Asimov's Science Fiction: April/May 2014

by Penny Publications

  "Well. That lady does sound fascinating."

  "Except," said Sandra. "Doing nothing is incredibly difficult."

  A doubtful noise leaked out of him.

  "Quentin," she said. "Hold your life exactly where it is now. Nothing about you and yours can change. You'll always have the same friends, the same routines. You'll never move to another apartment or alter your beliefs, find a new job or new lovers. How easy would that be? Not very. And now imagine that same trick applied to Constantinople and its enormous wealth. Retain all of your far-flung holdings. Your enemies remain your enemies, yet you never enter into open war. And meanwhile your fragile alliance with Rome and the Latin Deipara can be burnished but never altered. Six and a half years, and nothing becomes new in your very complex world. For any leader, wouldn't that be a wonderful accomplishment?"

  Quentin narrowed his gaze, saying, "Six and a half years."

  Sandra heard implications that he never intended.

  After a moment's consideration, she kissed his cheek and then warned him, "Let's not get ahead of ourselves, shall we?"

  Quentin was reading about dirt. Specif ically, a peculiar and very old layer of shocked quartz and ash that was scattered across the world. Mongolian researchers found the anomaly years ago, but it wasn't until an Iberian paleontologist made the same discovery that the Asians revealed their secret data. A single catastrophic firestorm had engulfed the earth, and the dirt's elemental makeup wasn't only peculiar, it was meaningfully peculiar: An abundance of rare-earths, including iridium, revealing the presence of a large asteroid or comet that attacked the helpless world.

  Below the iridium, thunderbirds ruled.

  And above lay nothing but furry lactating queens.

  "When I was a girl," she began.

  And she hesitated, smiling at some cherished memory.

  A single hard click sounded, hot water flowing through pipes and the iron radiator.

  "Venus was alive," Sandra said. "Smart well-read people were certain that it was a warmer, wetter earth. I never read the fantastic fictions, but the ideas were floating free, and I spent quite a lot of time dreaming about life on that sister world."

  "What did the dreams show you?"

  "Nothing interesting," she stated, with conviction. "I wasn't an imaginative nineyear-old. But the World's War had just finished, and I pictured a tropical realm full of dark naked people who were happier and quite a lot nicer than we are."

  "That was 1948," Quentin thought.

  "The War killed my father," she said.

  She hadn't mentioned that before.

  "On my Venus," she said, "little girls don't lose fathers to bombs."

  "So you were thirteen when the Mongolian probe flew past Venus," he said, proving that he was paying attention. "No jungles found. Just one enormous oven and clouds of sulfuric acid."

  She moved over him, saying, "Mars could be alive, I hear. Even if it's just bacteria."

  Quentin queued up a few smart words about the manly Mongolians riding in their rocket ship.

  But she spoke first, saying, "I don't want another world contaminated."

  "I doubt our bacteria would survive there," he said.

  She eased away.

  "Quentin," she said. "I'm not worried about little bugs."

  The physics department's library subscribed to odd journals built from interesting, marginally comprehensible articles. There were also copies of famous papers by Bernice Easy and Ras Gobena and Katherine Tan, and honored nineteenth century textbooks, and at the back of the room stood a special bookcase, locked and unavailable to students and vagrants alike. Staring through the armored glass, Quentin read the most dangerous words. "Tritium" and "Uranium." "Fission" and "Fusion."

  "What are you doing?" a man snapped.

  For an instant, Quentin pictured the inside of a cold prison cell.

  But it was just Dr. Kale. A stocky, white-haired gentleman, Kale was an incorrigible smiler and natural jokester, and he was also the mind and heart of Warner physics. Undergraduates didn't usually get attention from researchers with his credentials. Informed rumor claimed that during the War, while great armies marched back and forth across Asia, this man sat beside a reactor in the Navajo Nation, playing some pivotal role building the West's first multi-kiloton bomb.

  "Maurus, is it?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "We haven't seen you here in awhile."

  "I graduated."

  "Yet I remember you. That's unusual." Blue eyes narrowed. "Still interested in the futurist fictions?"

  "Sometimes."

  "Researching nuclear fire, are you?"

  "No, sir."

  "Well, there's nothing behind those titles anyway. Introductory noise with a few wrong turns about isotope synthesis and chain reactions."

  "Wrong turns?"

  "Creative miscues. Words meant to confound our nonexistent enemies."

  Quentin nodded carefully.

  "So what's your interest today?"

  Needing an answer, he said, "Artificial minds."

  "Ah. Magic." Kale studied the young man. Maybe he liked what he remembered, but more likely, his mood had no relationship with this former biology student. Whatever his reason, the smile grew. "Do you want a glimpse of the future?"

  "Always, sir. Yes."

  Quentin's father was a Hero, and he was such an important Hero that the reasons for the medal and the honor remained obscure. But classmates and even adults often requested war stories from the Hero's son. Since Father shared almost nothing on the subject, Quentin had little to tell. He wasn't even sure where the medal was hiding inside his house. What Quentin knew was that his father served as a Marine in the Bellum Ocean. Just that fact was enough to make the other boys happy, and a lot of confident, speculative noise was offered about famous islands and obscure islands that were conquered by the vaunted Marines.

  Quentin liked the attention well enough to let his friends say and believe and even defend whatever stories they wrote for themselves.

  Of course very few citizens could be like Father, but many, many people were the opposite of Heroes.

  One day, a new girl came to class. She lived with her aunt and walked to school alone and went home alone, and everybody thought they knew her story: Her parents had been imprisoned for treason. Except nobody could understand the crime because treason was wrapped in secrecy—trials and the subsequent convictions normally kept out of the news. Just knowing about treacherous acts was a criminal offense, and that's why a ten-year-old boy didn't want to be anywhere near that silent, solitary girl.

  Then there was a morning when the new girl didn't walk to school.

  A full week passed without her sitting in class, and that's when someone started the rumor that her parents had been hanged for their crimes. It was a convincing story that patched over the questions and the gaps. Who knew what was real? But it turned out that the girl only had the varicella pox, and when her scabs were gone, she returned to school to discover that most people, even the teachers, believed the rumor. Her classmates watched her carefully, but a few girls did most of the teasing, particularly when tears erupted. And then the Pawnee teacher took the traitor's child by the arm and pulled her to the office, and the girl was sent back to the aunt as a disruption, and for the rest of the year, the varicella pox was called Traitor's Blight.

  Kale led the ex-student out of the library, making one side trip through the physics lounge. A couple of deferment boys were reading journals while a chubby girl did some high-end calculus with a pencil stub. Then they went to the basement, to a facility finished only this year. Quentin's heart kicked. Looking back at him, the professor winked when he asked, "Are you going to steal any secrets?"

  "Not today."

  "Good answer."

  An empty desk was set beside a heavy steel door.

  The man's laugh turned caustic, shrill. "We're supposed to post a guard, but funding hasn't come through. It isn't cheap, finding someone with enough clearance to
sit out here and see nothing."

  Quentin nodded amiably.

  "But that's how these things work. The rationality of our leaders continues to amaze me."

  Kale turned a long key while punching eight numbers. Then he twisted the big nickel-plated handle, and the door swung inward, exposing a long bright room filled with noisy machines. At least three students had enough clearance to direct the computer's genius. Punch cards were flying, reels of magnetic tape were spinning, and a wind blew into Quentin's face—the breath of enormous air conditioners that still weren't powerful enough to chill that extraordinary machine.

  Dr. Kale yelled out a name, asking, "Have you seen her?"

  One man said, "She's in the lounge, doing her calc, sir."

  "Thank you." The professor closed the door and secured it. "What do you think, Maurus?"

  "It's louder than I imagined."

  "And she's subject to breakdowns. And she's not particularly bright either." He led them back up the stairs, asking, "Have you heard of Grant's Principle?"

  "Computer power doubles every..." Quentin hesitated.

  "Three years."

  "Yes, sir." The man paused, suddenly whispering. "Why does it take so long, doubling the intelligence of a stupid mind?"

  "I don't know. There's a lot of engineering problems to answer."

  With a soft, disappointed voice, Kale asked, "But now which stupid mind am I talking about?"

  Quentin took a deep breath.

  And the old man turned and charged up the stairs, obviously wanting to be alone.

  "Hello."

  Quentin said, "Hello."

  A small airy sound came into his ear, and then she said, "It's Sandra."

  "Hello, Sandra."

  She was a different person on the telephone. Her voice was faster, while copper and electrons made her younger, less certain.

  "Are you ready for company?"

  He said, "Yes."

  "If not," she said.

  "No. I want you."

  Then she said nothing, and he saw a husband lurking.

  Sandra said, "I'm leaving now," and hung up.

  Sometimes the imaginary husband was old, bedridden, and mindless. But tonight he was fifty and alcoholic, and unapologetically violent. Quentin pictured a drunken bully chasing after his cheating bride, and the story unfolded in several directions, Quentin always playing the role of hero.

  In a universe of endless invention, every shattered skull is inevitable.

  Sandra's Theotokos, God-bearer to the Eastern Church, assumed her post ten days after her thirty-seventh birthday. Marian IX was a small, plain-faced woman and the titular head of a very profitable empire. She also served as the honorary admiral to the world's largest navy and the Holy Provider to a well-trained army based upon the armored cataphracts. In the final decade of the twelfth century, Byzantine holdings stretched from the Balkans to the northern fringe of the Sudan and west to the Ionian Sea and Libya, with the Holy Land and Anatolia, Syria, and a sliver of the Caucasus Mountains constituting the long, ever-shifting border with the Maimun world. But peace reigned during her time, the old enemies of Christianity more eager to wage war against one another than attack Europa or Egypt. What's more, there was meaningful trade between every portion of the known world, including a Western Empire enjoying a modest rebirth.

  The Theotokos already had four children with various fathers. Her three daughters accepted landholdings and accomplished husbands, while her ten-year-old son was taught how to ride and fight.

  Power and the Church's purse strings negated that plain face and the slender, almost boyish body, and Marian IX reveled in the endless choices available to her. Her own husband was elderly, possibly senile. But two youthful advisors often peeled away her official robes, and occasionally both entertained her at the same time.

  "Jealous?" Quentin asked.

  "Of so much," Sandra said.

  "But was she really that powerful?"

  Sandra rose up on an elbow, acquiring a purposeful height. "You think the Eastern Church was controlled by its male advisors, not the Theotokos."

  "I've read that once or twice."

  Sandra was happiest when she was the smartest person in bed. Facing just the right level of ignorance, she smiled, and then she looked across the room, admitting that yes, the predominantly male Council served as a powerful Senate, riding hard over the directions of government. And the Eastern Bishops, men as well as women, chose the Theotokos from among their less ambitious colleagues. But Quentin was falling for the old Roman half-truth. After the Great Schism in the 550s, the West embraced the useful myth that their God-bearers, the Latin Deipara, were superior to the flashy, hypocritical East. But of course the Roman West was a very different realm, poorer and far less educated. Its priesthood was mostly female, but that was because so many young women had lost their ancestral lands. Numbers didn't mean sure power. Meanwhile in the East, free citizens enjoyed many more opportunities. There was stability and Law. A sixteen-year-old girl—the customary age of adulthood—wasn't likely to misplace her family wealth. And landless ladies didn't have to pledge their souls to the Church, free to become merchants and shop owners and bankers. Yes, women were scarcer in the Church hierarchy, and that's why men appeared to dominate. But while the Theotokos was many things, she was never the simple figurehead.

  "Okay," he muttered.

  "Testosterone," she said. "That's what ran the military and often set foreign policy. But Byzantine women always held title to the best lands. And only a woman could be heaven-touched—the face and voice that people worshipped long after the face and voice of their Christ had vanished from this corporeal world."

  Quentin always tried to be the good student. But he couldn't shake the image of God's chosen representative on earth stripped nude, happily sandwiched between burly, sweat-greased boys.

  "Equality," Sandra whispered.

  "What's that?"

  "When Marian IX was inside Sophia's Church in Constantinople, presiding over thousands of worshippers, there was equality between the sexes. Men had their realm, women another, but both sexes kneeled as equals, taking the flesh and blood of the Christ." She paused, eyes wandering into the bedroom's high corners. Then a quiet, dry, and enthralled voice said, "A rough balance existed in their world. The wealth and the possibilities were shared, and it would be hard to prove that any system as rich has ever come into this world again."

  "What are you reading?"

  He wasn't certain. Last week's issue of Mammal was opened on the tabletop. "An article," he managed.

  The girl laughed at him. "I can see that."

  Quentin was struggling with the girl's name. Emma, wasn't it? The pale tops of her breasts were distractions, offered to Quentin when she bent over to examine the title. It took him a moment to craft the rest of his answer. "It's about an extinct bear," he said. "From Asia, the Han Kingdom."

  "A bear?"

  "Except it ate bamboo. Nothing else."

  She kept laughing. "That's not much of a bear."

  He looked at the photograph of a white skull, winning back some of his poise.

  "What did the bamboo-eater look like?"

  "Black and white, according to the legend."

  The girl settled on the adjacent chair. "I knew you'd be here," she remarked. "You're Quentin Maurus, right?"

  "And you?"

  "Emalee Notion," she said, offering a tiny hand.

  Not Emma. He took hold of the warm fingers and palm, and she clapped her other hand on the back of his.

  They let go of each other, and she asked, "Is it old?"

  "What?"

  "The bear." He had become a fountain of endless amusement. Giggling, she said, "It's some kind of fossil, right?"

  "No, it vanished just a few centuries ago. Though there's hope that a few of them survive in remote valleys."

  Feigning interest, Emalee smiled at the pages and then at him. "I knew you'd be here."

  "Yeah?"

 
; "I've seen you reading. You're awfully interested in science, aren't you?"

  He started to answer.

  But one hand grabbed at the journal, flipping over to the cover. "That's neat," she declared. "A magazine all about mammals, huh?"

  "It is."

  "Do you date much, Quentin?"

  The girl had a fine face, her mouth thin and the brown hair long, brown eyes throwing light in every direction.

  "What's much?" he asked.

  She kept laughing, unable to stop.

  He said, "Sure, I date."

  She breathed and said, "Good. Let's go out."

  He said, "Yes."

  "Tonight," she said. "My treat."

  It was Monday, late afternoon.

  "What's wrong?" she asked.

  Nothing. Nothing at all.

  In the spring of 1198, Marian IX was in her sixth year as God-bearer to the Eastern Empire. She would soon die, though there was no way to know that. As a young woman with several lovers and great authority, one of her duties was to meet emissaries from the far reaches of the world: Romans and Berbers, Franks and Saxons and Vikings, plus quite a few Maimuns who found their way to the courts of Constantinople. These weren't just the neighboring Persians and Arabs, but there were Indians and Turks and even Chinese diplomats and traders who crossed half of the world to kneel before her. In this mishmash of languages and conflicting customs, protocols held sway. Perhaps the Theotokos wished the entire world behaved with the same ceremonial poise that was demanded of her. But even this most powerful leader could barely nudge the actions of millions, and Marian IX's place was to make polite conversation, sign treaties and declarations, while keeping her state secure and enhancing the gold that passed through her empire—the wealthiest realm in that lost world.

  One day, a bearded young man rode into the great city on a peculiarly small horse. From a region too distant and too thinly populated to seem real, the visitor spoke through a Turkish interpreter, describing oceans of grass and mountains like islands, bitter winters giving way to burning summers that killed every lesser man. And it was very much a man's world, he explained to the God-bearer. Although his people had always preferred primitive, timeless beliefs, they were now receiving the Word of the Maimun, and that Man Prophet was winning new converts every day.