on his end of the checklist was pushing the launch button. After that, everything was automatic. If things went as before, the ship would indeed reappear ... minus Wynsten. There was even an automated return that could be activated from long distance. Saturn might be the shortest hop the quantum drive could do, but it was a long way to tow a ship back to Earth.

  So far, the testing program had been the worst kind of good-news/bad-news joke. The good news: FTL travel was possible. The bad: only for drones or mice. Not exactly a golden age of exploration.

  * * * *

  In theory, Wynsten was free to back out any time until the end. But one of the reasons he'd gotten the job was that the psyches said he wouldn't. After the first half dozen disappearances, only glory seekers and suicides had been selected as pilots, and screening was good enough that none had bailed in the final minutes. The only thing Wynsten was afraid of was pain, and he figured that if there was any, it wouldn't last long. His immediate predecessor had been afraid of the same thing and had slipped an opiate-loaded asthma inhaler on board with him. Seconds before he reached for the launch button, a massive dose of pseudocodone was en route to his brain. Weirdly, he was the only pilot ever to survive the flight. But not by much. He barely managed to reach the launch button, was comatose moments later, and long gone by the time the auto-return brought him back.

  Wynsten wondered what the engineers had made of that. He knew what Mission Control had thought: Before boarding, he'd been subjected to a body-cavity search that would have done a maximum-security prison proud. Hell, it had probably been borrowed from one. It was strange, though, that hyperspace treated a dying pilot the same way as a goldfish. That had to mean something.

  Time was ticking down. All systems were go and the ship was ready to launch—if that applied to a silent, instantaneous disappearance from trans-lunar orbit.

  It was time for the ironic or campy comment. “One giant step,” and all that. Except that he was the n-plus-one pilot, and nobody was listening except Mission Control, who'd heard it all before.

  For that matter, Wynsten didn't have much to say. The psyches had made him repeat the true version endlessly; the press had mostly been concerned about how to spell his name; and now that the moment was here, anything else seemed kind of silly.

  “Bye,” he said, and pushed the button.

  * * * *

  For a brief moment, nothing much happened. Then the hyperdrive twisted in an invisible dimension.

  Briefly, it again seemed that nothing much happened. Then the stars winked out.

  Time wrenched, shattered, and sparkled like uncounted fireflies.

  Aboard ship, the universe divided. Suddenly, there was a multitude of Wynstens.

  “That's weird,” they managed to say to each other.

  Then time shifted again and they flowed into a meta-consciousness, most of whose fragments had never even heard of the Marie Celeste.

  * * * *

  “Don't be a such a wimp. It's perfectly safe."

  Wynsten Prime was six years old, sitting on a dock, tossing lazy pebbles, and watching the ripples spread and intersect. It was hot and the Lake of the Ozarks was as torpid as Wynsten: its surface a dark mirror reflecting everything and nothing, its opaque waters nearly the color of his mother's coffee.

  “C'mon,” his cousin Olsen said again. He was standing at the edge of the dock, knees bent, poised to leap. “It's not like you can't swim."

  Wynsten dropped a stone in the water and watched it vanish from sight.

  “Don’ wanna” he said, which wasn't quite true. The Missouri sun was nearly straight overhead, and however unappealing the water might look, it offered hope of relief. In the distance a motorboat whined, pulling skiers to an unknown destination. Back in the Topeka municipal pool, Wynsten swam like a fish. But here, who knew what terrors lurked?

  To distract himself, he thought about the ripples. If the lake were big enough, they would go on forever, changing everything along the way, even if nothing but the ripples would notice. Sometimes, Wynsten felt like a ripple nobody noticed. Right now, his mother was probably still yabbering in Chinese on her satphone implant and his father was halfway to somewhere Wynsten had never heard of, having promised to be back by the weekend—though everyone knew he wouldn't. They called this a family reunion, but the only family Wynsten had united with were his aunts, uncles, and cousins, and right now the only one he really liked thought he was a wimp.

  Wynsten watched Olsen take the plunge. His cousin leapt high and far and struck with a cannonball splash that disrupted the lake's surface far more effectively than any of Wynsten's pebbles. He disappeared, then broke surface, grinning. “Nothing to it! C'mon!"

  Wynsten shook his head. He could be stubborn when he wanted.

  “Oh, crap,” Olsen said. “It's those stupid stories Uncle Billy told us last night, isn't it?” Olsen shook his head in a very grown-up way. “I tell you, he was drunk. And even if he wasn't, he's an idiot. There's no such thing as lake sharks. And,” he continued from the vast superiority of third grade, “snapping turtles don't get that big.” He grinned viciously. “They might be able to take a bite out of your weenie, but they sure as heck can't drag you under."

  He splashed back from the dock in an energy-wasting backstroke. “C'mon!"

  Wynsten shook his head. “Don't wanna,” he repeated, though he knew Olsen had hit the nail on the head. Anything could prowl beneath that deceptive mirror-surface. That was the whole point: You couldn't see what was down there.

  Olsen's expression shifted. “Wimp!” he spat, third-grader to the core. “It would serve you right if a turtle reached up on that dock and dragged you right in."

  Panicked, Wynsten scooted back from the edge as Olsen triumphantly porpoised from the water, then arced underneath, headfirst.

  A moment later, he shot back to the surface. “Eee-yi!” he yelled, thrashing wildly. “Something's got me!” Then he was below again, invisible except for roiling water and an explosion of bubbles.

  Then all was still.

  Wynsten glanced back to the vacation cabin, but his legs wouldn't move. He tried to shout, but nothing would come. It was too far, anyway; if his mother was still on the implant, she wouldn't even notice. He looked back at the water, willing Olsen to reappear, but everything was silent, without even a ripple to mark the progress of a shark dragging its prey off to the deeps.

  Wynsten didn't know it yet, but it was one of the formative moments of his life. Decision points shifted and spun. Ripples spread. There were many forks, but two main branches.

  Wynsten Prime stayed on the dock, huddled as far as possible from the dangerous waters, rocking and whimpering for an endless interval.

  Wynsten ‘36.07.12:1314 leapt to the rescue. Not that he had a clue how to find his cousin, or what to do if he did.

  The splash engulfed him and carried him deep. He expected to be eaten at any moment.

  It was dark. Then he realized his eyes were closed. He opened them and now it was lighter but brown. He still couldn't see anything, so he flailed at random, hoping to touch something, anything that felt like Olsen. But Olsen wasn't there, and the need for air called him back to the surface. He broke with a whoop, treading water, frantically wiping drops from his eyes, filling his lungs for a second dive.

  “Hey, squib,” said a voice behind him. He spun, and there was Olsen, under the dock, holding a piling and floating on his back. “Gotcha good, didn't I?"

  Wynsten found his voice, and yelled as only a six-year-old knows how, slapping water toward his cousin's taunting grin. Then all was forgiven. For the rest of the week, under the dock was their favorite escape from the sun.

  * * * *

  At sixteen, Wynsten Prime was the geek to end all geeks. He probably could ha
ve been class valedictorian if he wanted, but the year before, he'd deliberately taken Cs in biology so he wouldn't add that honor to his list of socially ostracizing accomplishments. Such things might be great on college applications, but they were death on the social life.

  What he particularly hated was physical education, which the Kansas Board of Education, in its infinite wisdom, had decreed to be a flab-fighting must for all high school students. Wynsten was scrawny, at no apparent risk of ever becoming a cardiac statistic. But still he had to either go out for a sport or take the classes.

  His was a school in which football was king. In freshman PE he'd quickly discovered that if you couldn't go head-to-head with the big guys, you weren't worth much. If you didn't even want to attempt it, you were the worst kind of wimp.

  There was one thing he was good at. He could run. It was probably the same genetic endowment that had made him a good swimmer at age six, though he'd never again gone in the water.

  He'd used his running talent to escape PE, and now the coach was telling him he had the potential to be all-state. There was only one problem: Track practice ate into his study time. Everyone in Wynsten's family thought it was pointless. His grandfather had been a pioneer in green chemistry. His father now spent half his time on the moon, designing nanofilms for tunnel-habs. His mother was about as close to a sports fan as the family had ever produced: A couple of years ago, she'd helped a ski manufacturer design smart-waxes for the Juneau Olympics.

  Being all-state was a ticket to a track scholarship at any of a number of schools. A-ing out the rest of his junior and senior years was the ticket to a chem degree at Caltech or MIT. His parents saw it as a non-choice: Any sane person would take the academics. If he still liked running, his mother added, he could always work for a shoe company. Lots of nanotech opportunities there. Sweat was for jocks. “Do you really want to be like all those football players?” she asked.

  Wynsten Prime dropped off the track team. Chemistry wasn't his passion—history or music seemed like more fun—but he knuckled down and never took more than the required non-science courses. Nor did he watch the next Olympics. No sense taunting himself with things that couldn't be.

  Wynsten ‘46.11.19:0241 said the hell with it. He could name a dozen track stars who'd gotten Ph.D.s or gone to med school. What was so wrong with an athletic scholarship? It didn't mean you weren't also smart. While he was at it, he took another deliberate C in advanced chem. And an A+ in history.

  * * * *

  Wynsten Prime didn't go to either MIT or Caltech. About the time he was applying for college, the Nobel Prize in chemistry went to a professor at the University of Kansas, which was cheaper and a lot closer to home.

  Not that having a Nobel Laureate in the program made much difference at first. Even for courses in his major field, most of his freshman and sophomore lessons were chip-lecture or AI tutorial. It wouldn't be until he was an upperclassman (and an honors one at that) that he'd have any chance to meet the great professor and maybe impress her enough for a letter of reference.

  Maybe the chip-lectures and tutorials were part of why Wynsten Prime took it for granted that it was okay for a chem major not really to enjoy chemistry. It stood to reason that courses with real, live discussion sections, such as his general-ed requirements in English literature and social science, would be more fun.

  Wynsten ‘49.10.23:0937 decided otherwise. First he changed his major to literature. Then he tried anthropology. Finally, simply because the schedule was convenient, he took a course in geology. Immediately, he was hooked. Geologists hike. It wasn't quite as good as running, but it was a damned close substitute.

  * * * *

  Wynsten Prime was staring at a raven-haired vision sheathed in sweat. Though he supposed that wasn't the best way to think of it. Horses sweat. Men perspire. Women glow.

  In which case this one was radiant.

  She was the perfect human animal. He'd seen her before, working out at the indoor track where he ran daily in the hope that the exercise would shake loose the creative juices on his Ph.D. work in synthetic nanochem. She'd been there all winter, and from the start, he'd been fascinated.

  She ran alone and looked to be about his age. That meant she wasn't on the track team. But she must have run somewhere as an undergraduate. Or maybe she was a triathlete. She was a big girl for a runner: not fat but muscled. She liked crop tops that revealed toned abs, and there was definition in her shoulders and legs, but curves where you wanted them. He'd clocked her once, pounding out 200-meter repeats: thirty-four seconds, again and again and again. College-star pace, but not Olympic level. Once upon a time, he'd been able to do thirty-ones. But not now. These days, he was just a fast jogger.

  He was supposed to be letting his subconscious chew on his thesis problems, but she was too much of a distraction: a distraction, though, that he very much appreciated. At first he saw her only on Tuesdays, but he varied his schedule and was rewarded to start finding her on Mondays and Thursdays, as well.

  Watching her felt like being fourteen at his first high-school dance. She moved with the grace of a gazelle, barely seeming to touch the ground between strides. At night, she floated through his dreams. But it was freshman year in high school in more ways than one, because he never spoke to her and averted his eyes if ever she glanced his way.

  Everything that attracted him to her also intimidated him. Partly, it was a matter of height. She was tall: perhaps 5'9” to his 5'7". But she was also wondrously, vibrantly alive. He was a wimpy nerd. What on earth would she want with him?

  December and January passed without a word. Then February and much of March. Crocuses were pushing through a late snowfall on greening grass. Any day, she'd be running outdoors and he'd never see her again.

  Already, he could taste the regrets. Not from not being with her, but from not knowing. He'd done that before; he'd do it again. It was the way of shrimpy nerds. This woman had to be out of his class.

  Then he cut a corner a bit close as she was buzzing by in the inside lane. Or maybe she swung wide. Whatever the cause, they clipped elbows.

  “Sorry,” she called over her shoulder, generous in accepting blame. It was the first time he'd heard her voice, and it resonated in her wake like a carillon of bells.

  A hundred meters later, he caught her at the end of her speed circuit. “My fault,” he said, afraid even to look her way.

  He jogged a few more paces. But it was now or never.

  Quantum-mechanical dice rolled. Wynsten Prime kept jogging. Wynsten ‘56.03.21:1648 came down on the lucky side. Heart pounding from more than exertion, he turned back.

  “Hey,” he said, “you're really good. My name's Wynsten..."

  * * * *

  Wynsten Prime was feeling good. He kicked high and with the toe of his dress shoe, lightly tapped the button for the twenty-first floor.

  Even before he'd regained his balance, he knew he'd made a mistake. His date's name was Grace, and she was a stickler for decorum.

  “Do you have to do that?” she asked, with an edge that said he'd better give the right answer. He'd been in an exuberant mood; today, his final experiment had at last worked, and all that lingered between him and a Ph.D. was the drudgery of writing up his findings. Barring disasters, he'd soon be Dr. Wynsten.

  In the back of his mind, he'd known that Grace wouldn't like high-spirited karate-kicking of elevator buttons, especially in her apartment building, where neighbors might disapprove. Even though he'd managed to hit the right button on the first try.

  “Normal people don't do that,” she said, the edge to her voice increasing.

  He'd met Grace the previous spring. May 2, she'd happily tell you if you asked for details. He'd been heading for the lab, and he'd had an inkling the bus was just around the corner. Not that he believed in ESP. What he believed in was Murphy's Law. If you sprint, the bus is miles away. If you don't, you regret it. Whatever decision you make, it's usually wrong.

  It was a muggy day
, and Wynsten ‘56.05.02:0739 didn't want to arrive at the lab sweaty, so he walked. Of course, that meant the bus was right there, but by the time he saw it, it was too late.

  Wynsten Prime didn't really expect it to make a difference, but he ran. To his amazement, the bus appeared and he caught it with barely a second to spare. There was only one empty seat and two stops later, he offered it to Grace.

  It had only been weeks since he'd missed his last chance to talk to the runner. Attractive women still intimidated him, but Grace was short, brown haired, and emphatically not an athlete. She also turned out to be working on her own Ph.D. in quark mechanics—a field she never quite managed to explain at any level where he could fully make sense of it.

  Needless to say, his parents loved her. There was some pun involving her name and quarks, but he'd never quite understood that, either. What he did know was that she hated puns. “The lowest of lowbrow humor,” she called them, instructing him never to make them in her presence.

  Obviously, kicking elevator buttons was also out.

  Vaguely, he knew he was facing a decision: conform, for Grace, or deliberately nonconform because he'd never quite managed to do so before.

  Wynsten ‘57.01.13:2243 told her to take a hike. Then he kicked the elevator button again for good measure.

  Wynsten Prime conformed. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I wasn't thinking.” Then, in an odd effort at appeasement, he blurted out something he'd been debating for weeks. “Will you marry me?"

  * * * *

  The marriage lasted seven years, which was about five too many. Ultimately, it was Grace who dumped him, at about the time it became clear his tenure committee was going to do the same.

  Even from a marriage that never should have been, divorce hits hard. So does denial of tenure, whether or not it's in a field you particularly like. Even when you only sought the academic big-time because it's what “normal” Ph.D.s do.

  Wynsten could have filled out his years as an aging lab tech, but he couldn't tolerate the pity. All he wanted was to lick his wounds and hide. So he mechanically voiceprinted all the docs Grace's attorney sent him, cashed in whatever assets she left him, and headed for the far side of the globe.