Asimov's Science Fiction 12/01/10

by Dell Magazines

  “How?” Mariska was tired of their accusations. The weight of what she had done—and not done—was crushing her.

  “You could have.”

  Glint was no help. She had kicked her slippers free of the deck burrs and was floating aimlessly around Command. She seemed not to notice when she bumped into things.

  “But we still have ice,” said Didit. “Who’s going to fetch the ice?”

  “Nobody.” Glint’s head lolled backward. “It’s just like Mariska said. A fairy tale.”

  “What does she know?” Didit’s hands curled into fists; she was ready to punch someone. “Maybe she made Beep do it.”

  “He gave her the override.”

  The four of them considered this fact in silence. Richard ran a finger down the edge of the cargo rack. It came away with a smudge of ugly blue. “The crud is back,” he said to no one in particular

  “It’s her first run,” said Didit. “Why her?”

  Glint cackled. “Because he hated her?”

  “We should contact Sweetspot. Tell them what’s happening here.” Richard nodded at the override hanging around Mariska’s neck. “Maybe we should enable comm now?”

  Mariska brought up the comm cluster and flashed the override at the nav rack. Then she paused, considering. “Close communication,” she said. “Time?”

  “Sure,” said Glint. “Let’s check the doomsday clock.”

  Didit turned on her and shouted. “Shut the fuck up, Glint.”

  The screen still flashed red. It was 08:14:56 on 17 July 2163. The mission was in its three hundred and eleventh standard day. They were eight days, twenty-two hours, and six minutes into deceleration. Acquisition of the approach signal for Sweetspot station would occur in one hundred days, twenty-three hours, and fifty-one minutes.

  “There,” said Mariska. “See?”

  The ship’s reaction mass reserves of hydrogen would permit braking for eighty-nine more days. The ice inventory would supply be sufficient for seventy-three days of oxygen renewal.

  “See what?” said Richard.

  “We gained twenty-six days.” Mariska felt as if she were rising out of herself and looking down at them from the Eye. “Beep gave us twenty-six more days.”

  “So what?” Now Glint shouted. “Seventy-three from one hundred. A month of no air.”

  “Right,” said Mariska. “But if we decrease demand again, we buy even more time.”

  “Decrease demand?” Fear filled Richard’s voice.

  “And the rescue ship—they don’t have to wait until we get all the way to Sweetspot. They can come out to meet us....”

  “Someone else sacrifices?” said Didit. “That’s your plan?”

  “Nobody has to sacrifice.” She pushed herself over to the environment rack. “Somebody just has to stop breathing.”

  “Oh, great,” said Glint.

  “Who?” said Richard.

  Mariska’s mind was racing as she brought up the crew’s med files. It could work. It had to work.

  It was just above freezing in the mod; Mariska was pleased. The inner shell of the Shining Legend was fitted with heating strips to keep the bitter cold of space from penetrating crew areas. But Mariska had disabled the shell heaters in Service as part of her plan. She faced Richard as he gripped her waist in his strong hands and lifted her. The Jingchu sisters stood together to one side, wisps of their breath curling into the chill. They were holding hands, which was a good sign. Mariska was worried about Glint’s mood swings. Sometimes it seemed as if she resented getting this chance to survive. She just wanted to have the dying over with. But Didit kept pulling her back from despair.

  Richard was concentrating so hard on lowering her into the suit that she couldn’t help herself. She touched his neck. He glanced up, about to apologize, but she winked at him. “Permission to nap?” She tugged the lanyard of the override around his neck. “Sir?”

  He grinned. “Permission granted.”

  She shivered as he sealed her into the suit. Was this the last time anyone would ever touch her? Bad thought. No bad thoughts. “Ninety-six days,” she said. “We can do this, right?”

  Richard and Didit answered, “Right.” Glint just glared; she still thought that Mariska was abandoning them.

  “No chores, understand? Let the crud run wild. And sleep as much as you can.”

  “We will,” said Didit.

  “Just remember to wake up when it’s time to swap my bottles.”

  Richard handed her the helmet. “Don’t worry.”

  She tried to think of what else she could say to keep from saying goodbye. “This is it, then.” Mariska could feel her throat closing; she didn’t want them to see how scared she was. “Okay monkeys, out of here before you freeze to death.” She lowered the helmet to the collar and Richard locked it to the spacesuit. She felt a tear pool at the corner of her eye, but the helmet’s tinted faceplate hid it nicely.

  So, how was she going to do this? She didn’t really know how to trigger the hibernation response. The one time she had done it had been five years ago. That had been the first time she had tried to escape from her mother, by running away three years into the future. She had been furious at Natalya Volochkova then. Had that had anything to do with it? She was still mad at her, but not as much as she had been. She tried working up some hate for Beep but all she could think about were his two bottles of oxygen. Six hours, and then? Maybe she should get mad at herself for signing on to crew the Shining Legend. Bucket monkey—the worst job in space. And now she might die a bucket monkey. Bad thought. No bad thoughts. She did the math again while she waited for something to happen. She had thirty-seven bottles. Each could provide three hours of oxygen, plus or minus ninety seconds. Altogether, a hundred and eleven hours. Sweetspot claimed the soonest the rescue ship could rendezvous was ninety-five days, plus or minus maybe half a day. Altogether, two thousand, two hundred, and and eighty hours. Plus or minus. But if she hibernated she might reduce her oxygen intake to as low as 4 percent of normal. Four percent of two thousand, two hundred and eighty hours was ninety-one hours. That meant she only needed ninety-one hours of oxygen and had a hundred and eleven hours bottled. Plus or minus. Was 4 percent possible? She didn’t know. The first and only time she had hibernated it hadn’t been in a hibernation pod with the proper euthermic arousal protocols. She had induced it by sheer willpower in her bed on Haworth. And at room temperature. They said afterward that she was crazy to try it, lucky to survive. But this time she had the cold on her side. Four percent. Ninety-one hours.

  And if 5 percent was the best she could do? Bad thought. No bad thoughts.

  Mariska wasn’t as big as Beep, and subtracting her consumption from the load on the electrolytic cells only gained the crew another twenty-four days. But twenty-four and seventy-two would stretch the oxygen resupply reserve to ninety-six days. Which was exactly when they would rendezvous with the rescue ship from Mars.

  Plus or minus.

  Mariska felt good. Cold, but good. The numbers added up. They could do this. All she had to do was close her eyes and stop breathing so much.

  Mariska’s blood was pounding. Her fingers throbbed and it felt as if someone kept clapping hands over her ears. She thought her heart might explode. Time to open her eyes.

  Storage. She knew this was Storage. But where was Storage? Someplace full of floating bottles. And Richard. His name was FiveFord and he could drown in a glass of water. She could see that he wasn’t very smart, sleeping in Storage when he was supposed to be doing something. Something. She was gasping and her throat was sandpaper. She thought she should go back to sleep. Or die. But then there were other people in Storage. People in spacesuits. One of them pushed Richard aside and he crashed into a wall. Mariska wished he would wake up. She blinked because her eyes were filling with smoke. Then Spacesuit Person was in front of her. Shaking her. This must be the rescue. Yay! She couldn’t tell who it was at first because the helmet had a mirror face. Then she saw the name. Black lett
ers below the collar. Volochkova. That was her name. Mariska giggled. Was she rescuing herself? Why didn’t Richard FiveFord get up? This was what they had been waiting for.

  Xu Jingchu didn’t look much like Didit or Glint to Mariska. She was old and her life had tugged at her. She was Earthborn, a head taller than Mariska, and her loose muscles and spindly posture made her look as if she were suffering from some wasting sickness.

  And she was grieving.

  “When Glint said that she wanted to make one more run, I swear I fought her,” said Xu Jingchu. “I wanted her to learn the business, not qualify as senior crew.” The old woman had Mariska’s hand in hers. “I’d already arranged for her to work at Sweetspot, move on to the materials processing division. But she insisted on one more chance at cargo. Why?” She kept rubbing her finger across Mariska’s palm. “I don’t even shop for myself anymore, so why should she be fetching ice and loading ore into buckets?”

  Mariska was exhausted and just wanted Xu Jingchu to go away. The old woman was no longer talking to her—she had been arguing with her dead daughter for the last few minutes. Mariska let her head fall back on the pillow of the hospital bed, hoping that her mother would pick up on the signal.

  “She was proud,” said Natalya Volochkova. “She wanted to do her best.”

  “Proud.” Jingchu’s expression was bitter. “Of dying for nothing?”

  “Glint and Didit were very brave.” Natalya Volochkova stood up. “They fought right to the end. They just ran out of time.”

  “Yes.” Xu Jingchu squeezed Mariska’s hand and let go. “Yes, they were good girls.” She stood too. “I appreciate everything you did, Dr. Volochkova. I know you took extraordinary measures to save them.”

  “I couldn’t have done anything without you.”

  She bowed in acknowledgement. “As you say, time ran out. Thank you, Mariska, for seeing me. I hope we can meet again under more pleasant circumstances.” She gathered herself to leave.

  “Excuse me,” said Mariska. “But did Glint ever visit Earth?”

  Xu Jingchu looked puzzled. “No, not really. Of course, the clinic was in Chicago so they were born there. But they were tweaked for space. Staying in Earth gravity would’ve been agony.” Her expression darkened. “Why?”

  “I just wondered if she had ever seen the sky.”

  “The sky?”

  “Mariska is still not herself.” Her mother rested a hand on Xu Jingchu’s arm. “We came close to losing her too.”

  She nodded and a wisp of white hair fell across her forehead. “Of course.” She let herself be led away.

  Natalya Volochkova had been right. It had been a mistake to see Xu Jingchu so soon. And now her mother had rescued her from the sad old woman. Mariska was still getting used to the idea that Natalya Volochkova might not be the enemy. Had she come back into the room then, Mariska would have tried to thank her. But her mother was still trying not to push herself on Mariska.

  Mariska had learned meditation as part of her spacer training, and her doctors kept urging her to try it now, find a silence in herself that would give her peace. But what had happened still roared through her mind. The Shining Legend’s shipbrain had captured the crew’s last moments. Glint and Didit had died in each other’s arms in the wardroom, but Richard, the strongest of them, had muscled his way to her even as the oxygen levels in his blood crashed. He had died changing her last bottle. She couldn’t imagine being that brave. She knew she hadn’t earned that kind of devotion.

  To escape these dark thoughts, she called up a feed she had been working on.

  A dusty dirt road cut across a grassy field. The sky above was the deep blue of the oceans as seen from space. It had a delicious weight, as if it had been filled with more air than any sky had ever been. Mariska stood on the side of the road as a parade of animals passed. Cows and polar bears and elephants and two zebras wearing top hats and a whale with squat legs. Didit, Glint, and Richard drove up in a bathtub filled with water. Didit waved.

  =We set up a tent.=

  Mariska looked up. =Nice sky.=

  Glint smiled. =Not too blue?=

  =Perfect.=

  Richard leaned out of the bathtub, reaching for Mariska. She stepped back.

  =Coming?=

  She shook her head. =Not yet.=

  =Want us to wait?=

  She shook her head again. Richard pulled his arm back into the bathtub and tapped Didit on the shoulder.

  Mariska watched them go. In the distance she could hear the tootle of a pipe organ.

  Copyright © 2010 James Patrick Kelly

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  Novelettes

  WARFRIENDS

  Tom Purdom

  “Warfriends” is the long-awaited sequel to The Tree Lord of Imeten, an Ace Double Tom wrote over forty years ago. He liked the planet and its people, and he always thought “a more energetic writer might have turned it into a series.” We are fortunate that recently he found himself thinking “Why not a novelette or two?” Readers who would like to learn more about the original tale—along with revelations about marriage, cats, SF readers, and the Ace Double publishing saga—can browse the literary memoir the author is publishing on his website, www.philart.net/tompurdom.

  “He has decided to attack the patrol,” Jila-Jen said. “Tonight. In the dark. You and your warband will scout. And carry me and two others.”

  Vigdal’s tail started to stiffen. He stifled the impulse and held it curled against his body.

  “They will know we’re in the area if we do that,” Vigdal said. “They’ll be alerted. We’ll face an alerted force when we attack the road.”

  Vigdal had deliberately arranged himself in a sitting position, with his hindquarters tucked under him and his weight resting on his forepaws—the most relaxed, unthreatening posture a member of his species could assume. Jila-Jen had tried to reciprocate, and he had done about as well as his species could. Jila-Jen was bending forward, with the weight of his upper body resting on the knuckles of his left hand, and he had let himself lean to one side, so he would look almost languid.

  No Warrior of Imeten could ever eliminate the threat inherent in his presence, of course. Vigdal could still feel the tensions and conflicts that permeated every conversation he conducted with Jila-Jen’s species. They both knew the dartblower hooked to the back of Jila-Jen’s harness could be whipped into action in seconds. The iron sword at Jila-Jen’s waist could be unhooked and swung against an enemy’s neck in a single, sweeping motion.

  The tree people always looked awkward on the ground. In the trees, Jila-Jen could flow across the branches on all fours and sail from handhold to handhold. He could hold himself steady with one hand and manipulate a weapon with the other. On the ground, without his weapons, he would be a prey animal—a clumsy creature who scuttled around on his knuckles and hind legs, without the natural grace of a fourlegs.

  But everything had changed in that legendary age when fate had taught the tree people their hands could be used to fashion things that had never existed....

  “We are supposed to kill the enemy and make them guard their land and their wealth,” Jila-Jen said. “Nama-Nanat says we can do that by attacking their patrol. We will kill every Drovil in the patrol. And attack the iron road if we can.”

  Vigdal was holding his big round head slightly bowed, as if he was pondering every word he heard. The tree people didn’t like it when you looked them in the eye without a break. “And what if we don’t kill all of them?” Vigdal said. “What if some of them escape and get to the road before us? And we can’t attack the road because the Drovils have been alerted? Are we supposed to give up the chance to steal iron and free captives just so we can ambush a patrol?”

  Jila-Jen straightened up. The fur on the side of his head stiffened into bristles that turned his face into a broad angry mask. His free hand gripped the hilt of his sword.

  “Nama-Nanat has given his orders!” Jila-Jen screamed. “Na
ma-Nanat is your commander. He commands! We obey!”

  Harold the Human had placed Nama-Nanat in command. Harold had met with the five Master Harmonizers selected by the itiji and they had all agreed it was the best course. This would be the first time a war party of the tree people and a warband of the itiji would fight under a single leader.

  The Five Masters had engaged in the usual chatter. Their orange eyes had flashed and fluttered. Their heads had bobbed like windblown flowers as they vented their dissatisfaction. And in the end, after all their talk, they had come to the same conclusion they would have reached if they had never said a word. The Warriors of Imeten would only respond to orders and they would not accept orders from an itiji. That day had not come.

  Harold was younger than the Five. He obviously lacked certain kinds of wisdom. But he was the being the Warriors of Imeten would listen to. He was the being they had to listen to.

  “The Imetens have accepted the will of the Goddess,” Harold said. “Most of them truly believe they must accept you as equals because I defeated their champion. Many of them realize you’ve made them stronger. Some of them even realize you understand strategy better than they do. But I can tell you many of them resent it, too. And some of them feel confused. They’ve been taught all their lives that you’re supposed to be their slaves. And now they’re being told their Goddess has changed her mind. Some of them are even claiming there was something wrong with my fight—that it didn’t truly tell them the will of the Goddess. We have to move carefully. We can’t make too many demands on their emotions.”

  Harold had spoken in his own language. He was still learning one of the simpler languages of the itiji. The itiji who worked with him had found it was easier to just add his language to their repertoire.

  Vigdal had attended the council because the Five Masters had already agreed he would be the designated harmonizer of a warband that would contain eight warfriends. He had maintained the Ordeal of Silence—an act of self-repression that could feel just as painful, in its way, as the restraint of the mating urge—and stretched across a bed of blue and yellow shade flowers while they reviewed, once again, the strategy the Five had recommended to Harold.