TVA BABY and Other Stories

by Terry Bisson

  “It’s not going to evolve any farther,” said Boudin.

  “No reason to,” I said. “Unless. Unless you seeded the planet with a killer—or killers. Killer robots. Berserkers that would pursue this species, relentlessly. Something that was big, fast, and hard to kill. And smart.”

  “Charlie’s Angels,” said Prang. “I get it. Survival of the fittest. Berserker robots with a mission: Evolve or else!”

  The BMW’s cell phone rang.

  “If it’s Ward don’t let him keep you on the phone,” I reminded Prang. “And if it’s our friend…”

  “Prang here. Hello?”

  “You got it,” said a deep, smoky, dreamlike voice. “Now kill me, please.”

  “Got what?” Prang asked, as she scattered kids and crossing guards.

  “Kill you?” I asked, eyes squeezed shut.

  “So I can rest,” said the Enormé over the car phone. “There were twelve of us. I am the last.”

  “Twelve what? Angels … I mean, robots?” The 740i has a speakerphone; I switched it on.

  “One in each corner of your tear drop globe. We stalked and killed your kind, or what was then your kind. We slaughtered the weaklings and pushed the rest into the caves and cold hills. Out of the pretty plains. Away from the meat runs.”

  “The dragon myth,” said Boudin. “Racial memory.”

  “There’s no such thing as racial memory,” said Prang.

  “Nonsense,” I told her. “What is culture but racial memory?”

  “Then I slept for a thousand years. Dreaming. But I could not speak. Xomilcho could not hear. He would not kill me.”

  “Xomilcho?” Prang lit a fresh Camel. “Sounds like a chain store.”

  “Sounds Olmec to me,” said Boudin. “Was Xomilcho the one who put you in the tomb?”

  “Saved me from the moon. Let me dream and dream. But he would not kill me.”

  “We want to let you dream too,” I said. “Where are you?”

  “City of the Dead…”

  “Which one?” Prang asked.

  “C-c-city …” the Enormé began stuttering like a bad CD. “Can’t t-t-tell w-which …”

  Click.

  “What happened?” asked Prang.

  “We overloaded him,” said Boudin. “If this berserker hunch is right, the Enormé is programmed to evade. He can’t tell us where he is any more than we could decide not to breathe.”

  “Then we have to check them all, it’s getting late!” said Prang, stepping on the gas. I didn’t want to watch, so I ducked my head and watched the blinking light on the display. Our speed was alarming, even there.

  Then I saw another blinking light, in the upper left hand corner of the screen. It was stationary.

  “Head north,” I said. “Crescent Street, near the corner of Citadelle.”

  “There are no cemeteries there,” Prang protested. “Is this another hunch?”

  “Yes!”

  That was enough for her. I put my hands over my ears to block out the screaming of tires as she made a U-turn.

  “Damn!” said Prang, as she power slid off Citadelle onto Crescent.

  I opened my eyes just enough to see a run-down business district, with a Karate School, a Starbucks, a Woolworth’s and an abandoned movie theater.

  No cemeteries. Even though the street looked spooky enough in the gathering dusk. The sun was setting.

  “A wild goose chase!” said Prang.

  “Wait!” said Boudin. “Look what’s playing.”

  I opened my eyes a little wider.

  The marquee of the BIJOU was missing a few letters, but the title of the last feature was still readable: CI Y OF HE DEAD.

  We parked in front of Starbucks where the BMW wouldn’t be so conspicuous. The BIJOU’s wide front doors were chained shut, but I figured there would be an exit in the back, and I was right. I figured it would be smashed open—and I was right.

  It was dark inside. The smells of old popcorn, tears, laughter, Cokes and kisses all mingled in a musty bouquet. The seats had all been torn out, sold (I supposed) to coffee shops or antique malls where they would seem quaint. The Enormé lay on the bare sloping concrete floor, his “eyes” staring straight up at the baroque ceiling with its cupids and curliques, angels and occasional gargoyle.

  I approached and touched one great three-toed foot, like the first time. And like the first time, he was as cold as any stone. And I was glad he was cold, here, in the gloom, where he was safe from the rays of the rising moon.

  “Cool!” whispered Prang. “Villon and his hunches! Give me your phone and I’ll call the museum.”

  “Wait,” I said. “Enormé might have something to say. He uses the phone to talk.”

  “I can dream here,” said the familiar voice, booming through the theater. “I am safe here.”

  “Now he’s coming through the speakers!” said Boudin. “Apparently he can access any electronic grid. Even turn it on. Even supply it with power.”

  “I am the last one,” Enormé said. “They want you to kill me.”

  “Who?” I asked. “Who made you?”

  “The Makers. Made us to make you. Sailed the stars and found the little tear-drop worlds where life could be nudged awake. Yours was not called Earth then. It was not called anything. Your kind was all over the planet, silent but strong.”

  “Strong?” Prang said. “We were weak.”

  “That’s a myth,” said Boudin. “Actually, Homo was the most impressive killer on the planet, even without language and culture. With fire and hands, sticks and stones, hunting in packs, he could live anywhere and face down even the saber tooth.”

  “Yes,” Enormé’s voice boomed. “You were the king of the beasts. We made you something more.”

  “Made us?” Prang asked.

  “To survive, you had to kill us. To kill us you had to develop tools, cooperation, language. Understanding. Kill us one by one. We were hunted, with sticks, with stones. Smashed with boulders, thrown into fiery pits, buried alive. There was no dreaming in that dance. I am the last.”

  “How come we never found the others?” Prang asked, lighting the Camel in her mouth off the one in her hand.

  “Maybe we did,” I said. I was thinking of statues in Greece, India, the Middle East. But Enormé corrected me:

  “All that is solid melts into air. Killed we are set free. Back to nothingness. It is the end of our pain. And of our usefulness.”

  “You don’t mind dying, then?” asked Prang.

  “No. Killing is what we do. What I do. Dying is what we are. What I am.”

  “We don’t want to kill you,” I said. “We want to let you dream.”

  “Xomilcho let me sleep. He kept me away from the pearl world that awakens me. He let me sleep the centuries. Then, a hundred years ago I began to dream.”

  “He must mean radio!” said Boudin. “As soon as there was an electronic grid on the planet, it awakened something in him.”

  “I can only dream when I am not awake. I have been dreaming for a hundred years. You awakened me so that I could barely dream.”

  “That was our mistake,” said Prang. “We will let you sleep. We’ll build a special room for you in the museum, and you can dream forever.”

  “They want you to kill me,” said Enormé. “They want to come.”

  “Cool,” said Prang. “They can come too.”

  I felt a chill. “Don’t be so sure. We don’t know what they are. Or what they want.”

  “When we are killed, it is done,” Enormé said. “The Makers will come.”

  “He’s a transmitter!” Boudin said. “When he dies, they will know we have survived. He’s a trigger, a signal.”

  “Or an alarm,” I said. “If we kill him they know we have evolved. But they will also know we didn’t evolve past killing.” “What are you saying?” Boudin asked.

  “Maybe we’re not supposed to kill the last one. Maybe it’s a test.”

  “Is that another hunch?” asked Pra
ng.

  “Maybe it’s not our decision to make, since it involves the whole world.”

  “They want you to kill me,” Enormé repeated, his voice echoing through the theater. “The Makers will come down from the sky. It will be over.”

  “Forget about dying!” said Prang. She pointed at her watch, then at Boudin and me. “Let’s leave him here in the dark till morning. Then we have to get Enormé back to the museum and out of harm’s way before the police find him. Otherwise…”

  “Too late,” said Boudin, looking up. I could hear the whump-whump-whump of a chopper hovering overhead.

  “Damn!” said Prang. “Just when…”

  The helicopter drowned out her voice. Boudin and I looked at each other helplessly. We heard footsteps on the roof, on the fire escape; we heard sirens outside.

  CRASH! Suddenly the stage door burst open. “Stand back! Hostages, stand back.”

  “Ward!” I cried. “We’re not hostages! Don’t shoot. We just discovered what this thing is. It’s…”

  “I know what it is, it’s a monster!” said Ward, stepping in front of his troops with a bullhorn. “I’ve got the place surrounded!”

  And he did. The front door burst open and armed cops appeared. They all wore flak jackets. Two carried antitank guns.

  “Don’t shoot!” Prang said, stepping coolly into the line of fire. “Ward, I can explain everything!”

  “This had better not be a trick!” Ward shouted.

  “No trick!” said Prang. “It’s a federal matter. Hell, it’s international. And we need your help, Chief Ward!”

  It was the “Chief” that did it. “Hold your fire, men!” Ward shouted. The SWAT cops lowered their weapons.

  “Close call!” I whispered to Boudin, as Prang took Ward’s arm and pulled him aside. She spoke fast, in low tones, pointing first at the Enormé, then at the ceiling, then back at the Enormé.

  Ward looked puzzled, then skeptical, then amazed. Boudin smiled at me, and we breathed a collective sigh of relief.

  Too soon.

  Behind Ward and Prang, through the smashed-open rear exit, I could see a vacant lot and bare trees, outlinedagainst the rising moon. The silver light washed across the concrete floor like spilled paint.

  “Ward! Prang! Close the door!” I shouted.

  Too late. I heard a groan behind me.

  “No!” I heard my own voice shouting, as Enormé stood up. The saucer eyes were shining; a voice boomed over the theater speakers: “Kill me…”

  TAT TAT TAT! BLAM BLAM!

  Bullets whined as they ricocheted off the pseudo stone. Enormé spun around and around in a grotesque dance, his wide eyes pleading, his stubby arms reaching out, for the door, for the moon…

  “Hold your fire!” I yelled. KA-BLAM!

  The theater rocked with the blast of an anti-tank shell. Enormé spun one last time—then shattered, and fell to the concrete floor in pieces.

  “No!” I yelled, stumbling, falling to my knees.

  It was all over.

  Prang and Ward edged closer and closer to the shapeless pile of pseudo stone. Boudin helped me up, and I joined them.

  “What the hell…” Ward muttered. The pieces were starting to smoke, like dry ice. The Enormé was fading: all that is solid melts into air. We watched in astonished silence until the pieces all were gone, as if he had never been.

  “What the hell was that, a ghost?” asked Ward, looking at me almost with respect.

  I shook my head and retreated to the open door. I couldn’t answer him. I couldn’t bear to look at him.

  “That was a robot!” said Prang, angrily extracting the last Camel from her pack. “From outer space. And priceless, you idiot!”

  “Sent here half a million years ago to accelerate our evolution,” Boudin explained. “And to signal its Makers when we were finally capable of destroying it.”

  “Well, it’s sure as hell destroyed,” said Ward. “So I guess we sure as hell passed the test.”

  “No, you fool.” I stepped outside, past the puzzled cops, and looked up at the brilliant cold full moon, and beyond it, a few faraway stars, scattered like broken glass across the dark floor of the universe.

  I wished I had a cigarette. I wondered what the Makers were and what they would do with us when they came.

  “No,” I said again, to no one in particular, “I think we flunked.”

  Author’s Afterword

  I feel bad, but only a little, about my Epistolary Epic “Pirates of the Somali Coast”: the actual Somali pirates are never so cruel! Originally published by Ellen Datlow in Subterranean magazine, it made Hartwell’s Year’s Best SF. So did the deliberately retro “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime,” which was written for Yesterday’s Tomorrows: The Golden Age of SF.

  The rigorously Noir “Charlie’s Angels,” also a Datlow (SciFiction) and Hartwell pick, had a grievous astronomical error in its original incarnation which has been, also rigorously, corrected.

  “Catch ‘Em in the Act,” my first and only Little Shop story, was bought by Patrick Nielsen Hayden for www.Tor.com. So was the rather more controversial “TVA Baby.” Just for the record, a TVA baby is a Southerner whose Yankee father came down to work for Roosevelt’s Tennessee Valley Authority.

  “Farewell Atlantis,” my first and only Generation Ship story, was published in Fantasy & Science Fiction at precisely moment that a hoax novel with the same title showed up on the internet promoting the disastrous disaster movie 2012.

  Coincidence? Ask the Mayans. Or was it the Aztecs?

  “Private Eye” was written for Playboy, the traditional home for my Romantic Comedies. Alas, they passed, and Gordon Van Gelder picked it up for F&SF.

  “BYOB FAQ” was published in Nature magazine’s series of SF short shorts; they didn’t want “CORONA

  CENTURION™ FAQ” but Gordon came to the rescue again. It has already been overtaken by reality: Dick Cheney actually has such a heart!

  “Captain Ordinary” was intended for Geoff Ryman’s special “mundane” issue of Interzone, illustrating his contrarian argument that SF should eschew faster-than-light travel, telepathy, superhero mutants, and the like, and dramatize more likely (mundane) futures. Geoff wasn’t amused, but Rudy Rucker liked it for his prestigious online e-zine Flurb.

  “Billy and the Circus Girl,” is the only Billy story not included in my recent Billy’s Book collection. It’s not for kids. Except for Rudy, who took it for Flurb.

  “A Special Day” was commissioned by New York Magazine for their 9/11 fifth anniversary issue (2006). They turned it down as “too sentimental,” a first for me. I spent the kill fee on six-year-old bourbon and ran it on Amazon Shorts instead.

  “The Stamp,” my shortest short-short ever, was written for Boy’s Life but published online in Lone Star Stories instead. There will always be a Texas.

  This is my fourth collection, and my first for PM. You will notice that several of the stories in this batch were rejected and then rescued. In California used-car parlance they would be called “salvage titles.” They still start and run, though, at least for me.

  I hope they work for you as well.

  Terry Bisson, who was for many years a Kentuckian living in New York City, is now a New Yorker living in California. In addition to his Hugo and Nebula award winning science fiction, Bisson has written children’s books, comics, screenplays and biographies of John Brown, Nat Turner, and Mumia Abu-Jamal.

  He is also the host of a popular San Francisco reading series (SFinSF) and the Editor of PM’s Outspoken Authors pocketbook series.

  He lives in Oakland and rides a KLR650.

  PM PRESS

  SPECTACULAR FICTION

  Fire on the Mountain

  Terry Bisson

  978-1-60486-087-0 $15.95

  It’s 1959 in socialist Virginia. The Deep South is an independent Black nation called Nova Africa. The second Mars expedition is about to touch down on the red planet. And a pregnant scientist is climbing the B
lue Ridge in search of her great-great grandfather, a teenage slave who fought with John Brown and Harriet Tubman’s guerrilla army.

  Long unavailable in the U.S., published in France as Nova Africa, Fire on the Mountain is the story of what might have happened if John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry had succeeded—and the Civil War had been started not by the slave owners but the abolitionists.

  About the Author:

  Terry Bisson, who was for many years a Kentuckian living in New York City, is now a New Yorker living in California. In addition to science fiction, he has written bios of Mumia Abu-Jamal and Nat Turner. He is also the host of a popular San Francisco reading series (SFinSF) and the Editor of PM’s new Outspoken Authors pocketbook series.

  “Few works have moved me as deeply, as thoroughly, as Terry Bisson’s Fire On The Mountain… With this single poignant story, Bisson molds a world as sweet as banana cream pies, and as briny as hot tears.”

  —Mumia Abu-Jamal, death row prisoner and author of Live From Death Row, from the Introduction.

  PM PRESS

  OUTSPOKEN AUTHORS

  Mammoths of the Great Plains

  Eleanor Arnason

  978-1-60486-075-7 $12

  When President Thomas Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark to explore the West, he told them to look especially for mammoths. Jefferson had seen bones and tusks of the great beasts in Virginia, and he suspected—he hoped!—that they might still roam the Great Plains. In Eleanor Arnason’s imaginative alternate history, they do: shaggy herds thunder over the grasslands, living symbols of the oncoming struggle between the Native peoples and the European invaders. And in an unforgettable saga that soars from the badlands of the Dakotas to the icy wastes of Siberia, from the Russian Revolution to the AIM protests of the 1960s, Arnason tells of a modern woman’s struggle to use the weapons of DNA science to fulfill the ancient promises of her Lakota heritage.