Asimov's SF, July 2011
Page 8
Which Dunyon?
Which Dunyon indeed? I had no idea. But I couldn't tell an information kiosk that.
“Dunyon,” I repeated. “The one that's far from here. And safe.”
You are the six hundredth person to enquire about that Dunyon on this station in the past week, the system informed me. I have no Dunyon that fits such parameters.
“How about a place called Dunyon within travel distance from this station?” I asked.
I have no Dunyon that fits those parameters either, the system informed me. You are asking questions in the same pattern as four-hundred-and-eighty other inquirers. Would you like the remaining questions and answers?
I didn't like being told I was unoriginal, but I did appreciate the shortened workload. I told the system yes, and let it inform me that there was no place called Dunyon in the known universe, that there was no place with alternate spellings or pronunciations of Dunyon in the known universe, and no place called Dunyon on any shipping lanes.
“No place nicknamed Dunyon?” I asked.
No, the system told me, and then informed me that I was starting down a line of questioning that 365 people had followed. I got their results as well.
So far as we could tell—all of us who inquired on this system—Dunyon did not exist.
Then I remembered the system's initial response to my very first question.
“When I inquired about Dunyon,” I said, “you asked me to clarify. You said, which Dunyon? Which implies that there are several Dunyons. What are they?”
Dunyon, the system responded. An ancient family of hereditary rulers on Uteelly. The family was assassinated several thousand years ago. Uteelly was destroyed in the latest wars, along with all cities and landmarks named after the family Dunyon.
I wondered if that was the source of my rumor and was about to ask when the system continued.
Dunyon, it said. A mythological city in the Koppae Sector. A place that may or may not have existed. Thought to be the perfect city. The hereditary family Dunyon of Uteelly claimed to be the only survivors of Dunyon, although this is unproven. There is no evidence that this Dunyon ever existed.
But it sounded like my Dunyon, the place far from here, the place that was safe. In these troubled times, “safe” was better than perfect or idyllically beautiful.
I frowned. There was a long silence, and I realized that the system had finished its recitation.
“When did you get your first query about Dunyon?” I asked.
Seven days ago.
“Did that query fit into any of the patterns of inquiry you mentioned before?”
No.
“What did that questioner want to know?” I asked.
Personal inquiries are protected information, the system said, rather primly it seemed to me.
“Did I ask any of the same questions as the original inquirer?” I asked.
No, the system said.
I felt frustrated. I couldn't find out where this information had originated, but it had clearly originated here on this station one week before.
“Did I receive any of the same answers as the other questioner?” I asked.
No, the system said.
I thought for a moment. Then I tried one last question. “Has anyone thought they've found the lost city of Dunyon?”
Time parameters?
Time parameters? It took me a moment to understand that. “When did that Dunyon disappear?”
Sixteen centuries ago.
“Has anyone thought they've found the lost city of Dunyon in the past three hundred years?”
I chose the number three hundred randomly. I could have chosen five hundred or even the full sixteen hundred. But I wanted some inkling of what was happening recently.
Seventy-five explorers believed they found Dunyon. But they could not find it a second time.
I recognized this myth. It had existed throughout human history. The vanishing city. The perfect city that you could only visit once.
“Has anyone found the lost city of Dunyon in the past fifty years?”
Lucas Ennelly found the lost city of Dunyon fifteen years ago.
“Where is Lucas Ennelly now?” I asked.
I got the red screen. Lucas Ennelly was no longer viable. Even though I expected something like that, I still felt discouraged. I could understand why most people fled the kiosk upon getting such news.
“When did Lucas Ennelly die?” I asked.
Eight days ago, the system told me.
My stomach clenched. I was on to something.
“Where?” I asked, even though I had a hunch I knew.
In a bar on this station, the system told me.
“Which bar?” I asked. I knew what the system would tell me. I really didn't have to wait for the words, although I did.
My bar. Lucas Ennelly died in my bar, eight days ago.
The day before the woman arrived, asking about Dunyon.
* * * *
People die in my bar all the time. That's part of the new reality. No one has the money to do simple things, like eat properly or see doctors when they get ill. The pens are breeding grounds for all kinds of viruses, and no one is allowed to leave if they're sick.
But that doesn't always stop people. Nor do they benefit from the constant stress and worry. Heart attacks, once thought to be eradicated, are common now, along with strokes. Experts are saying that it is the stress that kills, but I think it's a broken heart.
Lucas Ennelly passed out at the bar, not far from where that woman sat. By the time we realized he wasn't a passed-out drunk, it was too late. He had stopped breathing an hour before.
I'm not held liable for such things, just like I'm not held liable for the attacks and the attempted murders that go on just outside. People have become hostile. They drink too much and get too angry.
I'm always happy when they pass out. I prefer to let them rest there, since God knows, they probably don't get rest anywhere else.
Jake contacted authorities when we realized Ennelly was dead. One of the station's six coroners eventually removed the body, and—I'm sorry to say—that was the last thought we had given him, if we had given him one before that.
I was giving him a lot of thought now. I had the system tell me all it could about Lucas Ennelly. Turned out he was taking funds from people—the money the woman had quoted to us—for safe passage to Dunyon. He had already made a down payment on a retrofitted generation ship. He was going to take everyone to a place he had only seen once.
And they were willing to believe him. I left the kiosk, and reported his scheme to the authorities. If things went well, they might find some of Ennelly's funds and return them to the poor unsuspecting souls who had invested so much for escape to a mythical realm.
If things went the way they normally did, some low-grade bureaucrat would find the money, pocket it, and claim that Ennelly had spent it all.
I couldn't worry about it.
I had to figure out how to keep Ennelly's clients from coming to my bar.
I walked back. I didn't usually have time off during the day and it was an odd treat to see people in the corridors, to see the full restaurants, and the back-and-forth of commerce, even if it was conducted furtively and with great desperation.
By the time I got back to my exclusive neighborhood, I was relieved. I was tired of the crowds, the grasping, the clawing, the questioning looks from faces shoved against mine. I had gotten used to the late night silence as well as the order I kept inside my own bar.
I preferred it.
I wasn't going to get it, however.
Because as I got close, I heard shouting. Then I saw dozens and dozens of people, pressing against the bar's entrance. A mob, screaming, pulling, punching. The windows looking into the corridor were already broken and people were pouring inside.
I had never seen such chaos at my place—or even in this neighborhood. I grabbed one man and pulled him back.
“What's going on?”
“Free tickets to Dunyon to the first five hundred people!” he yelled back, then pulled away from me.
I stood there, breathless, as more and more people hurried toward my bar. None were well dressed. They all smelled like sweat and unwashed clothes.
People from the pens, running toward free tickets.
I scrambled away, heading to the side of the bar. The employee entrance was hidden. Only an employee's DNA made it visible, and no one else's. I made sure I wasn't followed before I touched the wall, which opened for me and let me slide inside.
Inside wasn't much better. People crowded the main room. The images behind the bar were shut off, and it took me a moment to realize why. Someone had broken the screen. Bright light shone from it onto the floor above.
Jake was standing behind the bar, protecting the expensive liquors with some kind of unauthorized weapon. The cocktail waitress who had helped me was keeping people back with the broken edge of a bottle.
I didn't see any other employees, but I glanced up. The doors to the back rooms were closed and locked. Someone had the presence of mind to seal off the entertainment area and the high stakes poker room.
The noise was deafening. I pressed the emergency call button beside the employee entrance and got a green light, which meant help was on the way.
Although I wasn't sure what the authorities could do, except stun the rioters and maybe hurt regular patrons inside my bar.
I pushed my way to the bar proper, then climbed on top of it. I waved my hands, but nothing happened.
So I shouted, “I'm the owner of this bar!”
The people in front of me stopped yelling and pushing.
I shouted the same thing again, and again until the entire room was quiet.
Now I had to tell them something. I could have said the authorities were coming and they would all be arrested, but that probably wouldn't counteract the concept of a free ticket.
I had to be creative.
I had to let them think they were getting what they wanted.
“Thank you all for coming,” I said, hoping I sounded sincere. “It's been a great promotion. Lucas Ennelly gave us tickets to Dunyon and I'm proud to tell you that we have just given the last one away. Congratulations to all the winners!”
I clapped my hands, as if I were congratulating someone. Jack watched me for a minute as if I had lost my mind, then he started clapping too. The cocktail waitress slapped one hand against the neck of the broken bottle.
A few confused people up front peered at me, but people behind them started to clap. And so did everyone else.
They were so used to losing, so used to being the ones who did not get the special treatment, that they weren't angry when they realized the tickets they had come for were gone. They accepted the loss as one more in a series of losses. They pretended joy for my so-called winners, and then they slowly, calmly, filed out.
No one remained except Jake, the cocktail waitress, and one of our regulars, who had clung to his seat at the bar through it all.
“What the hell was that?” Jake asked.
“I know how the rumor started,” I said, and told him about Lucas Ennelly. “He really was selling tickets to Dunyon from this bar for a lot of money.”
“A scam,” the waitress said.
“Most likely,” I said. Then I shrugged. “But people who claimed they found the lost city of Dunyon always tried to go back. I think he was using these poor people to fund his trip.”
“I don't get it,” Jake said. He set his weapon in a drawer behind the bar that I had forgotten about. “Why come in greater numbers after he died?”
“Two reasons, I think,” I said. “First, people had bought tickets here. And second, deaths don't get publicized on the station. No one knew he was dead.”
“So they thought he was holding out on them,” the cocktail waitress said.
I nodded. “Which only made them more desperate.”
I didn't have to explain the rest to them. Because they live here and they know: Desperation leads to rumors and rumors become wild stories, and wild stories ignite belief. People are taking action on the smallest things, the most unlikely things, because they need something—anything—to cling to.
I've seen it countless times.
I just hadn't experienced it myself.
Until then.
The authorities arrived too late to do anything. We were already sweeping up the mess, replacing the broken tables with others from our back rooms, and scrambling to find more chairs.
I didn't even file a complaint, because who was there to complain against? God? The universe? The random unfairness of the conflicts we all found ourselves in?
So I had some damage and I lost some money. I consider myself one of the lucky ones. I have a place. I am here on purpose, not because I have nowhere else to go.
Unlike most of the people outside my doors, I am not desperate.
Not yet.
Although I feel the press of humanity with the arrival of each new ship filled with refugees, as the pens grow bigger and the crowds more unruly.
At some point, there won't be incidents any more, sparked by rumors, fed by hopelessness.
At some point, it really will be us against them.
And we will lose.
Because there are too many of them, desperate and terrified. And there are too few of us, pretending that civilization will go on.
Even when there is no real civilization left.
Copyright © 2011 Kristine Kathryn Rusch
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* * *
Poetry: E
by R. M. Kaye
loop infinity
mobiusly
singularity
creases
buckles
bends
crinks
rends
fractures
froths
multiple spaces
overload
energy strings
writhe
force
loop seething swarms
opposites annihilate
vacuum space frames
energy surges
gush through nine dimensions
shrink-seal six
settle in three
uncertainly
everywhere
particle waves
blend
radiate
everywhen
wave particles emerge
forces force-click quanta
clump grainily
bloat bound bubbles
everywhere
branes bind in
gravitons gravitate
converge, cohere, adhere, conflate, contract
isolate
shine
glimmering solar systems
glowing spiral galaxies
wink on and off
in bubble spheres adrift
on streaming currents
of dark energy
* * * *
generations of supernova suns
forge and reforge elements
waft in solar winds
acid
base
mineral
metal
react
in amniotic pools
cells absorb
swirl
divide
attract
harvest light
develop
envelop
sequence alimentary organs
gorge
excrete
become aware
flee
congregate, communicate, multiply
grow
old
die
decompose
* * * *
slime washes ashore
clumps spawn and cling
string upon string
forms shapes
shapes forms
breathes
mutates
metamorphoses
slithers, crawls, hobb
les, hops, lopes
rises
and sniffs at stars
with a lens
then somewhere
here and there
everywhere
glitches unglitch
infinity loop unloops
telomere strings unravel
organic sequences unorganize
elemental grips ungrip
material forces unforce
elements unclick
quantum grid reconfigures
quanta unbuzz
infinity reboots finitely
gravity ungravitates
integrations unintegrate
suns unshine
shadows unshade
solar systems unwind
galaxies unswirl
forms unappear
shapes unshape
multiple spaces uninflate
dimensions unbend
unbuckle
unrend
uncrink
uncrease
unfracture
resingularize
infinity
mc2 = E
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* * *
Short Story: THE MUSIC OF THE SPHERE
by Norman Spinrad
Norman Spinrad splits his time between Paris and New York, though Police State, the novel he's currently working on, is set in New Orleans. His last novel, Welcome to Your Dreamtime, is set entirely in the dreamtime of you, the reader. Norman's most recently published novel Osama the Gun has only appeared in France. His latest American publication, He Walked Among Us, came out last year from Tor Books. The author's new story, “The Music of the Sphere,” was inspired by his experience as a cyborged vocalist with the band Heldon, and his long-time affectionate fascination with dolphins, whales, and their sonar sensoriums.
In the 1960s there was a band called Blue Cheer whose claim to be the loudest rock and roll band on the planet went unchallenged. They would play in intimate club venues standing right next to the same monster speakers used in stadiums. They were so loud that many aficionados of their recorded music fled in physical agony from live performances.
Mario Roca wasn't even born then, and their recorded music he found primitive and tedious, but he was fascinated by the legend and he had heard that there had been more obscure bands who had brought jet engines on stage just for the decibel count.
But why would audiences and the musicians themselves court deafness to experience it, even when the music itself was mediocre at best? Perhaps especially when the music was mediocre or worse. What was the appeal of bad music played so loud that it was an excruciation to the ear? What secret was buried in the wall of noise?