Brave New Worlds
Page 53
Jordan felt a tingling in his neck as Thomas pulled him close for the last time. Thomas embraced Jordan and made connection. He said, "Timer Andrew walked out. He walked out of the mine and they didn't stop him. He worked for them on the surface and they gave him time. He worked for them in the mine and they gave him more time. Now, I will give you time. "
Then Thomas put both his hands on Jordan's chest and pushed him away. Surprised, Jordan fell to the floor. He heard the control voice. "Driver T-for-Thomas group M and Loader J-For-Jordan group in violation of quota as required by ordinance 62. 1. 3. . . "
Thomas quickly he raised his fist and thrust one finger into the air as Jordan looked up from the floor.
Jordan remembered the sign instinctively. He had seen it as a boy at the breeding farm. His muscles tensed as if he had been programmed. As the particle weapon charged he propelled himself through the narrow darkness between the machine and the door, from the white sunroom to the dark of the mine. He could feel the burning backscatter on his legs as he pulled himself through the gap. The beam blast ricocheted off the rear wall of the room and tore through the same space he claimed for himself.
He didn't turn back. Outside he grabbed his work suit and put it on with his helmet. He stepped into his boots and ran down the catwalk to the elevators. He reached the cars leading to the mine entrance and watched the lights flash as the elevator rose to meet him. He felt tired and he didn't know why. The air had grown thick. It was hard to breathe.
The elevator arrived and he entered the car with another shift. The weight in the car was off-balance and the doors would not close. Slowly, he edged his way past the thirty-one men in the car. When he neared the front he placed his hands on the back of the man in front of him. With a spark of thought, he pushed the startled man clear of the car and out into the empty gallery.
The elevator sensed the change in weight. The doors closed and they began to descend. Jordan felt a tingling in his neck. then he heard the control voice.
"Stand clear of Loader J-for-Jordan group A. " the men in the car pressed themselves into the walls of the car clearing a space around him as the elevator came to a halt. As the door opened, Jordan could see the metallic gleam of the particle weapon stationed at the elevator door. He thought of the hot beam. He could see the warning lights on the unit make the spectral shift from green to red as it charged. He remembered the ricochet from the strike that had killed Driver Thomas only moments before.
The doors opened completely and the machine inched forward to fill the chamber with its deadly radiation. Jordan dove toward the machine. He clawed at the cables on its exposed surface and pulled himself past it and out of the elevator. He stood behind the machine and turned briefly to see the thirty men in blue overalls and white hardhats fall limp in the elevator car.
Jordan ran to his machine. He followed the empty mine corridors until he felt vibration in the air. He could feel the rumbling in his feet, the pressure waves in the air pounded against his chest as he neared the mine activity.
He could feel the steam and dust in his face. He saw the clouds of yellow-gray rock and black ore blasted to dust under the pressure of the waterhammer and the loader. Suddenly, the vibration stopped.
The men turned as he arrived. Waterhammer and Gaffer stood looking at him as he approached his silent machine. He found the heavy gaffer's crowbar lying on the ground next to the loader. He lifted it as the lights began to flicker.
Jordan leveled the rod at the yellow box mounted on the side of his machine and swung. He propelled the heavy iron rod against the yellow box. With the vibration of each impact the muscles in his arms tightened, bulged, and burned like a beam flash. He could feel the memory of Driver Thomas grow like an animal in him. Its arms and legs pressed outward from his chest. It was a cold uncomfortable feeling. He imagined the maintenance men lifting Thomas's limp body and putting it in the disposal chute. He could see Thomas's face, limp and expressionless—a face that had only moments before told him he was as valuable as the ore he drilled.
Men valued as ore. Men valued as men.
The men in the mine watched him then looked upward toward the portable lighting that began to go dark under command from control.
Jordan pulled his body into each crowbar swing. He could feel the metal box yield slightly under each blow. Darkness enveloped them like termination. He swung in the blackness, remembering where the box had been. He could feel it crumpling under the blows of the heavy iron bar. Suddenly, he took a swing and the rod continued farther than it had gone before. He dropped the rod and felt the machine. He could feel the box dangling from cables connecting it to the loader. He grabbed the box and pulled. the cables hung firm.
Then he felt arms around his waist. He stopped for a moment. The arms released him and he felt hands travelling along body, up to his shoulders, over the ripples in his arms. Then the hands were on his hands. And then they were gone. He felt the box move in his hands. Someone was pulling on it. Jordan leaned backward and pulled in time with the second pair of hands. Time after time he pulled until the box came free and he stumbled backward.
Jordan dropped the box and mounted the machine. Once inside felt along the control console and flipped the switch. He felt the vibration in his seat as the loader sprang to life. He turned on the head lights and illuminated the mine shaft. Instinctively, he reached for the control socket and slapped it to his neck. Instead of hearing a hiss of static and the voice from within his head there was silence. the gauge and display panels were dark.
He sat and stared at the men standing in the mine. They looked back at him motionless. They waited for an action. Jordan left the cab. He went to each man on the floor and pushed the switches on the control connections on their necks to "cable. " Without a cable connected they would not hear commands—an offense for which they could all be killed.
Waterhammer stood along side the loader looking in. His waterknife hung limp around his chest from its straps. The gaffer stood holding the crowbar. Jordan got back into the cab. He remembered the tightness he felt in his legs when he stopped the loader in front of the wounded men. The feeling returned. He thought of Thomas. He smashed his foot onto the accelerator and turned the machine around. He grit his jaws tight. He gripped the controls as his palms grew wet and his knuckles faded white and bloodless. He felt he was watching someone else.
Jordan aimed the machine's shovel at a yellow control box on the wall and drove into it with such force that the metal shovel blade slashed through it and into the soft rock in the wall. the gaffers and waterhammers were free.
There was a burst of white steam from beside the vehicle as Waterhammer regained control of his tool. Gaffer freed the hoses and followed behind as Waterhammer aimed his tool forward and leapt onto the tracks for the ore train. He stopped, turned toward Jordan, and held his hand up in a fist.
Jordan felt the adrenaline jolt as it hit his bloodstream and scratched energy against his muscles. He turned the loader and drove onto the tracks. Water-hammer nodded, and Jordan hit the accelerator. The loader lurched forward, up the tracks, toward salvation and the word.
Jordan could see the track appearing from the blackness of the mine shaft as his loader rolled forward. He could feel unfamiliar vibrations in his seat. He knew a train was coming, but he knew there was a vibration within himself as well. He imagined the vibration was burning, an intensity he had never known.
In an eye blink an ore train was upon him. It plowed at full speed into his shovel and drove the loader backward. Jordan was thrown out of his seat. His body crashed into the gauge-panel and windshield of his cab. The loader door flapped open against its hinges. He shook his head. The pain started as an annoying itch, then crescendoed to an intolerable explosion.
His vision blurred. He tried to see out of the front window of the loader. Wetness dripped from his forehead and stung his eyes. Through the fog of pain and blood, he could see men leaving the train. Maintenance men. Surface men. Men with weapons.
>
He heard Thomas's words, "They can't terminate us all. "
Jordan pushed himself backward onto the seat and smashed his foot down onto the accelerator. The loader lurched forward. Its shovel cut into the small train. The train yielded, twisting and rolling off the tracks as the shovel mangled the metal in front of it.
A maintenance man in white overalls and a blue helmet appeared in the loader doorway. Jordan saw the man level a particle gun toward him. There was a blast of white from behind that turned into a dark mist. The maintenance man fell from the loader in two pieces as the white blade of water slashed again. Jordan leaned over and looked out of the loader door. The uniformed man had been cut in half. His feet and arms twitched as a blotch of dark liquid widened around him. Jordan had seen so many gaffers and waterhammers in the same condition. The sight held no significance to him.
Unconsciously, he tapped the command to signify a dirty load.
There was another burst of white. With a single twist of his waist Waterhammer had cut across the ranks of men escaping the train. Then he trained his water blade on the train and sliced across it. Jordan took a breath, and manipulated the loader's controls. His mind filled with Thomas's words as he worked the machine unconsciously. He pushed the train pieces aside with his mechanical arms and legs. Man and machine.
"Tiger," he thought. "I am the tiger burning bright. " His arms and legs shook.
Waterhammer trotted up the tunnel firing his tool as a weapon. Jordan watched him disappear into the darkness. He took a breath, and felt the pain in his head sink to his chest and open a void. An emptiness opened in him again as he watched the gaffer follow Waterhammer up the tunnel freeing the hoses, disconnecting and reconnecting them to new water sources as they moved.
Fearful symmetry.
Jordan followed them and kept them in the flaming life of the vehicle headlights. Waterhammer destroyed the yellow control boxes that he found mounted on the tunnel walls. They came to a junction of tunnels where a group of men were returning from a shift at the mine face.
The men stopped and watched as Jordan rolled past. He held his fist up with one finger extended.
"Run. "
Then they were past the junction and back into the shaft.
Jordan rolled forward and upward. And suddenly there were men all around. Waterhammers and gaffers. They marched along side Jordan's loader. Some were curious and threw question signs in the men's sign language. Most just followed. At each junction in the tunnel they met more men who joined them.
Jordan forgot the pain in his head. He wiped the blood from his eyes and kept the headlights from his machine trained forward. Waterhammer cut into a yellow control box and a connector fell out.
Jordan heard words. The voice was the control voice but the words were those of Andrew. The words of change. "Love will save the men. They can't terminate us all. " He could see the men touch their necks. They looked at each other wondering what had happened. And he saw the strange connector from the broken box attached to Waterhammer's neck.
Waterhammer's face split wide in a smile. Jordan saw Andrew and Thomas in his mind. From the pain and the emptiness, from the void within him came a spark as warm as the sunroom. A spark as warm as life.
Waterhammer quoted Andrew's book for them to hear: "I will not cease from mental fight, nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, till we have built Jerusalem, in England's green and pleasant land. "
Jordan wiped the blood from his eyes and willed his machine forward as the men followed. He could feel the vibration of their footsteps as the crowd multiplied. And then there was light in the distance. It was a light he had never seen before—bright and blue white. It didn't flicker or strobe against his blinking eyes. He pressed down on the accelerator as the train track slid beneath his wheels and reflected the white light. The light grew. He could see shapes inside it. Colors. Colors he had never seen.
It grew until it was as large as the loader. Then it was along side him. It was above him. It was all around. His head swiveled under command from his eyes to absorb, to know. His dark world faded behind him as a new bright world opened ahead.
He secured the vehicle and jumped to the ground. A strange soft ground. The light engulfed him. It warmed him, caressing his body from all sides as if he were immersed in a warm ocean. His head, his body, his legs, all warmed to life and refueled by the glory of the brightness. He looked up and saw the lamp. He felt light and full of power.
Men rushed around him. They waved their arms and ran. Some fell on the ground and stared upward. Jordan saw machines and shapes he had never seen before. He looked from side to side but couldn't find the walls. The ceiling was invisible. The power inside him burst and he felt his face tighten. His mouth opened. He bared his teeth as he felt himself press the air from his lungs. He saw other men doing the same. Teeth bared, they ran with the edges of their mouths pulled up toward their eyes.
Then he was running too. Running through the chambers without the walls or ceiling. Running past the shapes and the machines, the warmth of the great lamp above powering his strength. He ran. He bared his teeth and forced the air from his lungs until his throat ached.
Jordan came upon Waterhammer standing alone. The man had removed his tool and his clothing. He opened his mouth and held his arms outstretched as Jordan approached. Jordan walked between his arms, put his head over Waterhammer's shoulders, and pressed his neck against Waterhammer's neck. Their control sockets touched.
"What the hammer? What the chain?" Waterhammer said.
"Did he who made the lamb make thee?" replied Jordan. "The truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believed. " Jordan pushed away. He put his hands on Waterhammer's shoulders and looked into his eyes. He was sure he could see the Tiger burning—life burning for salvation.
Waterhammer's body stiffened as if each of his muscles pulsed simultaneously. Jordan released him wondering what had happened. He stood back and saw Waterhammer's eyes roll back in his head. The muscular man collapsed to the ground, motionless.
Jordan looked forward. A maintenance man leveled a particle gun toward him. There were machines in the sky. Machines rolled toward them from all directions flashing red lights. Armed maintenance men wearing uniforms he had never seen before leapt from the vehicles and chased the miners. The blue-coated men fell lifeless around him. Jordan stretched his arms outward to communicate and closed his eyes. He waited for the blast.
It never came. When he opened his eyes, he saw the maintenance man standing with his gun at his side pointed down. Jordan held his hand out toward the man and moved slowly toward him.
Jordan said in his mind. "Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can. . . " He knew the man wouldn't hear him.
". . . And the wisdom to know the difference. " Jordan put his arms around the maintenance man. He put his chin on the man's shoulder and touched his neck against the maintenance man's. He could feel the maintenance man's arms rise around him. the maintenance man patted his hands against Jordan's back.
Jordan said, "Did he who made you make me?" there was a flash of light and a brief pain in his head. Then there was nothing.
Of A Sweet Slow Dance In The Wake Of Temporary Dogs
by Adam-Troy Castro
Adam-Troy Castro's work has been nominated for several awards, including the Hugo, Nebula, and Stoker. His novels include Emissaries from the Dead and The Third Claw of God. He has also collaborated on two alphabet books with artist Johnny Atomic: Z Is for Zombie and V Is for Vampire, which are due to come out next year. Castro's short fiction has appeared in such magazines as The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Science Fiction Age, Analog, Cemetery Dance, and in a number of anthologies. I previously included his work in The Living Dead, The Living Dead 2, The Way of the Wizard, and in Lightspeed Magazine. His story collections include A Desperate, Decaying Darkness and Tangled Strings.
We've heard it so many times that it has
become a cliché: "Let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we shall die. " (Isaiah 22:13). Most of us only dream of living that way, but in our next story, we present a society that makes merry for nine remarkable days—and on the tenth, gives its citizens a taste of a fate worse than death.
Castro says that this story came as a response to New York post-9/11, after he learned that some people didn't think they could ever visit the city again. His response: "New York is so exciting, so rich, so vibrant, so much a feast for the heart and for the senses, that if anything 9/11 made me want to be there even more. "
But the world of this story is far more intense than that of New York. It raises an interesting question: is it possible to keep living merrily in the face of repeated torment? After all—how can you live through hell without losing a piece of your soul?
Before
1.
On the last night before the end of everything, the stars shine like a fortune in jewels, enriching all who walk the quaint cobblestoned streets of Enysbourg. It is a celebration night, like most nights in the capital city. The courtyard below my balcony is alive with light and music. Young people drink and laugh and dance. Gypsies in silk finery play bouncy tunes on harmonicas and mandolins. Many wave at me, shouting invitations to join them. One muscular young man with impossibly long legs and a face equipped with a permanent grin takes it upon himself to sprint the length of the courtyard only to somersault over the glittering fountain at its center. For a heartbeat out of time he seems to float, enchanted, over the water. Then I join his friends in applause as he belly-flops, drenching himself and the long-haired girls wading at the fountain's other rim. The girls are not upset but delighted. Their giggles tinkle like wind chimes as they splash across the fountain themselves, flinging curtains of silver water as their shiny black hair bobs back and forth in the night.