Analog SFF, March 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

  When they saw Rover, they stopped dead. Several gasped, backed away.

  Stanwick raced up behind them, computer and stylus in hand. “Stay back!” he shouted. “Stay where you are!"

  I pulled on the goggles’ rope, stopping about twenty meters away. Rover stared quizzically at the line of men, head cocked, still chewing on the soccer ball.

  Then, just as I'd hoped, one brave Cleanser stepped forward, aimed his rifle, and squeezed off a round.

  The bullet whacked into Rover's chest, not hard enough to penetrate the scales, but enough to dent.

  Rover yelped. His head snapped around, zeroing on the man who fired the shot. A low growl rumbled up from his chest, and slowly, he reared up on his hind legs, towering over the assembled army. Puffs of smoke curled out from his nostrils. His jaw clenched, exploding the soccer ball. Pop!

  "Better run,” I said.

  An enormous fireball erupted from Rover's mouth, barreling down on the men. They ran.

  We'd stopped far enough away that the fire didn't cook anyone. (Well, maybe a few eyebrows got singed, and the Cleansers necks might now be a shade redder.) But it definitely scared the bejeezus out of them. They scattered, dropping weapons, screaming, racing toward their trucks.

  "Sic ‘em."

  Rover gave chase, blowing puffs at the feet of the fleeing men, then raced after their cars and trucks as they skidded down the driveway. He pursued them to the end of the property, stopped, “barked” once, then padded back toward the clinic.

  All of the cars were gone now—except for one. Agent Stanwick's electric Hyundai still sat at the top of the circle. He leaned against it, watching Ellie and my animals load into the helicopter, calmly taking photographs with his hand computer.

  I urged Rover forward, stopping ten meters from Stanwick. “Put the camera down and back away,” I said.

  Stanwick studied me. “You're not a radical,” he said. “You won't kill anyone."

  "This isn't a horse, Stanwick. No guarantees."

  He hesitated, then sighed and tossed his computer to the ground. I gave Rover a poke under his wing, and he melted it.

  "Next one fries the Hyundai,” I said.

  Stanwick watched Ellie and my animals for another few moments, making mental notes, no doubt. Then he fished keys from his pocket and climbed into the Hyundai. He rolled down a window.

  "Remember the Death Valley pupfish, doctor,” he said. He amped the car and began backing down the driveway. “I will find you."

  Rover and I waited till Stanwick's car had disappeared onto the road. Then I gave his wing a tug, and we trotted around the clinic to the back pasture.

  Ellie had finished loading everyone but Radar and the harpy. While she shooed the harpy up the ramp, Radar sauntered around the copter and stretched a hoofed arm toward the propeller. Ellie snagged him in time and hustled him up the ramp. The copter's door swung shut and it teetered into the air, heading back out over the forest.

  The rendezvous point was twenty miles west, under dense foliage in the Blue Ridge Mountains. There, we'd meet ground vehicles and head north. Ellie's PETSA friends wouldn't tell me the final destination yet, but they assured me the animals would be safe.

  As Rover trotted across the pasture, I turned back once more to look at my clinic and cabin, the overgrown racetrack of my childhood, the place where I'd planned to spend my career, my life.

  But I couldn't linger long. I knew that as soon as Ellie and her entourage arrived at the rendezvous, the mermaid would need water, the centaur would need dialysis and oxygen, and Radar would need—well, I'd find out when I got there.

  "Let's go, boy,” I said. “Let's find you a new home.” We bounded for the trees.

  Copyright © 2010 David A. Simons

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  Novelette: THE HUB OF THE MATTER by Christopher L. Bennett

  Tools can be used without being fully understood. Even really big tools....

  It is a universal law that the faster a mode of transportation is, the more extreme its associated delays become. The Hub offered instantaneous travel to anywhere in the galaxy, so its gridlock achieved truly cosmic proportions.

  The wait might not have been so bad for David LaMacchia if he hadn't been seated in the midst of a family pod of Hijjeg tourists returning home from Earth. He'd expected everything in space to be grander than it was back home, but he hadn't expected that to include his personal curse that the fattest individual on the bus—or in this case, the members of the largest, smelliest species—always sat next to him. My first lesson in galactic travel: from now on, take the aisle seat.

  Once the transport finally got clearance to enter the Sol System Hubpoint, the surrounding bulk of Hijjeg flesh and the watering of David's eyes made him miss the split-second transition to the Hub itself. He was here, just south of the far end of the galactic bar, forty thousand light-years from home. But he was still surrounded by Hijjeg and losing the feeling in his crushed extremities. The wait was even greater at this end, for as the single means of faster-than-light travel known to exist—the single point that every ship had to pass through to get anywhere—the Hub was, admittedly, something of a bottleneck.

  Finally the transport docked at Hubstation 3742, serving Earth and worlds of comparable biochemistry and socioeconomic status. David found himself bustled off the shuttle by the press of Hijjeg bodies before he'd fully managed to restore circulation to his limbs. This is it, he thought as his luggage caught up with him after a frantic search, rubbing against his leg and offering up its handle. Here is the place where I begin my quest.

  It looked uncannily like a bus station. Smelled like one, too, but with aromatic overtones unknown on Earth. David's shoulders slumped. “This is the Hub?"

  "What is to expect?” rumbled the largest of his Hijjeg seatmates as it trundled past, family pod in tow. “Low-rung world like yours getting good facilities? You want it, you earn it."

  His doubts evaporating, he gave the opinionated hillock a defiant smile. “My friend, that's exactly what I'm here to do."

  The Hijjeg rumbled. “Good luck. My world try for six generations. Still stuck in this dump."

  "Thanks!” David replied. “Good luck to you too."

  As he navigated the crowd, David was thrilled to see so many exotic kinds of life in more types of mask, suit, exoskeleton, and other life-support mechanisms than he could identify; business and tourism transcended most environmental categories. It more than made up for the smells.

  Finally he found the lobby area for the Hubstation's hotel—about thirty meters past the end of the line for the registration desk. He napped on the back of his trunk until it finally reached the desk, and it gave a whirr of relief when he climbed off and stretched his limbs. “Boy, this place is busy! I hope you still have some empty rooms. I'm exhausted."

  The desk clerk, a cadaverous, blue-skinned Jiodeyn, peered at him with four small black eyes. “Empty rooms, sir? No, sir, we have none currently."

  "Oh.” David slumped. “Then where am I going to sleep?"

  "We have a number of rooms available, sir."

  Huh? “But you just said there were no rooms."

  "No empty rooms, that's correct, sir."

  "Wait ... you mean I'd have to share a room?"

  "No, sir. You would have your own space."

  "Space. I'd just have part of the room?"

  "One segment, sir, but you would have the full space."

  He blinked. “Do we take turns?"

  "No, sir, you may stay as long as you wish.” The clerk looked him over. “Provided you can pay."

  "But other people will be in the room."

  The Jiodeyn spoke as if he were doing David a favor by being so patient. “Each suite accommodates seven, sir."

  "O ... kay.” David had lived with roommates before, during his college career—all five months of it—and he doubted any of them would be as interesting as the aliens he could meet here. “So there are seven beds per room?"r />
  "No, sir, just the one."

  "For seven people?" he cried.

  "We don't pry into how our customers use their beds, sir,” the clerk replied primly.

  "Isn't that kind of ... well ... cramped?"

  "Our beds are quite roomy, sir."

  "They'd have to be,” David muttered. Feeling a bit dizzy, he tried a different tack. “Look, what about life-support? You wouldn't put an ammonia-breather or a silicone life form in the same suite with me, right?"

  The clerk glared. “Sir, this establishment does not discriminate."

  "But that would kill me!"

  "Not necessarily, sir, since you have not chosen a room yet."

  David took a breath and spoke very carefully. “Okay. Look. Do you have any rooms occupied only by species whose life-support needs wouldn't kill me?"

  The Jiodeyn checked his computer with two of his four arms. “Suite forty-seven currently holds five oxygen-breathers and one chlorine-breather. That is the best we can do at this time, sir."

  "Does the chlorine-breather wear a mask or something?"

  "Not in his room, sir."

  David gasped. “Then how am I supposed to not die?!"

  "That will be no problem, sir, so long as you stay in your own room."

  "But you said he's in the room too!"

  "Yes, sir. Would you like me to page him?"

  "I don't know,” David said, shaking his head. “What page are we even on?"

  A new voice spoke. “That room will be fine for my friend here, Yolien. Put it on my account."

  David turned to see a tall, elegant, relatively humanoid biped with tawny skin, handsome leonine features, and a mane of golden feathers down his back. No surprise, he thought, that a Sosyryn would come to his rescue.

  The clerk took it in stride. “Very good, Mr. Rynyan. Here is your key, sir.” He handed David a small crystal rod.

  At the Sosyryn's prompting, David took the key, but he was still confused. “But what about—"

  "You're new to the Hub, aren't you?” Rynyan asked as he led David aside. At the human's nod, he continued. “The rooms are tesseracts, you see. They use a quirk of the spacetime around the Hub to extend into four dimensions. Eight cubic ‘faces,’ making for seven rooms and one entry interface. The only way the Hub complex can handle the volume of traffic, you see."

  David was beginning to catch on. “So the key..."

  "Rotates the interface to the particular room it's associated with. You use that key and you'll have no worries about opening the wrong room, inhaling chlorine, and dying in agony as your mucus turns into hydrochloric acid.” He paused. “Well, so long as the interface doesn't malfunction. The maintenance crews don't get out here as often as they could,” he went on with no change to his breezy, reassuring tone. David looked warily at the key.

  "Ah! I've been rude. I am Rynyan Zynara ad Surynyyyyyy'a. Welcome, traveler, to the Hub."

  David shook his hand. “Hi. David LaMacchia."

  "Human, right?” Rynyan asked. “From Earth?"

  "And proud of it."

  "Good for you! I suppose someone has to be. I've taken an interest in your planet, you know. That's why I'm slumming here—I'd been hoping to meet someone interesting from Earth. Are you interesting?"

  "That's what I'm here to find out."

  "Good answer! You humans have such clever ways of saying ‘no.’ Well, Earth is a lovely world anyway,” he went on before David could answer. “Shame about the climatic catastrophes, though. They must be terribly inconvenient."

  "Uhh ... thanks. Really, we'd be much worse off if it weren't for all your people's help."

  Rynyan spread his arms magnanimously. “It's our purpose in this universe. I mean, we have no problems of our own, so we need to have them imported.” He gave a passing imitation of a human laugh. “I joke. Seriously, your world was fortunate to be discovered when it was. Rysos was in similarly dire straits millennia ago. Then contact with the Hub Network and its advances and wealth let us make our world the paradise it is today. It is our privilege to share our ... well, our privilege with others who are less ... privileged.” He tapped his neck, where he presumably kept the implant that translated his speech impulses into the language of his choice before they reached his mouth. “That can't be quite right."

  "I really admire your people,” David said as Rynyan led him toward his room, his trunk scuttling wearily behind. “You're so egalitarian. You have so much, but it isn't hoarded by a greedy few. You make sure everyone benefits from it."

  "The gratitude of others is our wealth,” the Sosyryn replied. “Now, let me do something really generous for you. My cousin just endowed an orphanage, and I'll never live it down if I let that uncultured boor out donate me."

  "Oh, no, I couldn't. The room is fine."

  "Come now, there must be something. What is it you hope to gain here at the Hub?"

  David's eyes lit up. “It's been my mission in life to get here. I didn't have much growing up, but I always believed that I—that humans—were capable of better. There's a whole galaxy out there, just on the other side of the Hub, and that's where humanity's future lies. Where my future lies. It cost me all my savings just to get a ticket offworld. And now I'm here."

  "What a charming story. And now that you're here, what will you do next? Or do you plan to kill yourself now that your life's goal is achieved?” he asked with sincere curiosity. “That would be an unconventional thing to help you with, a bit tricky to work into the plus column, but I suppose I could work something out."

  But David smiled. “Oh, I've only just begun to chase my life's goal. You see ... I'm going to figure out how the Hub works."

  "Oh, oh, I can tell you that!” Rynyan said excitedly. “It's at the center of mass of the dark matter halo that encompasses our galaxy and its satellites, and it connects to every point within that halo, so long as you know the right entry vector. All you have to do is dive in at the right speed and angle and—"

  "No, no, I know that part!” David said, chuckling. “I mean I'm going to figure out the part nobody else has figured out yet."

  Rynyan stared. “You mean the relationship between the Hub vectors and the exit points?"

  "Right. I'm going to find the pattern. I'm going to make it possible to go anywhere in the Galaxy by choice, not just by trial and error."

  The Sosyryn gaped at him. “Why, this is delightful! I'd forgotten they haven't yet cured insanity on your world! Do tell me more, this is invigorating!"

  David took the comment in stride. “I know it sounds crazy. But somebody's gotta be the one to solve this, and it might as well be a human."

  "Oh, this is an entertaining delusion! How do you intend to proceed?"

  David explained his plan to hire a Hub scout, one of the pilots who took their ships into the Hub on random vectors in the hopes of discovering promising new destinations. It had been such a scout who'd stumbled across the Sol System thirty-four years ago; once that vector was logged and recorded, it allowed steady access to Earth, at least until Sol's drift took it away from the Hubpoint over the next few millennia. But missing the correct vector by a milliarcsecond could send a ship to the other end of the galaxy or a Magellanic Cloud; the relationship wasn't remotely linear, if there even was one. David believed there had to be, and he'd brought instruments that he hoped would prove it. “I just keep collecting data with each jump we make, try to find a pattern. That's why it has to be a Hub scout. They make the most trips."

  "You're in luck,” Rynyan said. “I just happen to know a very good Hub scout. And she's human, too, so I'm sure she'd be happy to help you out."

  "Can you introduce me to her?"

  "Absolutely. She positively adores me."

  * * * *

  "You're an idiot, Rynyan,” the Hub scout said.

  Her name was Nashira Wing, and she'd spent a lifetime trying to live it down. It was just her rotten luck that she'd turned out to be better at piloting than anything else. “And so is
your friend,” she went on, “if he thinks he has any chance of cracking the Hub."

  Nashira's insult bounced off Rynyan's impenetrable skull as usual, but the Sosyryn stood up for his new pet charity case. “He's not an idiot."

  "Thank you,” the man named David said.

  "He's a lunatic,” Rynyan went on, beaming. “I've always wanted one of my own."

  Nashira tilted her head to regard him. “Doesn't charity for lunatics involve curing them, not indulging them?"

  "Oh, where's the fun in that?"

  She turned to the young, sandy-haired human, making an effort to soften her expression. She often welcomed the “dragon lady” severity her crisp Asian features and sharp-edged soprano could assume, but this David LaMacchia was a harmless wide-eyed hick who didn't know any better. “Look ... David? If there were a way to predict the relationship between entry vectors and exit points, somebody would've done it already. It's what they call an NP-complete problem—there's no way to solve it in a finite amount of time."

  "But a solution can be verified in a finite amount of time,” David responded, showing that he wasn't completely ignorant about the subject. “If we have a theory to test, we can confirm it."

  "And what makes you think you can find a solution nobody else in thousands of planets has thought of? Are you some kind of supergenius?"

  "Nope. Just an ordinary human."

  "No degrees in astrophysics, quantum physics, anything like that?"

  He shook his head. “Don't need ‘em.” He tapped his face next to his eye. She saw text dancing across his contact lens interface. “A wikigoogler. I've got the sum total of human knowledge at my fingertips. Or ... eyetips."

  She scoffed. “What?! You think that's gonna give you some special insight?"

  "The collective insight of the entire human species,” he answered with pride.

  "You think that amounts to anything?” She let her face grow severe again, and her voice along with it. “You have no sodding idea what it's really like out here, do you? You don't understand what it means to be in a society with thousands of worlds, with civilizations thousands of times older than ours. I've heard it all—humans wondering why the rest of the galaxy hasn't gone gaga over Shakespeare and Mozart and the Grand Canyon and chocolate. It's because the galaxy is just too big. Too old. There's too much stuff in it. Everything we have, everything we've ever built or written or thought of, somebody else did it first or has something better. There's nothing new under the stars.