Asimov's SF, July 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "Complex how?” Xaia growled.

  Chan produced a notebook and tried to show Xaia his calculations. “I'm doing my best, Lady. In the end, I fear, we'll have to come back here with a fully equipped expedition. I can only map the changing structure at the gross physical level. I've only a handful of measurements of the changing electrical fields, for instance. It's like trying to understand what's going on in a human brain by counting its folds. But still, I've tried doing raw counts of element types, and then mapped their distribution in space and time, and then done correlations on the clusters that analysis uncovered, and then correlations on them....” He shook his head. “It's not like a city. It is more like a brain—I believe. Or a machine for storing thoughts. And the patterns I'm detecting, flowing and changing, are like the traces of an ongoing conversation."

  Xaia tried to understand. “And did the Dead build this?"

  "No,” Chan said. “Yes. I mean—I don't believe this is an artifact of the Dead, Lady. I believe this is the Dead. Or all that's left of them. Look, the biosphere of Earth II is not like Earth's, in that there is only one kind of multicelled organism, above a substrate of microbe analogues. Some of us in Ararat, and I know there are scholars in the Four Universities of Orklund who hold similar views, believe that such an arrangement is unnatural. Artificial."

  Xaia said, “You believe the Dead created this."

  "Yes! They rebuilt their entire biosphere, from the microbial level up."

  "Why?"

  "To store the best of themselves—all that's left of them. After half a billion years, their memories and philosophies, everything that defines them, are stored in the endless conversations of their living cities—cities that might have covered the planet's land surface before humans came."

  "And why in this form?"

  "For robustness. No spore of Purple is immortal; but the Purple itself is, as long as the planet lasts, the sun shines. And the patterns stored in the City cannot be lost, as long as the City itself survives in some form. Break it down and it just grows back. Of course, they had to plan for calamity, for repeated and disastrous events, just as we must if we wish to survive on this world. They must have decided it was futile just to rebuild another city of the human type, like the one we found in the Reef—"

  Xaia was struggling to follow this. “What ‘repeated and disastrous events'?"

  Chan stared. “The axial tipping. You mean you don't know?"

  And Xaia learned for the first time of the coming axial excursion, and the damage it was likely to cause to the human world.

  Xaia dug into her pocket and found the Orb Manda had taken from Ossay Lange's bloody eye socket. She twisted it this way and that, pointing its polar axis toward the igloo's central fire's glow, and away from it. “If the scholars at Ararat know about this, so must ours,” she said to Teif. “Why was I never told? Why not our predecessors as Speaker?"

  Teif snorted. “Those brain-cases always have their own agenda. A juicy bit of knowledge like this gives you power. You don't want to waste it by revealing it to the rabble, or their leaders."

  Chan said, “There might be nobler motives. Maybe they thought there would be panic if this was made known."

  Xaia asked, “Is this common knowledge in Ararat?"

  "Oh, yes. Ask anybody."

  "And is there panic?"

  Chan shrugged. “You've been to Ararat. We tend not to get worked up."

  On impulse Xaia got to her feet, ducking to avoid the low ice ceiling, and pushed her way out through the skins that covered the entrance. The sky was clear, the stars like shreds of bone. Under the cold auroral glow the City of the Living Dead was bathed in its own violet light. She thought she could hear a soft sifting noise as its billions of living components, each almost too small for the eye to see, sorted through their endlessly repeating configurations.

  Light streamed across the sky: a meteorite, whose billion-year career ended in a spark of light.

  Teif came staggering out after her. He carried a heap of coats, but he stumbled and dropped them on the iron-hard ice. Chan followed, and grabbed a coat for himself and draped another over Xaia. “Fifty below,” Teif murmured, his breath frosting. “Wear a coat, Lady, the cold will kill you....” He slumped to his knees. Chan knelt over him and tried to haul his great bulk back against the wall of the igloo, and covered him with the remaining coats.

  Xaia faced the City, and held the Orb in fingers turning numb with the cold. “I feel—betrayed. My ancestors traveled light years to come here. I traveled around the world, a journey just as hard. I came for treasure. But there is no treasure here, is there?"

  Chan said, “Only the frozen conversation of a culture half a billion years dead. Is that treasure?"

  "No wonder the stories of this place are so fragmentary. Even the Founders must have failed to understand what they observed. Well, here's what I understand. There is nothing here that cares anything for me or mine. The planet itself is going to try to shrug us off. And when it does, this Purple, this heaped-up decaying stuff, will crawl out of refuges like this and take back all we have built. And as for the Founders—look at us, with our wooden ships and our clumsy guns; look at us, still merely retracing their footsteps. What a disappointment we would be to them. I imagine they would wish they had never succeeded in reaching Earth II in the first place. Well, here's what I say to the Founders."

  She flung the Founders’ Orb at the City, as hard as she could.

  Teif gasped, “My Lady ... no...” His words broke up in a coughing fit.

  Chan, cradling him, became frantic. “Lady Xaia—he is bleeding again."

  Xaia knelt down and thrust her hand under the coats. The whole of Teif's right side was damp, with blood that was quickly freezing. “We have to get you inside,” she murmured.

  "No bloody point,” Teif gasped. “You'll only be lugging me out in the morning, stiff and stinking.” He gripped her arm, but with fading strength. “Go home, Lady. Promise me that."

  "I will. Tomorrow, we turn back. Good Teif, you did your duty—more than I deserved."

  "And when you get to Orklund, when you get back, there's a woman in the Garment District, Bella her name is ... Find her for me, Lady. Tell her ... tell her the money I owe her..."

  "Hush now,” she murmured, and put a bloody finger on his lips. His eyes were already closing, frosting over. “Come on,” she said to Chan. “Let's get him inside before we all freeze in place."

  * * * *

  X

  "The last of the frost,” said Thom, as he walked with Proctor Chivian over the hillside above the nascent Library.

  It was a bright day, the sun climbing high in the sky as the world spun toward its spring equinox, and even the workers in the Library's foundation trenches looked cheerful. Thom himself, not given to elaborate show, felt rather splendid in his bright ceremonial robes, where the crimson thread caught the sunlight.

  He glanced around to see the ceremonial party, scholars and Proctors and representatives of the various parliamentary parties, picking their way across the short, sheep-cropped grass. And there was Maxx, fifteen now and spectacularly taller after a year's growth, walking alongside old Jan Stanndish, as ever the two of them talking and gesturing, blind to everything but the speculations they shared. All of them had clambered out of the city of Orklund to this hillside to commemorate the deposition of the Hundred and Eight Books of the Founders in the Library's central vault—the kernel of the place, already planted securely underground, even though the rest of the structure had barely been begun. The Books themselves were set on a pallet on a hillside, an unspectacular pile ready for interment—exposed to the elements, and yet, as far as Thom was aware, the only copies of these precious, ancient texts in existence.

  The footprints they left in the frost were vanishing fast.

  "Indeed, the last frost of the winter,” said Proctor Chivian. “One can always tell.” He took a deep breath of air, opening up his wide nostrils.

  Thom h
imself could smell the scents of sap, of growing grass, of spring. “The seasons change so quickly around the equinox, from coldspring to the torrid heat of hotspring, just a few weeks. It always seems to catch me by surprise."

  "So it should,” Proctor Chivian said. “We humans evolved as tropical animals on Earth—a planet, I remind you, of moderate seasonality. It's said that even on Earth those who lived at high latitudes felt surprised every year at the abrupt changes of length of the day—"

  "This is Earth II. Not Earth. Why speak of a planet none of us will ever see?"

  Thom whirled, shocked by the familiar yet half-forgotten voice. “Xaia...?"

  And there she was, dressed in drab, scuffed armor. Warriors stood by her, all women, many of them apparently carrying injuries, all weather-beaten, sunburned or with the characteristic scars of frostbite on their faces—or both. Two of her crew carried torches, their burning an anomalous sight in the bright morning light. Xaia stood beside the Books, casually leaning with one gloved hand on the pile.

  Thom felt a yearning to run to her, a physical compulsion like a steel cable yanking at his guts. Yet with Proctor Chivian standing stiff at his side, with the Library project splayed over the hillside, he could not move.

  Maxx had no such inhibitions. He broke away from Jan Stanndish and ran to his mother. “Mom! Mom!” They embraced, though Xaia seemed shocked by how much he had grown in the years she'd been away. “You're back! But where are the others, Manda and Teif ?"

  "Dead, and dead,” she said softly. “Both gave their lives to save mine—or to help me achieve my goals. Too many died on the way back—including those who drowned as we tried to run the rapids on the Belt's greatest river, a perilous course Teif warned me against. Why, I only brought one ship back, the Cora; the others I didn't send home are wrecked or sunk or cannibalized.... Oh, It's been an expensive trip. And if you want its story,” she said to Thom and the Proctor, “ask Chan Hil, scholar of Ararat, who is writing it all down even now. That will be a story worth reading,” she said, glancing with contempt at the Books piled beside her. “A story of our world, of our achievements. Not the dead past."

  The rest of the parliamentarians and scholars had caught up now, and were forming a loose horseshoe around the Books and Xaia, Thom, and the Proctor. The parliamentarians muttered, agitated by Xaia's challenging tone. Even the workers in their foundation trenches, aware that something was going on, were leaning on their shovels and watching.

  Suddenly this was a sensation, Thom saw, the incident exploding into a turning point in his relationship with Xaia, and their sharing of power. He touched the Orbs at his neck, caught himself doing it, and dropped his hand. “I looked out for you. I missed you every day."

  "I'm sure you did.” She sounded sincere.

  "And, unable to consult you, I put off as many decisions as I could."

  "But not this one.” She gestured at the Library workings.

  Thom felt anger simmer. “You show up like this after years away.... A decision had to be made. The Proctor and others made a good case."

  "About the world's axis tipping? Yes, I learned all about that too."

  "You should have come home, after Brython. You should not have stayed away."

  "I did not ‘stay away.’ I went somewhere else."

  "Yes,” the Proctor sneered. “You searched for the City of the Living Dead. A fool in pursuit of a fantasy."

  There was a stir among the parliamentarians, but Xaia, to Thom's relief, did not react.

  "And what did you find, Lady, in the wastes of the north?"

  "I found the City,” she said, evoking a gasp from her audience. “I found the Dead—what is left of them. Frozen thoughts in mounds of Purple. That's all. They wait for us to pass from this world, like other blights of the past, so they can fill up our abandoned fields and cities with their Purple heapings. In the meantime they dream of the glory days of a half billion years ago.

  "But we are the same.” Abruptly she grabbed at Thom's necklace of Orbs; when the thread gave he felt a sharp burn at the back of his neck. “Here is our most precious artifact, our definition of power. Toys given to us by the Founders. Here, when we could be building our own cities for the future, we dig holes in the ground to preserve the Founders’ words.

  "I say, it's time to forget the Founders. Forget the Dead, and the billions who died on the Earth. Their memory crushes us, as if we are no more than moss on the feet of a statue. History doesn't matter. Life is all. You won't build a Library here, Proctor."

  He grinned, cold, complacent. “Then what in its place?"

  "Better a statue to me, a hero of Earth II, than to a world lost in the sky."

  "Your arrogance is so overweening it is absurd."

  She grinned. “Quite possibly.” And she reached out, took a torch from one of the bearers and lowered it to the Books of the Founders.

  "No!” Chivian lunged forward and would have flung himself on the Books, but Xaia's warriors fielded him easily.

  The Books of the Founders, old and dry, caught alight immediately.

  Thom was appalled at the act, yet something dark in him surged with joy at the destruction, and at Chivian's devastated reaction. “So it is true,” he said maliciously. “These really are the only copies. You foolish old men."

  Jan Stanndish came marching forward, waving a spindly fist. “What have you done, Lady? This is a crime that will ring down the generations."

  "On the contrary. I have set those generations free. We are orphans. We are rejected by this planet. To our ancestors we were a goal to be fulfilled, worthless in ourselves. Well, no more; let us build a world for ourselves. And we will start, here in Zeeland, by consolidating the empire I have sketched out in the Scatter and on the Belt, as far north as any human has ever traveled."

  The Proctor, trembling, managed to sneer. “Such petty ambitions. And when the axis tip comes?"

  "We will survive, and build again.” She held up her arms. “Let it come! Let it cleanse us of the rot of the past!"

  "There will be war over this!” Chivian roared, struggling.

  Some of the parliamentarians ran over to remonstrate with him. Others took the Proctors’ side against Xaia. Feeble punches were thrown.

  To Thom's astonishment, Maxx forced himself into the middle of the crowd. “No! No fighting. Think of the Founders. The Books are gone, there's nothing to be done about that. Whatever lies ahead now, we must work together. That's what the Founders would have wanted. Let a healing peace be the Founders’ last gift to us...."

  Xaia came to Thom. “He's turning out to be a smart kid."

  "Wiser than either of us,” he said ruefully. They stood together, not quite touching, not quite apart. “I think we need some healing peace of our own."

  "Yes,” she said. “And in my case, a change of clothes and a damn good bath."

  "And then what? Will you start planning your statue?"

  "Oh, I wasn't serious about that. Well, not much. Enough mythology; we've too much to do.... You were close to old Teif, weren't you? Did you ever hear of a woman called Bella, in the Garment District...?"

  She linked his arm, and they walked away from the burning Books and the squabbling scholars and politicians, across the dewy grass toward the town. With a shout their son followed them.

  Copyright © 2009 Stephen Baxter

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  AUGUST ISSUE

  World Fantasy- and Stoker-Award finalist Michael Blumlein makes his Asimov's debut in our August issue with the tender, witty, and beautifully written “California Burning.” In it, a man, eager to bury his recently passed father, finds the task is much more difficult than he'd expected. Along the way, he also discovers that his father wasn't quite who he seemed, and that dealing with the aftermath of a parent's death is a much riskier and difficult affair when that parent may not have been from this Earth...

  Damien Broderick, swiftly becoming one of the most pro
lific and dynamic writers in Asimov's (with more to come), contributes a fine novelette, “The Qualia Engine,” in which a group of terribly intelligent Children of Wonder must not only advance the state of their van Vogtian super-science, but also deal with the more complex problem of puberty; Steven Popkes returns with a clever and poignant tale of Neanderthals come to live alongside humans with somewhat mixed results in “Two Boys"; Robert Reed returns to bring us the baroque and whimsical story of a few “Creatures of Well-Defined Habits"; if you already hate to fly, Kristine Kathryn Rusch doesn't help matters by adding a little “Turbulence” to your trip; Campbell Award winner Mary Robinette Kowal makes her Asimov's debut with “The Consciousness Problem"; and Derek Zumsteg considers the problems of black holes and astronaut food within confined spaces in “Blue."

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  Robert Silverberg, in Reflections, continues the tour through his own foreign editions in “Adventures in the Far Future II"; James Patrick Kelly's On the Net explores the unusual world of science fiction fandom awards in “And the Winner is"; Peter Heck brings us “On Books"; plus an array of poetry you're sure to enjoy. Look for our August issue on sale at your newsstand on June 23, 2009. Or you can subscribe to Asimov's—in classy and elegant paper format or new-fangled downloadable varieties, by visiting us online at www.asimovs.com. We're also available on Amazon.com's Kindle!

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  Department: ON BOOKS by Paul Di Filippo

  Welcome!

  Although “On Books” is a bit shorter these days, we should still be able to cover quite a few great titles from the alternative presses, if we get a move on!

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