Asimov's Science Fiction - 2014-06

by Penny Publications

  Throwing her arms out, the updraft slammed into her like a wall, and she braced herself as it threw her back upward.

  Reaching out both hands, she grasped the Diamond, feeling the spires puncture gloves and skin, just as they always had, as her grip on it closed just enough to hold.

  Mine!

  The drone, detecting a larger object than it could handle heading toward it at speed, veered away just moments before collision, and she spun with the Diamond up past it, momentum still pulling her upward.

  Something flew past her, horizontally, very close and fast. She spun around and saw the next hull-puncturing missile coming just in time to tuck and drop below it. The status lights on her suit slowly started flickering from yellow into orange; she was getting too low, too close to the recommended tolerances of even her genmodded body and cutting-edge breathing apparatus.

  The Diamond's razor limbs cut into her through her suit, sending more warning lights flaring across her display, as she held it against her chest with one hand, to free the other. Quickly, she tapped out the start code on her control for the retrieval sequence, and then deployed her chute.

  Once again she was accelerating skyward as the air filled her canopy and lifted her high and fast. She needed to get clear of the Veresiel and rendezvous with her sphere, before it caught up.

  Now far below her, the Veresiel turned and was banking upward. As it finally got its nose pointed at her, another hull-missile—a brilliant lightning-bolt of white in her goggles—streaked up toward her. "You're wasting your time," she said, tugging her canopy supports and shifting her position well out of its path. Even if she hadn't, it would have missed her by a fair width. Would it crest the atmosphere, give away the poachers by their own hand? She glanced up, but her chute canopy blocked her view of it.

  Proximity alarms started going off on her link to the sphere. Shit, she realized. They weren't shooting at me.

  She scrambled her sphere out of the way, just in time; it registered the projectile passing less than three meters off its port side. Hitting her would be nearly impossible, and the sphere was nimble enough that it could dodge indefinitely if set to auto-evade, but the sphere would have to stop moving for her to get on board.

  They can't afford for me to tell anyone what I've seen, or they lose everything, she realized. They have no choice but to kill me.

  Using her wrist panel, she tried to open a connection out, but her signal was being jammed. The Veresiel had slowed its climb, recognizing that time was on its side, and it merely had to wait for her to either panic and try to reach her sphere, or die when her air ran out.

  "Fuck you!" She shouted down at the ship. "I choose option number three." The option she had always had, waiting for her.

  With her free hand, she sent her sphere up and away, at a bone-crushing speed even she could not have survived. When it crested the upper levels of the troposphere, outside the range of the Veresiel's jammers, she opened a comm channel through it, bouncing off the shuttle station back toward the Protectorate Orbital, and Helise's node.

  She picked up almost immediately.

  "Cjoi?" Helise was confused, her hair disheveled, her room behind her dark. I've woken her, Cjoi realized. "Where are you?"

  Not much point in lying. "I'm on a dive," she said. "I—"

  "You're WHAT?!" Helise was instantly wide awake. "No, no! Tell me—"

  "Helise, you need to shut up and listen. I've found your poachers. I don't have much time. I'm sending you the video, which should be all you need to find the rest of the group. You'll understand when you see it. But I'm putting it on an hour delay, before it'll unpack."

  "What? Why? An hour—"

  "Because I am what I am. You were my only human friend, and I'm sorry I've disappointed you."

  "What do you mean, human friend? You're just as human as—"

  "I don't think I ever quite was, although I tried. Goodbye, Helise." Cjoi cut her off, set the recording from her goggles to upload straight to the station's cache on an ever-shifting frequency to avoid jamming. It would keep sending data until her goggles shut off or died.

  Connection stable and no longer in need of the sphere, she turned it around, sending it hurtling back down into the atmosphere at maximum speed. Above her, the Veresiel was still in its climb, still thinking it was the hunter in this game.

  From this angle, staring up at the engines, she could almost imagine it was the Ama. She smiled as the ship suddenly turned hard to starboard, desperately attempting to change course. Her dive sphere was smaller, faster. The Veresiel didn't have a chance. It was too slow, would always have been too slow.

  Her dive sphere hit just forward of the cargo bay.

  Pieces of the ship flew out and down as the Veresiel splintered and broke. The sphere emerged from its rent underbelly, deep gouges marking its once sleek sides, panels ripped off, the interior cabin exposed. It continued its fall, unresponsive now, in a halo of debris and glass domes.

  Cjoi's suit was all red lights, life-support systems starting to fail, but she didn't care. She could feel the tiny pinpricks of needles up and down her legs and arms as the suit, recognizing a terminal situation, dumped as many painkillers and anti-anxiety meds into her veins as it could. The Calm Cocktail.

  She fell, her perfect Diamond resting on her chest, droplets of blood leaving a trail in the air above her. She'd forgotten how light they were, how beautiful. "I got the biggest one, Helise," she said, knowing the words would eventually make their way to her. "For the record."

  The remains of the Veresiel, broken nearly in two, plunged down through the clouds past her and into the darkness. She could see the heat-signatures of the Diamond cluster above them now, safe and sound, such as it was. Born falling to their deaths, Helise had said. So was I.

  Below, there were flashes of a storm, lightning arcing through the dense clouds. Breathing was hard, the foam in her lungs starting to feel like cement, or like a billion angry ants, and despite the drugs her body hurt almost beyond what she could bear.

  In her hands, her Diamond suddenly shattered, imploding, a million beautiful shards of crystal crushing in on themselves. Around her the air filled with thousands of tiny, golden droplets. Through narrowing vision she watched as they opened like tiny umbrellas and caught the wind, soared up and away, free.

  "Show-offs," she said.

  One goggle lens cracked, then the other. She couldn't see, couldn't hear, couldn't breathe, wasn't sure she was even trying any more. She fell into the storm, alone but for her ghosts, and was gone.

  Helise caught up with her just as she was about to board the shuttle.

  "Cjoi!" she called out, reaching her, pulling her into an embrace. "I'm so sorry about Ryon," she said. Cjoi just nodded. "I'm sure he meant no harm."

  Helise let her go. "I'm not ever going to see you again," she said.

  "No, I don't think so."

  "You'll take care of yourself?"

  "I'll do my best."

  Helise nodded. "Well, then," she said. "I'm glad I got to see you, one more time, anyhow, my kinni-inhass."

  "Me too," Cjoi said. She nodded, then, because she didn't know what else either of them could possibly say, turned and stepped through the airlock into her shuttle, and did not look back.

  It would be a few hours out to the shuttle station, then two more short hops to where she'd parked her sphere, ready and waiting, for her and her alone. She felt free, unburdened, master of her own destiny.

  * * *

  THERE WAS NO SOUND OF THUNDER

  David Erik Nelson | 11028 words

  David Erik Nelson lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with his lovely wife, tolerable children, and aging poodle. In addition to writing fiction about time travel, sex robots, haunted dogs, and carnivorous lights, he also writes non-fiction about hogs, guns, cyborg cockroaches, and Miss America. His first story featuring Taylor and the government-subsidized time portal, "The New Guys Always Work Overtime," appeared in our February 2013 issue. That story
is now available in several ebook formats and as a free podcast at www.davideriknelson.com/NewGuys.

  The New Guy was chipper and upbeat in his khakis and button-down. He was working so hard to not glance at my boobs—not even a little—that he had sort of a goofy full-on intensity, like he was trying to pick a staring contest with me. He didn't look like he belonged in the People's Cooperative Bookshop at all, and certainly not in our fake after-hours "University of Nebraska Vegans for a More Ethical Tomorrow" meeting. We spent twenty very awkward minutes faking enthusiasm for Earth Day 1995— It'll be the 25th anniversary! —before Rob-o finally showed up, laughed, and explained that he'd invited the guy to join our anarchist black bloc.

  "Hi!" the new guy said in that false, bright way late-night infomercial guys have, "Your pal Rob-o tells me that 'Blowing shit up is your business model.' Well, you guys are in luck, because my name's Taylor, and I'm a narc!"

  Everyone laughed, including Rob-o, who was waving his hands and saying, "He's for real! He's for real! This dude is with the government."

  The new guy nodded and "yupped!" so eagerly that it set us off again. Then I saw Buffalo Bill slouch down in his seat; he was laughing, but his eyes were cold. I knew to watch his right hand as it crept down toward his unlaced Doc Martens. Buffalo Bill carried a little tube zip gun there. He'd made it using instructions from this old improvised munitions manual we found in an Army surplus store in Omaha. He'd used a length of steel pipe for the barrel; no rifling meant no bullet could be traced to it.

  I shushed everyone. "Guys, guys, c'mon; I wanna hear what Taylor the narc's got to say."

  "Thanks!" he chirped.

  "So are you a narcotics-narc or a fed-narc or what?" I tried to keep it flirty and light. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Buffalo Bill's hand had stopped creeping, but his face was still stonily impassive. He was tense.

  Taylor the narc smiled even broader and just bored into me with his eyes. "I'm with the Department of Agriculture."

  Buffalo Bill barked a laugh and relaxed. "That's no narc!" he scoffed.

  Taylor shrugged. "Oh- kay," he admitted, "I'm more of a 'fed' than a 'narc'—but Robo thought narc was funnier. If I catch any of you guys adulterating meat or whatever, I'm gonna narc you crapless. For real. I will narc that shit."

  Everyone laughed, half because he was funny, and half because we were relieved.

  "Anywho," Taylor said, "The big picture is that I've got a crazy deal for you guys. Who wants a revolution? C'mon, hands, hands?"

  He really seemed like he wasn't going to go anywhere until he got some audience participation, so I raised my hand.

  "Yes!" he clapped and jumped to his feet. "You're a superstar..."

  He left a conspicuous space for my name.

  "Suze," I admitted, crossing my arms and tamping down a smile.

  "Superstar Suze. Rad," He turned back to the others, "Who else? Who else wants to change the world?"

  And he kept at it, kept cajoling until all five of us had our hands up, even Buffie Bill. Then he dropped his bomb.

  "Supercool, 'cause me and my partner Deke have this time machine, and we're looking for a few good men."

  Everyone was quiet then.

  "He's not kidding," Rob-o said, struggling to suppress his glee. "He's legit."

  "Extraordinary claims," militantly skeptical Matilda intoned mechanically, staring him down from beneath her black, blunt-cut bangs, "require extraordinary evidence."

  "No sweat!" Taylor answered. He turned to Rob-o. "Should I show them the orange?"

  "Yeah. The orange is pretty convincing."

  Taylor the narc clapped briskly. "Right-on. Cool. Who's got an orange?"

  No one had an orange.

  "Or anything, any fruit or veg?" Taylor expanded. "A snack or something?"

  Matilda's boyfriend, hulking John-john, raised his hand tentatively. John-john wasn't really into the anarchist thing, let alone the vegan thing, but he was pretty into Matilda's thing. I had trouble believing anyone could be that into Matilda for long, but I clearly was underestimating the joys of Matilda's thing, because Johnjohn was a good-looking guy, and had been helping us for a year, even though it was pretty obvious that most of the meeting stuff bored him blind.

  Taylor called on John-john, as though this was a crowded lecture hall instead of a half-dozen people sitting in a circle in a bookstore.

  "I've, ah, got a grapefruit," John-john offered. "That's citrus."

  "It is indeed," Taylor agreed. Nothing happened, and so Taylor gently suggested that John-john could go and get the grapefruit whenever he felt comfortable doing so. John-john jumped up and jogged to his backpack, which hung on a hook next to the owner's little back office. Taylor graciously accepted the fruit. "Anyone got a sharpie?"

  I knew there was one in the jar of pens next to the register, and said so.

  "Rad!" Taylor said as he jogged over and plucked it from the jar. "So, we all agree that this is a grapefruit and I've had no opportunity to screw with it." He handed it to me, along with the marker. "Check it out, sign your name on the fruit, and pass it along." I made a big show of analyzing the grapefruit's skin minutely, smelling it, thumping it with my knuckle. Rob-o and John-john laughed, and Matilda snorted despite herself. I scrawled my autograph on it.

  "Excellent!" Taylor enthused. "Have you done this before, ma'am? Have we ever met in the past? Are you, in fact, my lovely assistant placed as a confederate in this audience."

  "Not a bit, good sir," I said stiffly, like a girl giving a testimonial in a low-budget local TV ad. I passed the fruit counter-clockwise, to Matilda, and when Taylor's sharp gaze shifted to her, Buffalo Bill leaned in and muttered, "When it comes to me, distract him."

  I frowned, because I'm not especially keen on being bossed around by Bill, but I also knew how his mind worked, and if this Taylor craziness might turn out to really be something, I knew Bill was seeing how to get the edge now. I nodded once, curtly, and Bill leaned back, nonchalantly hooking the box of straight pins off the ledge running beneath the Community Action bulletin board.

  When the grapefruit came around, I hopped up, button-hooked around Taylor, then tapped his shoulder so that he put his back to Bill.

  "So," I said, realizing that I hadn't really planned beyond getting the guy to turn around. "What's it like, being a tool of state repression?"

  He smiled. "Pretty okay. When we aren't suckling at the teat of the nanny state, we basically just gambol and play all day, like little goats—you know, when it isn't a federal holiday, banking holiday, municipal holiday, postal holiday, religious observance, secular festival, or union-mandated cigarette break." Behind him Bill had finished scrawling his pseudonym and was quickly, but calmly, using his slightly overgrown thumbnail to push straight pins deep into the grapefruit's flesh.

  I mugged looking over my shoulders, then leaned in conspiratorially and muttered out of the side of my mouth: "Why does the Department of Agriculture need a time machine?"

  "You know," he said, smiling a genuine smile, "No one ever asks me that." I realized that he was a legitimately nice guy right then, despite the khakis and the hard-sell and the two-dollar haircut. Once I saw that, I also saw that he really was actually sort of cute. Somewhere in the last thirty seconds my flirting-to-control-thesituation had become legitimate flirting.

  He leaned forward and stage-whispered. "It'll be pretty obvious in a sec, and I don't wanna blow the punch line."

  "Done!" Bill barked from his seat, holding the grapefruit aloft.

  "Supercool!" Taylor spun and clapped his hands. "Put 'er here, slugger!"

  Bill tossed the fruit, and Taylor caught it with two hands, scooping it to his stomach gracelessly. Someone had obviously never played peewee football—and not because he was a girl.

  "Let's push the chairs back," he said as he jogged over to his seat and dug a boxy yellow Magellan GPS unit out of the pocket of the parka draped over his chair.

  "Can I borrow someone's cell phone?" he as
ked absent-mindedly, squinting down at the GPS's little screen. It was so new he hadn't even pulled off that protective plastic coating yet.

  Rob-o laughed and Bill snorted. "We're not drug dealers and day-traders," he scoffed. "We're a totally different species of scum."

  Taylor looked up, then paced carefully to the center of the room and fiddled with some buttons. "Oh, yeah," he said, still looking at the screen. "Mid-90s. That always gets me. Is there a phone I can use? I've gotta call Deke."

  Everyone looked at me. We weren't exactly even supposed to be in the store after hours, but it was the only place we could all meet privately, and I had keys. "Well..." I began.

  "It's 1-800," Taylor assured me. "And, for real, if it was long-distance to Tokyo, you'd still want me to make this call."

  And so I relented, pointing out the phone next to the register. When he picked up the receiver I reminded him to dial nine for an out-line and he did so, marveling "How quaint!" under his breath in a pretty weak Scotty accent. I could hear the ring purring—it's a loud phone—but when it picked up, he must have gotten Deke's answering machine, because he launched right into reading the two long strings of numbers off the Magellan. He finished by looking at his watch and then at the Magellan and saying, "It's 21:57:57 on my watch and 21:58:06 on the GPS. Use my watch. Gimme sixty seconds, and then sixty seconds and then..." he paused, glanced up at me, smiled, struggled to suppress the smile. "And, um, check this voicemail again before picking me up. I might go get some coffee or something." I blushed and turned away so he wouldn't see. I'm not that easy.

  Behind me the phone clunked back into its cradle.

  "Okay! Let's all scoot back to the bookcases," Taylor called, pacing out the center of the room and waving us back. "The resolution on these old GPSes is for shit, and I don't know what would happen if a portal opened on you."

  I had time to say, "Portal?" and then it happened.

  There was no sound that came with it, no scifi shoop or creepy little tinkly bells. No sound of thunder. It was just suddenly there, a shimmer in the air that spread like burning oil poured out on a hardwood floor, but vertically, making a shifting window of dappled light as bright as the sun. Everyone was speechless and blank-faced, except Rob-o, who I guessed had seen this trick before. He was pogoing on his toes, grinning like a chimp, and quietly repeating "so sweet so sweet so sweet so sweet so sweet!" under his breath.