Bastion Science Fiction Magazine - Issue 3, June 2014

by R. Leigh Hennig

  The suggestion of inviting a female nurse to the camp also met with objection. Opponents argued that by definition no decent woman could make the place her home, and one man went so far as to say, "We don't want no more of that other kind." This slur against the newly dead mother, while harsh, was the first spasm of propriety in the history of the settlement.

  Doc himself said nothing. After it became clear that nobody else was volunteering, Shoe asked Doc if he might be willing to continue.

  "Well," said Doc, his face taking on a kind of glow, "as long as the kitchen can produce formula, and as long as the diaper department can do their job, both coming and going, I can manage to rear the child."

  This was something independent and near heroic, so that it stirred the men with powerful emotions, not the least of which was relief. More men volunteered for the ad hoc diaper department, and in order to get "baby stuff," finances were advanced for a trip to the asteroid Juno.

  Each of the 96 men living there felt like a father to the boy, to a greater or lesser degree. They had him, and he had all of them.

  Change came by tiny steps, radiating outward from the pressure cabin. The men repaired the metal hut and restocked it with emergency supplies that had gone missing long before. Doc kept the place scrupulously clean, having become a fanatic about hygiene. Everybody started cleaning up "for the baby" — dapper Shoe the Gambler passed this requirement, but Supervisor Young was barred from visiting for a while until he improved himself in this regard. And yet, he adjusted too. Soon he was showing up every day with a washed face and a clean shirt.

  The men's rowdy behavior was toned down since the baby needed to sleep. Their rough language was also gradually cleaned up. By these voluntary stages, civilization came to the frontier.

  Weeks passed and the child thrived. Shoe got a peaceful feeling whenever Doc brought the baby over to Jin's place, where he would set the infant among the grow lamps and the green leaves of the hydroponics rooms. The men talked about Vitamin D and took a new interest in plants. Jin expanded the hydroponics section with the hope of adding a few ornamental plants, a few flowers, perhaps, for the good of the child and general morale.

  They said he was he was lucky, lucky to be alive, but they also were noticing how their own luck had improved. Shortly after his arrival, the miners found new seams of metal in their asteroid, and mining proceeded at a brisk pace. In short, a boom was on.

  The luck was with them, month after month, and they grew prosperous. The boomtown was protective and looked upon strangers with suspicion. Others wanted to come in, drawn by the new prosperity, but they were denied. It was a hermetically sealed world, visited only by traders and re-supply transport pilots. Outsiders found it tidy, clean, and sober, a place with girlish frills but no girls at all. They said it was weird, unnatural, and cultish.

  #

  "May we please see the baby?" said the old woman, flanked by her fellow missionaries, a man and a woman. Shoe read the trio like a hand of cards, and saw the opening as a "granny" move.

  "No," said Young, sitting behind his office desk. "He's doing fine."

  "I'm sure that baby's a ton of trouble," said the male missionary, stepping forward. "We could take him off your hands for you."

  "No thank you," said Young.

  "He has a name, you know," said Shoe. "It's Tony Jade."

  "Ah, Jade," said the woman, taking her turn. "Because that's the best luck, am I right?"

  "You got it, sister," said Young.

  "My husband erred in trying to make it sound as though we would be doing you a favor in taking Tony Jade," she said. "We humbly request it for the child. The Goddess of Mercy would smile upon such an agreement. This is no place for an infant."

  "Now look here," started Young, his face flushing.

  "Mr. President, allow me to explain," said Shoe, making like a diplomat. He turned to the outsiders and said, "We acknowledge that our settlement is less than optimal for childrearing. We citizens desire improvements to that end, but only on our terms. I myself lead a majority faction with plans for a hotel with which we could entice one or two good families to immigrate. These families would have women and children, both of obvious benefit for Tony Jade."

  "What about the minority faction?" asked the woman, an eager light in her eyes. "What do they want?"

  "They want to keep things as they are, at least for a year," said Young. The light in the woman's eyes died, and then he added, "The compromise was a four-month wait."

  Then the old woman suddenly dropped to her knees. "We beg you," she said, as the others followed her lead, "in the name of Mercy!"

  "Get up!" shouted Young. "Get out of here! How dare you! I should have you thrown out!"

  "This meeting is over," said Shoe, and he hustled the missionaries out.

  When he returned a few minutes later, Young had composed himself.

  "Well, that's over," said Shoe, dusting his hands off.

  "See why I made sure that Doc kept Tony away?" asked Young. "That would've been just another way to get their foot in the door."

  "Are they gonna stay long?"

  "I'll only let them have another day or two."

  Shoe stretched, his arms going up and out, his back popping.

  "That's the end of my day at the office," he said with contentment. "You ready to quit yet?"

  "In a while. I'll meet you at Jin's."

  Shoe went out, emerging at the uptown end of the main cave. He clomped along the sidewalk past the dormitory section, past the mining shaft, and came to Jin's Hydroponics. When he walked in, Jin called out, "What's the word, Shoe?"

  Before Shoe could answer there was a deep rumbling sound and a tremor in the floor. Pressure doors automatically slammed shut as someone shouted, "It's a blowout!"

  Shoe ran to the window just in time to see a few men sucked out into space through a gaping hole in the sky. None of them were wearing suits, and in seconds each died the horrible death that all belters fear.

  Then Tony Jade's little pressure cabin was sucked out, too, tumbling end over end.

  Shoe jumped into a suit and organized a rescue party. They took the little hopper at the space dock and burned up a lot of reaction mass chasing after the cabin through the expanding plume of debris. The hour it took to match velocities felt like it lasted a bitter day, followed by an eternity as they nudged the cabin to halt its rolling.

  Shoe went into the cabin's airlock, cheered at the green light indicators showing there was air inside. As he agonized through the additional wait of the airlock cycle, he pounded on the hatch to send a signal that help was at hand.

  Once inside the cabin proper, Shoe saw the crumpled form of Doc wedged in a corner, battered and bruised, but still holding the Miracle of Asteroid Camp 88 in his arms. Shoe took off his helmet. As he bent over the pair, the boy gave a cry, but Doc himself was dead.

  #

  The flight back to the asteroid felt longer, though it was shorter by the clock.

  A commotion in the docking cave died the moment Shoe the Gambler came in, with tiny Tony Jade in his arms. In the silence he asked the nearest man, "What was the fighting about?"

  "Well, uh, you know," stammered the man, unable to meet his eyes. "Whose fault the blowout was."

  Shoe sighed.

  "The blowout was everybody's fault," he said to the men. "Here's Tony, our boy. Doc fought to save him. He succeeded, but gave his life in the process. I'm sure if any one of us had been there, we'd have done the same."

  A few men stood taller at that, and some nodded.

  "Now, little Tony here, he changed us all, and changed us for the better. We weren't working for ourselves anymore, we were working for him. It may be that our enthusiasm for making the family hotel got the better of us, so that we took chances and got a little careless in the mining."

  Shoe heard some muttering, saw some sideways glances.

  "But at the same time, blowouts happen. That old pre
ssure hut would've been fine if its anchors had only held out. We failed there, too. There's plenty of blame to go around."

  The men grew quiet again.

  "Still, we've learned our lesson. So let's not waste any effort beating ourselves up, or beating each other. The odds were bad, and we've just been reminded. I say we give him over to the missionaries. It will be the best, and the safest."

  All eyes went to Supervisor Young, whose hands were balled into fists that were shaking. He glowered at Shoe, but then the fight went out of him.

  "He's right," said Young, his eyes tearing up. "We owe it to him. And we owe it to Doc, since none of us could replace him."

  ###

  Michael Andre-Driussi has had fiction published in M-Brane SF, Big Pulp, and Perihelion, among other venues, but he is best known for his genre reference work, beginning with Lexicon Urthus (1994) through to this year's True SF Anime (2014). This particular story owes a lot to Joan Vinge's The Outcasts of Heaven's Belt, as well as its antecedents.

  Bartleby, the Robot Killer: A Story of Difference Street

  Alex Livingston

  The Companion hovered on a bubbling gout of water vapor and anthracite smoke, and Edwin kept it near his right shoulder. He had faced bullets and cudgels to steal it from the nursery. He didn't want it wandering off.

  His task was sending him to Difference Street, where the great robotic bombes calculated the value of every hour of labor, every ounce of goods. Edwin's father had told him that the place had been known as Wall Street before the bombes had moved in. If you looked closely enough, you could still see the remnants of human occupation. A restaurant's name faded into the brick, too washed out for robot lenses to detect. Iron rings for hitching up now-obsolete horses. Edwin had plastered a pro-human poster in an alleyway there once, and had only barely fought his way out of the cold clamps of the police. He’d finish the job someday. When there was time.

  Few humankind ventured anywhere near Difference Street these days. Bartleby, the man Edwin was going meet, was one of these few. He had managed to weasel his way into a quota job as a copyist for the Master of Chancery, and had important information for the resistance. He had asked for Edwin by name. Probably because of the Companion. Just having the whiny little thing hovering around him encouraged any curious lenses to assume he was safely cowed and had a good reason to be among the bombes.

  The Master of Chancery. What a target. He held one of the most respected titles a bombe could attain, and his security detail reflected it. But Bartleby was the kind of rebel that other rebels risked themselves to keep alive.

  Even in the best clothes the resistance could steal, Ironjaw Eddie didn't look like be belonged on Difference Street. The Companion lent him credibility, the way a gold watch or a fine hat used to in the old days. It kept the bombes from looking too close. Just some jumped up human. Must be doing some good for society somewhere.

  The Companion wanted Edwin to refuse the mission, tweeting steam at him in its odd morsetongue dialect. Like all bombes, the baseball-sized sphere of clockworks worried about safety too often. It reminded Edwin about the police, about the penalties he would endure if they referenced his face against their Wanted rolodexes. Maybe Edwin had snatched it from the nursery too young. Maybe it hadn't had enough time to build a bit more spine before being dragged into the world of street-brawls and trashcan fires.

  Edwin didn't set much stock by safety. His old man had played it safe his whole life. Look what happened to him. Sent to the mines at age fifty-eight in the first round of Reassignments. Spent most of his life at a desk, and the last two years of it puking coal dust to feed the same bombes that replaced him. No way Edwin was punching out like that.

  He ignored the annoyed chirrup in his ear when he stepped over the carriage chain while crossing Turnkey Avenue. Old habit from before the robots put in their damned carriage system. Back when he and the neighborhood kids played stickball on the cobbles, the worst thing Edwin had to worry about stepping in was a road apple. Now every major street had a brass-lined gash down its middle. A massive chain sped along just centimeters beneath, ready to catch the hook of a bombe-brained carriage.

  Centimeters. The metric system was another thing the bombes had brought along with them. It made sense.

  No carriage for Edwin today, though, even if he had the money. The resistance had a few pennies rolling around in the coffers, and he could have asked, but on foot was better. No need to attract the curious lens of some carriage. Those things loved to make conversation, and Edwin was more of a hands-on sort of rebel. Not like Bartleby. Edwin would have blown his cover in days, but this Bartleby seemed made for the job.

  Edwin had met Bartleby just once before. The pale fellow, barely fleshed enough to be considered a man at all, just showed up at a meeting and started talking to people. Didn't know the password, didn't explain how he knew about the resistance or its secret meeting place. Didn't need to. Every man Edwin had ever met up until Bartleby was cold in comparison, slowed down and empty like a watch that needed winding. Life after Reassignment did that. But Bartleby, grinning and clasping strangers' hands as if they were old friends back from war, was like the first strong sun after a New York winter. He told the resistance that he had a theory on how to beat the bombes, and had come up from DC to do just that.

  The Companion squealed and turned its lens towards a burly fellow struggling to get a steamer trunk into the back of an unhelpful carriage. It thought the guy looked like trouble. It always thought anyone with a suntan looked like trouble. Damn thing only trusted people who stayed inside and looked at rows of digits all day. Quotamen, filling the few positions left to humans. Their precise number had been calculated to keep mankind just this side of open rebellion.

  Difference Street gleamed in the midday light, a thousand brass domes reflecting the sun as the bombes went about their suppertime business. Edwin kept close eye on anyone he came near, watching their lenses. A massive old bombe with a fine patina and condescending demeanor barely adjusted its path to avoid hitting him. Two clerks just out of nursery whistled about the latest fashions in decorative plating. Edwin remembered hearing foppish young men talk like that back in the day. He had wanted to slug the boys then, and he wanted to rip the gears out of the bombes now.

  Bartleby's message said suppertime would work well. The two robotic scriveners in his office always dined out, the boss bombe had business down at Verification, and the errand boy was easily gotten rid of. Clever men like Bartleby were rare these days, and getting rarer.

  Edwin flexed his right hand into a fist as he shouldered past a slender bombe whose lenses shifted towards him in disgust. A cut from a recent fight opened on his knuckle and bled a little. He had won that one, hammering a police bombe right in the register panel and making his escape as it buzzed and moaned. He could have avoided the scrap altogether, though, if he had kept his cool.

  He kept his cool now. He walked right past who-knows-how-many ticking bombes without making eye-lens contact and didn't scowl at a single one of them. If the Companion appreciated his restraint, it didn't see fit to mention it.

  The stolen Companion. Edwin had taken the nursery job on little less than a dare. Companions were licensed to humans declared safe and legal – and wealthy – by the bombe authorities. Having one flitting around your head gave you a free pass in most of the city. Edwin wanted one. So, he broke in, listened to the licensers whistling their assignment commands, and made off with the noisy little thing. Earned him a few scars, sure, but he got one.

  Further down, Difference Street reeked of coal fire. Heavy smog blanketed the area just above the lampposts. It took a real storm to get anything more than a breeze in this neighborhood, shadowed as it was by the windowless, flat-faced towers of Portland concrete. Wall Street would have been a more suitable name, but the bombes didn't see much point in tradition. Difference Street where the calculators worked, Nursery Row for the factories, Verification Square for what passe
d as law, Right Way for the governmental buildings. Edwin dreamed of an army of men, wrenches in the air, swarming Right Way like a kicked wasp's nest.

  You are getting angry again, the Companion wheezed.

  Am not.

  Edwin could whistle a little morsetongue. Not much.

  You breathe through your nose when you are angry. You are angry. We should go back. You will become arrested. You will be made to tell all.

  Not angry. Stop.

  The meeting was to be at a miniscule coalhouse two blocks from the Chancery, a place known to offer some human food for the quotamen, and thus had fallen out of style. Edwin walked right in as if he had been there a thousand times, casually adjusting his stolen coat for added effect. The well-polished bombe behind the bar tooted a welcome as he entered, but Edwin gathered it was meant for the Companion.

  The Companion sang the combination of notes which proved Edwin was no threat, an upstanding citizen who had paid all of his taxes. This wasn't true, of course. Edwin had stolen the little sphere from the nursery before it had a chance to be programmed and assigned by a proper licenser. The little thing didn't know any better. Edwin had whistled the licensing ditty himself.

  Coffee that smelled three days burnt gurgled from a spigot at Edwin's table. He dropped exact change in the coin slot. The bombes didn't care much for tips.

  A streakless window let him watch the growing crowds. The suppertime crush reached what Edwin had to assume was its height, brass shoulders scraping each other with the occasional clank. Bartleby would be along any moment now, bounding in the door with a grin. He sipped his coffee from a pewter mug which couldn't have been fewer than fifty years old.