Analog Science Fiction and Fact - July-Agust 2014

by Penny Publications

  I unlocked my joints and staggered up the last stairs, nervously taking my place within reach of the loathsome creature, if creature it is of That which is Above, which I doubt. At that distance I could hear the shifting of those hideous scales, a low, syncopated whispering. It nauseated me, despite my training in meditation and bodily control. I tried to distract myself with humor, asking myself the question "Surely this is not as bad as dining with your first mother-in-law?" For the first time in my adult life, the answer could not be negative. This experience made that one pale by comparison.

  I concentrated on the view, for the visitor said nothing. What lay before my eyes was the valley of the Fish River and the hillside beyond, hundreds of acres of forest. Nestled into a dell on the side of that hill was a small farm, with fields of Indian corn growing tall. Why they grew corn on these machine-run farms had never been clear. Perhaps they fed it to animals in other zoos.

  I did not see the forest as forest, though, or the field as field. I saw a world denied to me. I would never walk in that forest, or see the valley beyond the far ridge, or any other part of the world, unless it was the confines of another human enclave. I saw the whole vast universe that was outside the Morgantown Sector, which meant outside the prison the New People had made for me. Even the name "Sector" had become a lie, for the Knoxville, Huntington, and Lexington sectors of the Westylvania Enclave had long since been detached, then shrunken, and finally shut down. My sector, all that remained of the Enclave, had been reduced to nine thousand square kilometers.

  I saw not the forest, but the loss of my true last name, that I had been forbidden to speak or write ever again. The New People had found, in Confucius, the concept of the Rectification of Names, and had imposed this virtuous program on us all. As I made fancy leather bindings for private editions of art books, I became Bookbinder.

  I saw the loss of meaning in that trade, as the only bindings I made were for the official histories that each community had begun keeping. Modern Domesday Books, written for descendants that might, someday, care about the last generation of humankind that had once lived outside the Walls. The real human economy, and real jobs, had ceased to be. We were provided almost all we asked for, except military weapons. They even allowed us dueling pistols and the rapier style of swords. With everything provided, our employments had been reduced to mere hobbies.

  Instead of the cornfield, I saw the loss of culture. There were no rows in that field, because their machines did not use tractors that needed to drive through them. The stalks were closely spaced in hexagonal distribution, the seeds shot into the ground by a hovering planter, and thus there was no angle at which the eye could see through a grown field. That morning the field said to me, I am not a human field. I am not for you. I am new.

  My clothes illustrated the loss of culture. I had been raised a Congregationalist, in Little Falls, New York. I wore American suits and ties at work, and jeans and Pendleton shirts at home, until the New People decided that the ideal attire for human beings must be the robes and burnoose of Persia in the sixteenth century. My Amy Vanderbilt manners have been replaced with the extreme formalism of second century Shansi, with touches of fourteenth century Japan, and with completely invented New People additions thrown in. I have learned court poses, and formal mudras, and my native English has been replaced with the Sanskrit the New People decided was our best language. I am proficient in sign-speech; not because I, or a relative, needed it, but because they don't care to listen to our gabble; and so we must sign whenever more than three of us are together.

  My religion had been replaced with The Wisdom, which seemed cobbled from Islam, Zoroastrianism, and Buddhism.

  For years I had thought of myself as a highly cultured person, an artist and an intellectual. As each challenge, each adaptation had been presented by the planet's new owners, I had risen to meet it, to exceed the standards required of us. I had been willing to commit murder, and commit it that very day, as part of my coping, my rising to meet a difficult and awkward transition. Standing on that Wall, that day, I lost my persona. Lost my reinvented, carefully maintained, safe, obliging self. I looked across the Fish with the eyes of a caged animal.

  I fought down the urge to push the visitor off the Wall, but only because I knew the attempt would be futile. Human reflexes are not fast enough to touch them, much less knock one over, and their bodies far too easily repair themselves.

  Perhaps it sensed some part of my feelings, for it chose that moment to gesture in the direction of the cornfield and utter two full minutes of discordant four-theme lyrics. I was surprised to find myself following the gist of the speech, even though I found the meaning too bizarre and too awful for words. Still, I let the minder repeat the contents, while the visitor took a brief stroll down the battlements, awaiting my reply.

  There may have been artistry in the monster's presentation, but I will not dignify it with a repetition. The essence was twisted and brutal.

  It wondered if I was knowledgeable on the ancient religions which practiced the annual sacrifice of the Corn God Ritual.

  Surely, it observed, an artist such as myself must deeply respect the great power of Archetypes.

  It noted that my lover, my Isabel, was distantly, and morganatically, related to royalty.

  It wished me to know that of all the versions of human sacrifice it had learned of from our history, the Saturnalia and Corn God sacrifices seemed the most noble, the most pleasing, and the most interesting.

  The New People had decided to revive the practice, and study its effects.

  Did I not expect better crops as a result?

  Would I not be proud to know that she had been given to the gods in such an artistic way? Or would sadness prevail?

  They hoped, it assured me, that scientific and philosophical study of the sacrifice and its outcome would allow them to perfect human civilization; would clarify for them our ideal culture; would help them bring us to our just and rightful reward.

  "These sacrifices," I asked, "are held in midwinter, or the spring, were they not? Some months from now, yes?"

  Indeed they were, but she would be taken and prepared now, and sacrificed later.

  My response was not in complex sentences. "Sadness would prevail," I said. "You are vile to do this. You are vile even to think of it."

  She had been taken while we stood on that Wall, was already gone when I returned, alone.

  The neighbors came, saying the inadequate things they could think to say, doing the little things that got me through the first week. I did not tell them, then, that the New People had taken her before I could find the courage to put her beyond their reach. I had planned to kill Isabel to spare her from whatever the next step was, though I never imagined something like this; and that peaceful, private death had been forestalled. I did not need to tell them that Isabel had once been delightful, proud, and generous—that she had only turned cranky and peevish lately, adapting poorly to a completely altered world. We all knew it.

  I worked in the bindery, because it is what I do, though there is no real sense in it. The New People had done to me what they do: taking away the most beloved, and claiming it to be for our own good. There is even less sense in that.

  I worked in the bindery, and mulled over my despair. I mulled it over in my native language, in English, which my visitor found adequate for addressing a chipmunk. I found myself rusty in it, after all these years thinking in Sanskrit. Mostly, I closed escape hatches. I decided not to indulge myself in going mad; not to commit suicide; nor to make them kill me by excessive resistance; not to attempt a futile escape over the Wall, or an act of senseless violence. I decided not to escape into mysticism, and not to convince myself that some god would help after failing so miserably up to this point, may all that is Above get itself in fucking gear.

  I decided that only one act of defiance might be of any use at all. I wrote this tale, and am inserting it into this binding and all my other bindings, on the backing papers and in a
microchip, with the hope that the recording of what the New People have done will someday bring their acts back upon them.

  Perhaps this will protect some other planet from their gentle ministrations. I am not, however, altruistic in this act. I am hoping that with them, soon—as with me, now—sadness will prevail.

  Man cannot live by incompetence alone.

  —Charlotte Whitton

  * * *

  Crimson Sky

  Eric Choi | 4265 words

  Press Release

  Date: Ls 117.43, 59 A.L.

  Source: The Bessie Coleman Foundation

  A Voliris 3600 lighter-than-air vehicle took off today from Yeager Base, Arabia Terra, at 07:22 Coordinated Mars Time, launching a bold attempt to set a new Martian record for the longest flight made by an aircraft. Piloted by Carl Gablenz, with funding from the Bessie Coleman Foundation and support from Thomas Mutch University, the blimp is expected to fly over 600 nautical miles in approximately 80 hours. Gablenz is scheduled to land at Laurel Clark Station on the western edge of Isidis Planitia.

  Link here for video and images of the departure.

  Every med-pilot does their own things before flying.

  If anyone were to ask about their routines, Martian med-pilots would swear that whatever they did was based on method and procedure, never superstition. Some of them, usually the grizzled veterans, hung out in the ready room, perhaps drinking coffee or watching videos or playing solitaire. Newbies might be found in the map room studying the latest mission profiles, or going over operational procedures in a simulator.

  When she wasn't strength training in the gym, Maggie McConachie drank coffee and read journals while listening to the irregular beat of heliocentric jazz. Helio had been all the rage when she was growing up. Her dad had loved it, and she too had learned to relish its strange rhythms. She now read her journals to its siren call. Never aviation or medical journals, though—Maggie's pleasure reading was scientific journals. Dad had still been a grad student when she was a baby, and he would often lull her to sleep by singing papers he had to read, thereby killing two birds with one stone. Maggie might very well be the only person in the Solar System to find soothing comfort in the bizarre medley of heliocentric jazz and partial differential equations.

  A framed still image of Maggie as a young child, with her father at her side, broke the grey monotony of the otherwise spartan walls of her quarters. Her dad used to travel frequently to scientific conferences and would often bring his young family along. Maggie must have been around two or three Earth years old at the time the picture was taken, in a boarding gate waiting area at the old La-Guardia Airport. They were standing in front of the windows looking out onto the apron, her father kneeling beside her as she pointed a short, podgy finger at a passing airplane.

  The call came in at 08:41 MTC. Maggie was next up in the flight rotation.

  "Med-Three here."

  The message was terse. She nodded and put down the reader, stealing a quick glance at the picture before dashing out of her quarters, the music fading to silence before the door closed behind her.

  Navigating the claustrophobic hallways and ladders of Syrtis Station, she found her way to the operations center in less than a minute. Ops was crowded, as usual, with teams of technicians seated at their workstations. Liu Huang, the Air Search Coordinator, turned to her and nodded as she entered the room. In the middle, surrounded by banks of screens, was Charles Voisin, the chief Search Master for the Mars Search and Rescue Service at Syrtis Station. Maggie approached Charles, carefully squeezing through narrow rows of equipment and workstations.

  "Good morning, Maggie. I have an excellent mission for you." Charles was a slight man of medium height. His angular face was crowned by curly dark hair, with a neatly trimmed moustache and large soulful eyes that always had slight bags under them, as if he never quite got enough sleep. Maggie thought Charles looked a little bit like her dad when he was young. "We have an aircraft down."

  "Where's the ELT?" Maggie asked.

  Liu uploaded a panoramic map to the wall screen. A flashing icon with the registration M4–LGA indicated the approximate signal source from the downed aircraft's emergency locator transmitter. "Arabia Terra, near the southwest rim of Antoniadi Crater."

  "That's getting awfully close to the bingo fuel radius of the chopper," Maggie said, referring to the farthest distance she could safely fly before having to either return to base or find an alternate landing site for fuel. The latter were extremely rare on Mars.

  "There aren't any permanent settlements at Antoniadi yet. Who's out there?" Maggie paused for a moment. "Oh, for the love of... It's that guy trying to set the record, isn't it? Carl... Gablenz?"

  "Yes."

  "But he's only been up since... what, yesterday, and he's in trouble already? As if we're not busy enough already without having to pull damn stunt pilots out of their self-inflicted messes." Maggie made a face. "Isn't he supposed to be rich? Can we send this playboy the bill?"

  "We do not go after people for costs just because they have the money to pay for it," Charles said gently. "Someone gets lost or goes down, we go help them. That's our job."

  "Who says universal healthcare is dead, huh?"

  Charles shrugged.

  "All right, then. Liu, get me the METARs and PIREPs," Maggie said, referring to the meteorological aviation reports and pilot weather reports. "Start with the upper level weather—wind speed, bearing aloft and temperature. I'll also need the forecasts and updates for the target area as well as current weather on-scene, especially site visibility."

  "Roger that," said Liu. He called up a display. "We have a low pressure trough approaching the crash site from the northwest."

  As Liu continued with the weather briefing, Maggie pulled out a tablet to prepare her flight plan.

  "We have requested Mr. Gablenz's medical records from Earth," said Charles. He consulted another display. "The Harmakhis–7 satellite will be passing over that area in about twenty minutes. We will transmit all data to you en route as it becomes available."

  "All right, Charles." She pronounced his name Anglo style, with a hard "ch" sound.

  "Soyez prudent, Maggie."

  She looked at him with a blank expression.

  "You have no idea what I just said, do you?" His moustache twitched in amusement. "No matter, although I wish you would at least try to pronounce my name correctly."

  Maggie tapped the tablet to file her completed flight plan. "Just make sure the coffee's hot when I'm back." She dashed out of the operations center and went to put on her bio-suit. Ten minutes later, she was on the pad.

  MarsSAR employed the Bell–Xïnshìjiè BX–719A helicopter. A two-armed dexterous robot nicknamed Chop-Chop performed near-continuous systems diagnostics and routine line maintenance for the BX–719 on ready standby. The ready vehicle was further checked every couple of hours by a human technician who performed a more detailed inspection and then signed-off the helicopter as ready to fly. This minimized the time between a call coming in and when the med-pilot could be dispatched.

  "Liu, please confirm the flight status of vehicle," Maggie radioed.

  "The last A-check was completed thirty-eight hours ago," Liu reported ."No major faults. One minor fault, an intermittent indication on the starboard landing light status, not a MEL issue. Caution memory is clear. Vehicle flight status is green."

  "Thanks, Liu."

  Formal assurances aside, Maggie always made a point of taking a minute to do a quick check herself. After one of her early flights, a technician on the Air Search Coordinator's team—perhaps insulted by her apparent lack of trust—asked her why she did it. She told her the truth: "Because I want to stay alive." Chop-Chop took no offense.

  Every med-pilot does their own things before flying.

  Jumping into the seat, Maggie checked the status of the liquid hydrogen and oxygen tanks, the regenerative fuel cells and the batteries, as well as the onboard medical equipment. Finding everythi
ng in order, she hopped out and did a quick circuit around the chopper, starting from the port side and working counter-clockwise. On the ground, the BX–719 sat on four landing legs with articulated foot pads. Maggie looked for leaks in the shock absorbers of the portside pair. She then scanned the port engine pod and its ten-bladed propeller for damage. The BX–719 was equipped with pusher props on each side, which served to increase the chopper's speed while counteracting the torque of the large main rotor through differential thrust.

  She then climbed to the top of the helicopter and looked at the transmission well and the main rotor for anomalies. The BX–719's rotor had four low aspect ratio blades made of reinforced Kevlar epoxy skin stretched over a skeleton of graphite epoxy spars and ribs. Resembling giant fan blades, they were twisted along their lengths, and the top and bottom surfaces were equipped with a pair of upper and lower boundary layer trips to produce an optimal lift distribution.

  After jumping down, Maggie went to look at the last major component of the helicopter, a large V-shaped horizontal stabilizer at the rear of the aircraft. She scanned the elevator and trim tab, and then manually moved the elevator up and down. Once the portside check was finished, she repeated the procedure on the other side of the helicopter.

  With her personal inspection ritual completed, she returned to the cockpit, strapped herself into the pilot's seat and plugged her biosuit into the helicopter's power and life support system. With the exception of a large forward windshield, the cockpit was open and unpressurized. She powered up the flight management system and avionics, started the engines and commenced the takeoff procedure.

  "Syrtis Station, MarsSAR–3 is ready for departure."

  "MarsSAR–3, you are cleared for departure. Surface winds are from two-seven-zero at eleven knots, gusting to twenty. Good luck, Maggie."