by Ben Bova
Segol scrabbled to his feet and stood beside me. “Let me do the talking, little lady,” he goes. “They may still listen to reason. And maybe you’d better put that silly sword away.”
I decided to let him take his shot. I didn’t even freak out about being called “little lady.” I was absolutely beyond arguing with him. He could try talking to the mob, and when he’d said his piece, I was going to lop his grody head off. Okay, like I’d given him fair warning, hadn’t I?
But he wasn’t even aware that he’d bummed me out. He started walking toward the crowd from the city, both hands raised above his head. I don’t know what that was supposed to mean. Segol probably thought he was one dangerous dude. Maybe he thought that with his hands in the air, he wouldn’t look like such a terrible threat to the safety of those five hundred howling maniacs. “Listen to me!” he goes. “Listen to me! I mean you no harm!”
Yeah, right. That made the mob feel a whole lot better about everything, for sure. There was this raspy guy at the front of the crowd. He looked like he’d been getting ready for the end of civilization for a long time now, and like he couldn’t wait for it to happen, you know? He had wild scraggly hair and big popping old eyes. He just about had a bird when he recognized Segol 154. “That’s one of them!” he goes, waving his arms around a lot. “He’s from the Observatory!”
Segol gave him this smile that was supposed to calm him down or something. “Come,” he goes, “let us reason together.”
“They didn’t come here to talk, “ I go. “They came here to work your butt.”
Someone else in the crowd started shouting, “Death to the unbelievers! Death to the blasphemers in the Observatory!”
That cry was taken up by others until it became this ugly chant. I wanted to tell them, hey, I’d never even been in the Observatory, but they wouldn’t even have heard me.
Finally, a tall man in a black robe pushed his way to the front of the crowd. When he raised his hands, they all shut up. “Silence, my friends,” he goes. “Let us give these profaners of the truth one last chance to redeem their souls.”
“Who’s that?” I go.
“His name is Sor 5,” Segol goes. “He is the leader of the Cultists.”
“Oh, huh,” I go. I turned to this Sor 5 and I go, “I don’t know anything about your Cult. What’s your problem, anyway?”
The guy in the robe just gave me this sad little smile. “It’s not my problem, young lady. It’s yours. You have only a few minutes left before Lagash is swallowed up by the Cave of Darkness. Unless you embrace the revealed truth of our faith, your soul will be stripped from you when the Stars appear. You will become a savage, unreasoning brute. “
I looked at the flipped-out people who made up his congregation, and I figured most of them didn’t have far to go. Like maybe they’d already seen the stars, like at some kind of preview party or something. “So what are you guys selling?” I go.
Sor goes, “Behold! The Cave of Darkness is already engulfing Beta.”
I looked up. There wasn’t much of the red sun left. “Really,” I go. “Tell me about it.”
“Soon all will be in Darkness, and the Stars will blaze down in all their fury. “
“Really.”
Sor looked confused for a few seconds. “You do not deny any of this?”
I go, “See, you’re telling me the same thing that Segol told me, and I can’t figure out what your hang-up is.”
That made him mad. I thought he was going to split his black robe. “We believe the Stars are the source of the Heavenly Flame, which will scourge and cleanse Lagash. The infidels of the Observatory insist that the Stars are nothing but burning balls of gas, physical objects like our own six suns. They refuse to grant that the Stars have any holy power at all. “
“Death to the unbelievers!” screamed the mob. “Death to the blasphemers in the Observatory!” Sor tried again to quiet them, but this time they wouldn’t listen. They surged forward, and I was like sure they were fully ready to tear us limb from limb. I brandished Old Betsy, but I backed away uphill, praying that Segol and I could somehow make it to the Observatory alive.
The astronomer shot me a terrified glance. “You hold them off,” he goes, “and I’ll run for help.”
“Right,” I go, sort of contemptuously, “you just do that.” He was like a real poohbutt, you know?
Just then, the last red ember of Beta flickered in the sky and went out as the eclipse reached totality. There was a long moment of this really creepy quiet. You couldn’t hear a sound, not a person gasping or an animal rustling, not even the wind. It was like being in a movie theater when the film breaks, just before the audience starts getting rowdy. And then the stars came out, normally No Big Deal.
Except on Lagash, it was a big deal, and not just ‘cause it’d been two thousand years since the last time. Bitsy, these people really knew how to have stars! I looked up, and there were a zillion times as many stars as we have on Earth. It reminded me of when we were getting ready for that dance at Brush-Bennett, and you spilled that whole box of glitter on my black strapless. Remember? Well, on Lagash, the night sky looked just like that. All the places between the stars were crammed with stars.
“Oh…my…God!” I was totally impressed, but I wasn’t, you know, going insane or anything.
“Stars!” goes Segol in this kind of strangled voice.
“Surprise,” I go. I mean, he was a real melvin.
Now the mob started screaming and screeching and carrying on. They’d known the Stars were coming, but like they didn’t have any idea what stars really were, or how many of them there’d be, and all that. So even Sor looked haired, but I give him credit, he pulled himself together pretty fast. “Our salvation will be the destruction of the Observatory,” he goes. I mean, he couldn’t bring himself to look up at the stars anymore, and he had to kind of croak his speech out, but he made himself heard. “If we destroy the Observatory and everyone in it, the Stars will spare us. And we must begin with them.”
He was pointing at me and Segol. “That is so lame,” I go. “Don’t be stupid. There’s nothing to be-”
Sadly, I didn’t have the time to finish my explanation. The crowd was full-on crazy and ready to roust. When they charged, I felt a sudden calmness flood through me. I didn’t know what Segol was doing and I didn’t care. Old Betsy whistled through the air as I hacked and hewed at the waves of shrieking lunatics. Bodies piled up in front of me and on both sides. I took a couple of biffs and bruises, but I was too skillful and like too excellent for them to fight through my guard.
Of course, they had me outnumbered, and after a while I realized I was way tired. I wasn’t going to be able to handle all of them, so while I fought I tried to think up some, you know, strategy. And then I saw their leader over on the side of the road, kneeling down in the dark, with his face turned up to the sky where the eclipse was still chugging along and the stars were still blazing away. I started working my way toward him, wading through his nutty buddies with my broadsword cutting a swath before me.
Finally I was right beside him. I reached down and grabbed him by the neck of his robe and jerked him to his feet. “I am Sor!” he goes, like frothing a little in the corners of his mouth. He wasn’t all there anymore, okay?
“You’re sore,” I go. I let him go and he fell in a heap at my feet. “Tell your fruitcake army to stand still and shut up, or I’ll split your skull open and let the starlight in.”
Sor stared at me fearfully for a few seconds. Then he got to his feet and raised his arms. “Stand still and shut up!” he goes.
All the rest of the mob stopped what they were doing, which was mostly climbing over the stacks of bodies, trying to get to me.
“Good,” I go. “You have no reason to be afraid.”
Segol started babbling. I’d wondered what had happened to him. “Beenay guessed a dozen, maybe two dozen Stars. But this! The universe, the stars, the bigness!”
“Lagash is nothing,
a speck of dust!” cried a voice from the mob.
“We’re nothing but insects, less than insects!”
“I want light! Let’s burn the Observatory!”
“We’re so small, and the Darkness is so huge! Our suns and our planet are insignificant!”
Well, these people had a serious problem. All of a sudden, they realized that there was a lot more to the universe than their precious Lagash. Then I had an idea that might keep these frenzied folks from thrashing all of their civilization and maybe save my own neck, too.
I go, “There’s no reason to be afraid. The stars are not what you think. I know. I come from a world that has studied them for many centuries.”
“She’s mad! The Stars have driven her insane!”
“Listen to her!” Segol goes. “She told me the same story long before the Stars appeared. She speaks the truth. “
“Yes,” I go, “there are other stars in the universe. That’s just something you ‘re going to have to learn to live with. But not as many as that.” I pointed up, and noticed that the eclipse had moved on past totality, and a teeny tiny thread of red light was starting to grow on one side of Beta.
“Then what are all those thousands of points of light?” goes Sor.
“Tonight is a night for revelations and strange truth,” I go. I’m always pretty good in a crisis like that. I can talk my way out of anything. Hey, you know that. You were my roommate, right? “Lagash, your six suns, and the other twelve stars in the universe are surrounded by a huge ball of ice. “
“Ice?” goes Segol. He sounded like he was having just a little bit of trouble buying it.
“Sure, ice, “ I go, acting kind of ticked off that he doubted me. “What did you think, that the universe just sort of went on and on forever? That’s so real, I’m totally sure.”
“A wall of ice,” Sor goes. “The Book of Revelations speaks of a Cave of Darkness. I don’t see why there can’t be a wall of ice as well.”
Now everyone had stopped trying to grab me by the throat. They were all like hanging on my every word, okay? “But what are the Stars?” someone goes.
“The Stars are an illusion,” I go. “What you see up there are only the reflections of the dozen real stars, shining on the craggy ice wall of the universe. “
There was this silence. I held my breath ‘cause everything would be totally cool if they believed me, but I’d have to start fighting for my life again if they didn’t. Five seconds passed, then ten. Then all at once they all went “ Ahhhh. “
Sor goes, “It’s the divine truth!” I saw tears running down his face.
“Look!” goes Segol. “Beta! It’s coming back!”
Sor waved his arms around and got their attention. “Let’s hurry back to Saro City,” he goes. “We can spread the news and keep our brothers and sisters from burning our homes. The other suns will rise in a few hours, and then life must go on as before. We must tell the others what we’ve learned, and broadcast the information to everyone on Lagash.” Then they turned and marched away, without so much as a thank-you.
When we were alone again on the road, Segol came over to me. He had this big, spazzy grin on his face. “That was really something, my dear,” he goes.
“My name’s Maureen, and this is the last time I’m going to remind you. If you have trouble remembering that, you can call me Princess.” Well, Bitsy, I know I was sort of stretching the truth, but sometimes I liked to think of myself as sort of almost engaged to Prince Van of the Angry Red Planet. I mean” a woman’s reach should exceed her grasp, or what’s a mixer at Yale for?
“Then congratulations, Maureen. You were outstanding. You have saved us from centuries of Dark Ages. I think you’ll always be remembered in the history books of Lagash.”
I shrugged. “What can I say?” I go. “It’s like a gift.”
Segol nodded, then hung his head in shame. “I guess I owe you an apology, too. I wasn’t much help to you during the battle.”
“‘S all right,” I go. “You weren’t really ready for all those stars.” I was just being gracious, you know? I’d been a little zoned out, too, when I saw how many there were, but I got over it.
He looked back up at me, as grateful as that awful Akita puppy Daddy brought home for Pammy’s birthday. “Perhaps you’d permit me the honor,” he goes, “of asking for your hand in marriage.”
I was like too stunned to say anything for a moment. I wiped Old Betsy off on this dead guy’s shirt and slid her slowly back into the scabbard. Then I go, “No, I won’t permit you the honor of having my hand in anything. Nothing personal, okay?”
He was disappointed, of course, but he’d live. “I understand. Would you answer a question, then?”
“Sure, as long as it’s not like way lewd or demeaning to all women. “
He took a deep breath and he goes, “Is it true? What you told the Cultists? Is it true that Lagash is in the center of a gigantic ball of ice?”
I laughed. I mean, how megadumb could he be? I wasn’t surprised that Sor 5 and his crowd swallowed that story, but I didn’t think a real astronomer would buy it. Then I realized that this was not the World of Superscience, after all, and that Segol was just a poor guy trying to understand like the laws of nature and everything. I couldn’t bring myself to weird him out any more than he already was. “Right, like totally,” I go. “Maybe someday your own Observatory will figure out the distance from Lagash to the ice wall. I used to know, but I forgot.”
“Thank you, Maureen,” he goes. Suddenly he’d gotten so humble it was ill. “I think we’d better hurry back to tell Aton and the others the news. Beenay and the rest of the photographers should have captured the Stars with their imaging equipment. They were all prepared, of course, but even so they may have given way to panic.” He looked down at the ground again, probably remembering how he’d bugged out of there in panic even before the stars came out.
“I’m sorry, Segol,” I go. “I can’t go back to the Observatory with you. I’m needed elsewhere. I’ve got to flash on back to Earth. If I wait much longer the eclipse will be over, the sky will get light, the stars will go out for another two thousand years, and I’ll never see my dear, dear friend Bitsy ever again. “ Sure, sweetie, even in this moment of awful tension, I thought of you. You believe me, don’t you?
Segol sighed. “I suppose you must go, then. I’ll never forget you, little la-I mean, Maureen.”
I gave him this sort of noblesse oblige smile, but I stopped short of getting all emotional and everything. “Farewell, Segol 154,” I go.”Tell the others that someday, when you’ve proved yourselves worthy, my people will welcome yours into the Federation of Planets. Until then, one last word of advice: try to discourage anyone who starts fiddling around with radio astronomy. I think it will make you all very, very unhappy.”
“Radio astronomy?” he goes. “How can you look at space with a radio?”
“Never mind, just remember what I said.” I raised one hand in the universal sign of “That’s all, folks.” Then I raised my supplicating arms to the stars, went eeny meeny miney mo, and whushed myself on out of there.
I’m sorry I had to listen to the whole story. By the time Maureen finished it, we had finished off all the strawberries, and a quiche with nothing in it is like tortellini salad without the tortellini. In the months that Josh and I had been together, he’d taught me a lot about food and everything. We didn‘t have supper any more, we dined. And then like I did the dishes.
Anyway, it was getting late, and you know I had to rush her out of there, and I tried to explain to her but she just didn’t want to listen, so then I put my back against her and shoved her toward the door, and I guess she got annoyed or something ‘cause then I shoved some more but she wasn‘t there and I fell on the kitchen floor and she was standing over me with her sword in her hand and she had on what she called her warrior-woman expression, and I could just see the headlines in the Post: QUEENS WOMAN DIES IN SHISH KABOB TRAGEDY. Josh would never be ab
le to face our folks again. So I go. “Back off, Muffy. “ Wrong thing to say.
“You’re as bad as those ape-things in the center of the Earth!” She was screeching now.
I go, “Just bag your face, will you? Some roommate you are. Where’s that old Greenberg School bond we used to have?”
That got to her. She sheathed her jeweled sword and calmed down. She helped me get up and dusted me off a little. “I’m sorry, Bitsy, “ she goes. I noticed she was blushing.
“All right, I guess, “ I go. We looked at each other a little longer, then I started to cry for some reason, and then she trickled a couple, and we started hugging each other and bawling, and the front door opened and I heard Josh coming in, and all he needed was another unexplained visit from his favorite Savage Amazon, so I go, “Maureen, quick, you’ve got to hide!” And then I felt like we were all on I Love Lucy or something, and I started to laugh.
She laughed, too. Josh didn’t laugh, though. Sometimes it’s like we only see his friends, and why can’t I ever have my friends over? Josh goes, “Because my friends don’t wave broadswords around on the subway. “ I suppose he has a point there.
Balance
by Mike Resnick
Susan Calvin stepped up to the podium and surveyed her audience: the stockholders of the United States Robots and Mechanical Men Corporation.
“I want to thank you for your attendance,” she said in her brisk, businesslike way, “and to update you on our latest developments.”
What a fearsome face she has, thought August Geller, seated in the fourth row of the audience. She reminds me of my seventh-grade English teacher, the one I was always afraid of
Calvin launched into a detailed explanation of the advanced new circuitry she had introduced into the positronic brain, breaking it down into terms a layman-even a stockholder-could understand.
Brilliant mind, thought Geller. Absolutely brilliant. It’s probably just as well. Imagine a countenance like that without a mind to offset it.
