Asimov's SF, July 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Above them, the stars in the vertiginous heavens seemed to turn while they watched, and Cao found himself becoming dizzy.

  “Do you know why my friend Cui was imprisoned in the Bureau of Suppression and Soothing?” the old man continued, glancing momentarily down from the stars to the two men at his side. “It was, so he said, because he had provided readings of the heavens that were inauspicious for the regent's reign. In fact, that was not his crime. Cui challenged the accepted wisdom. He devoted his life to studying the heavens, and made a frightening discovery. Our world is not, as we have always believed, the center of the universe, with the Sun, Moon, and stars twirling around us. Through a careful study of the heavens, Cui came to realize that, in fact, our world was just one of many, all of which circled around the Sun. What is more, he claimed that the stars themselves might be other suns, out in the distant heavens. Perhaps a small fraction of those other suns might have worlds of their own, and some small fraction of those might be peopled. We might not be the only beings in creation able to look upon ourselves and wonder.” The old man paused, and smiled ruefully. “Of course, this offended the Regent Aobai, who was convinced Cui had concocted his theory only to insult the young Kangxi emperor."

  Agent Gu shook his head in disbelief, and the old man fell silent. “The Earth circles around the sun? You might as well say that the Dragon Throne exists to serve me, and not the other way around."

  “You might indeed.” Ling smiled, his eyes twinkling.

  Cao swayed on his feet. He felt unsteady, as though he stood on the edge of a precipice, about to fall into the abyss.

  “Ling Xuan, you promised me one final fact about the Mexica,” Cao said, uneasily.

  “So I did,” Ling said, nodding. “So I did. And I will tell you. It is this."

  The old man leaned closer to Cao, and spoke softly, like thunder more distant than ever before, as though he were communicating some secret in confidence that he didn't want the stars above to overhear.

  “The Mexica, as clever and bright and ferocious as they may be, are still blinded by their faith. The most learned among them honestly believes that the world is but a few hundred years old, and all evidence to the contrary is merely a test of their faith. We of the Middle Kingdom, I would argue, cling with as much tenacity to beliefs and superstitions no more grounded in reality than that, but with one notable difference. Ours is a culture that can produce a mind like Cui's, a mind that challenges received wisdom, which questions the foundations of knowledge itself. If we manage to produce only one like him in every dozen generations, we will still manage, in the fullness of time, to conquer the universe. Like the fraction of worlds of the fraction of stars in the great immensity of the heavens, that ensure that we are not alone, just one small spark of genius in the vast sea of complacency will mean that history does not stand still."

  Ling Xuan turned, and headed back the way they had come.

  “I am ready to return home to my cell now, thank you,” the old man said, calling back to Cao and Gu over his shoulder. “I have seen all I needed to see."

  * * * *

  The next morning, as Cao Wen struggled to work out how to conclude his report, he received a visitor to his cubicle in the Ministry of War. It was Agent Gu, dressed in simple gray robes.

  “Gu? What are you doing here?"

  “At the request of Director Fei, I come to tell you that Ling Xuan, temporary resident of the Outside Depot, died in the night. From all signs, it was not a suicide, nor is there any indication of foul play."

  Cao blinked, a confused expression spread across his face.

  “The old man died?"

  “Yes,” Gu replied. “Of extreme old age, or so I am given to understand."

  “And yet he waited long enough to walk once more under the stars as a free man,” Cao observed.

  “Perhaps he felt that it was important enough to live for,” Gu said, unsure, “and having done so, his work was done."

  Cao sighed, and shrugged his shoulders.

  “Strange timing, no doubt, but he was old and the elderly have a habit of dying.” Cao regarded Gu's plain gray robes. “But here you are, beyond the walls of the Eastern Depot yourself, and so adorned that you could pass for a simple merchant in the streets."

  “Yes,” Agent Gu said, with a smile that commingled embarrassment and pride. “It is the opinion of Director Fei that I have completed my training, and will be of better use to the Dragon Throne beyond the walls, rather than within.” Gu paused, and shifted uncomfortably. “Cao Wen, I must ask you. What are your thoughts about the things that Ling Xuan said to us in the night, about the Sun and the Earth and the stars, about the Middle Kingdom and the Mexica and all?"

  Cao Wen shrugged. “All I can say is that everything Ling reported to me these long weeks has been true, as far as I have been able to determine—the intelligence on the Mexica and the facts the old man learned from Astronomer Cui alike. But who am I to judge?"

  Agent Gu nodded, absently, and with a final bow, departed, leaving Cao with his work.

  There remained only a few more characters to brush onto the final page, and then Cao's detailed report on the astronomer Cui was complete. This appended to his report about the Mexica, Cao rolled up the papers and slid them into a leather tube. Then he rose to his feet, arranged his robes around him, and headed toward the office of the Deputy Minister to hand in his survey.

  Copyright (c) 2007 Chris Roberson

  * * * *

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  * * *

  ROXIE

  by Robert Reed

  In “Roxie,” Robert Reed poignantly depicts the tragedy of death and the wondrous gift of life. Commenting on the story, he tells us that, “while my daughter is lobbying hard for a new dog, I have, so far, resisted every urge."

  She wakes me at five minutes before five in the morning, coming into the darkened bedroom with tags clinking and claws skating across the old oak floor, and then she uses a soft whine that nobody else will hear.

  I sit up and pull myself to the end of the bed, dressing in long pants and new walking shoes—the old shoes weren't helping my balky arch and Achilles—and then I stop at the bathroom before pulling a warm jacket from the front closet. My dog keeps close track of my progress. In her step and the big eyes is enthusiasm and single-minded focus. At the side door, I tell her to sit and hold still please, and in the dark, I fasten the steel pinch collar and six-foot leash around a neck that has grown alarmingly thin.

  Anymore our walks are pleasant, even peaceful events—no more hard tugging or challenging other dogs. A little after five in the morning, early in March, the world is black and quiet beneath a cold, clear sky. Venus is brilliant, the moon cut thin. Crossing the empty four-lane road to the park, we move south past the soccer field and then west, and then south again on a narrow asphalt sidewalk. A hundred dogs pass this ground daily. The city has leash laws, and I have always obeyed them. But the clean-up laws are new, and only a fraction of the dog-walkers carry plastic sacks and flashlights. Where my dog has pooped for thirteen years, she poops now, and I kneel to stare at what she has done, convincing myself that the stool is reasonably firm, if exceptionally fragrant.

  A good beginning to our day.

  We continue south to a set of white wooden stairs. She doesn't like stairs anymore, but she climbs them easily enough. Then we come back again on the wide bike pat
h—a favorite stretch of hers. In the spring, rabbits will nest in the mowed grass, and every year she will find one or several little holes stuffed with tiny, half-formed bunnies.

  On this particular morning, nothing is caught and killed.

  An older man and his German shepherd pass us on the sidewalk below. Tony is a deep-voiced gentleman who usually waves from a distance and chats when we're close. He loves to see Roxie bounce about, and she very much likes him. But in the darkness he doesn't notice us, and I'm not in the mood to shout. He moves ahead and crosses the four-lane road, and when we reach that place, Roxie pauses, smelling where her friend has just been and leaking a sorry little whine.

  Home again, I pill my dog. She takes Proin to control bedwetting, plus half a metronidazole to fight diarrhea. She used to take a full metro, but there was an endless night a few weeks ago when she couldn't rest, not indoors or out. She barked at nothing, which is very strange for her. Maybe a high-pitched sound was driving her mad. But our vet warned that she could have a tendency toward seizures, and the metro can increase their likelihood and severity. Which is why I pulled her back to just half a pill in the morning.

  I pack the medicine into a handful of canned dog food, stinky and prepared with the senior canine in mind. She waits eagerly and gobbles up the treat in a bite, happily licking the linoleum where I dropped it, relishing that final taste.

  Before six in the morning, I pour orange juice and go down to my basement office. My PC boots up without incident. I discover a fair amount of e-mail, none of it important. Then I start jumping between sites that offer a good look at science and world events. Sky and Telescope has a tiny article about an asteroid of uncertain size and imprecise orbit. But after a couple of nights of observation, early estimates describe an object that might be a kilometer in diameter, and in another two years, it seems that this intruder will pass close to the Earth, bringing with it a one-in-six-thousand chance of an impact.

  “But that figure won't stand up,” promises one astronomer. “This happens all the time. Once we get more data, this danger is sure to evaporate to nothing."

  * * * *

  My future wife was a reporter for the Omaha newspaper. I knew her because in those days, a lot of my friends were reporters. On a sultry summer evening, she and I went to the same Fourth of July party; over the smell of gunpowder, Leslie mentioned that she'd recently bought a husky puppy.

  Grinning, I admitted that I'd always been intrigued by sled dogs.

  “You should come meet Roxie sometime,” she said.

  “Why Roxie?” I asked.

  “Foxie Roxie,” she explained. “She's a red husky. To me, she sort of looks like an enormous fox."

  Her dog was brownish red and white, with a dark red mask across her narrow face, accenting her soulful blue eyes. Leslie wasn't home when I first visited, but her dog was in the backyard, absolutely thrilled to meet me. (Huskies are the worst guard dogs in the world.) Roxie was four or five months old, with a short coat and a big, long-legged frame. Sitting behind the chain-link gate, she licked the salt off my offered fingers. And then she hunkered down low, feigning submission. But her human was elsewhere, and I didn't want the responsibility of opening gates and possibly letting this wolfish puppy escape. So I walked away, triggering a string of plaintive wails that caused people for a mile in every direction to ask, “Now who's torturing that poor, miserable creature?"

  Leslie and I started dating in late October. But the courtship always had a competitive triangular feel about it.

  My new girlfriend worked long hours and drove a two-hour commute to and from Omaha. She didn't have enough time for a hyperactive puppy. Feeling sorry for both of them, I would drop by to tease her dog with brief affections. Or if I stayed the night, I'd get up at some brutally early hour—before seven o'clock, some mornings—and dripping with fatigue, I'd join the two of them on a jaunt through the neighborhood and park and back again.

  In those days, Roxie lived outside as much as she lived in. But the backyard gate proved inadequate; using her nose, she would easily flip the latch up and out of the way. Tying the latch only bought a few more days of security. Leaping was easy work, and a four-foot chain-link fence was no barrier at all. A series of ropes and lightweight chains were used and discarded. Finally Leslie went to a farm supply store and bought a steel chain strong enough to yank cars out of ditches. Years later, a friend from Alaska visited, and I asked sheepishly if our chain was overkill. No, it was pretty standard for sled dogs, she conceded. Then she told me what I already knew: “These animals love to run."

  One morning, somebody's dog was barking, and Leslie asked me to make sure it wasn't hers. Peering out the dining room window, I found a beautiful red-and-white husky dancing on the patio, happy as can be.

  “It's not your dog,” I told my girlfriend.

  Even burdened with the heavy chain, Roxie had killed a squirrel, and now she was happily flinging the corpse into the air and catching it again. The game was delicious fun until the limp squirrel fell out of reach, and then the wailing began. I got dressed and found a shovel in the garage, and when I picked up her prize by its tail, the dog leaped happily. Oh, I was saving her day! But with the first spade of earth, she saw my betrayal for what it was, and the wailing grew exponentially.

  Two nights later, Leslie called for help. Again, her dog had killed an animal. She didn't know what kind; despite being a farmer's kid, Leslie has an exceptionally weak stomach, and she didn't want to look too closely. But if I could drop over and take care of the situation....

  It was late, and I was very tired. But I stopped by that next afternoon, when no humans were home. A half-grown opossum was baking in the sun. Using my growing puddle of wisdom, I gave my girlfriend's dog a quick walk and put her inside before burying the bloated body. Then I let Roxie back out on her chain, and she hurried to the spot where the opossum had been, sniffing and digging, and then flinging herself down on her back to roll on the ripe, wondrous ground.

  After a year of dating, I moved in with both of them, and that next spring, Leslie and I dug a pond below the patio. That's where we found the opossum's grave. Rot and time had eaten the flesh from the skull, and I put the prize in a little jar that I set on a shelf in the spare bedroom that had become my office.

  * * * *

  After several days, the new asteroid surfaces again on the Web, this time wearing an official designation. The bolide is found to be exceptionally dark, lending evidence that this could be a short-term comet with most of its volatiles bled away. A tiny albedo means it must be larger than it appears in the images. Two black kilometers across, and maybe more. As promised, the one-in-six-thousand chance of an impact has been discarded. Extra data allow astronomers to plot a lovely elliptical orbit that reaches out past Saturn and then dives inside the Earth's orbit. Calculations are still in flux, I read online. If the object starts to act like a comet, watery fountains and gaseous vents will slow it down or speed it up, depending on chaotic factors. These are complications that will mean much, or nothing. But for the moment, the odds of an impact with the Earth have shifted by a factor of twenty.

  “One-in-three-hundred,” I read at the ScienceDaily site.

  In other words, it is easier to fill an inside straight in poker. And if the object's trajectory makes any substantial change, the chance of an impact will probably—probably—drop to one-in-infinity.

  * * * *

  I grew up with black Labradors in the house. They were docile animals, a little foolish but always good-hearted, and each one began his day by asking, “How can I make my owner proud of me?"

  No husky thinks in those subservient, dim-witted terms.

  Leslie grew up on a farm full of dogs and cats, but those pets lived outdoors. Because of that and because she wasn't home during the day, she'd had limited success housebreaking Roxie. Of course I like to tell myself that once I had moved in, the chaos turned to discipline. But the truth is a more complex, less edifying business: To make c
ertain our dog was drained in the morning, I walked her. Since I worked at home, taking Roxie outside for the midday pee was easily done. And when my girlfriend was tired in the evening, I would throw a thirty-foot lead on the beast and take her up to the park and back again.

  But “Who trained who?” is a valid question.

  The evening walk came after the human dinner. When I put down the fork, the dog would begin to whine and leap, sometimes poking me in the gut with her paw. Disciplining her was endless work, and often futile. She was too quick to grab, too graceful to corral. One night, watching some favorite TV show, I got a little too clever and lured her out of the basement. Then after a few words about what a spoiled bitch she was, I shut the door between us, and after a few seconds of loud thumping, the house went quiet. At the first commercial break, I peeked through the door to find my dog sitting in the kitchen, waiting patiently. “Good girl,” I said, and as a reward, I let her come downstairs. She sat at my feet, as patient as I had ever seen her act, sometimes glancing my way with an expression full of meanings that I couldn't quite read.

  When I went upstairs again, I discovered what she had done. In my office, on the throw rug, she had emptied her bladder. Here was a message, and the lesson was learned; after that, our walks were a priority, and I tried to avoid treating her like inconvenient luggage.

  * * * *

  The dead comet surfaces in newspaper articles and on television. Its soulless official designation has been replaced by “Shelby,” which happens to be the off-the-cuff name given to it by its discoverers. The odds of an impact are fluctuating between one-in-three-hundred and one-in-one-thousand, depending on the expert being quoted. But even the most alarming voice sounds calm, particularly when he or she repeats the undeniable truth: The bolide is a long ways out and still traveling toward the Sun. Any day now, Shelby will start to vent, and its orbit will shift some significant distance.