2014 Campbellian Anthology

by Various

  “This place caters to old rich people, Matthew Wallace.”

  “Old rich people have kids and grandkids. Maybe she can hook up with one of them and take care of us in our old age.” Old age with Lydia at his side. A dream that could just come true.

  “It looks like you’re going to have some problems with your chief deputy,” Lydia said. “From the hologram Roy showed me, he doesn’t seem to understand you are the marshal.”

  Lydia always reviewed Roy’s summaries of his actions. At first it was annoying, but she was really quite good at pointing out things. She saw ways for him to improve, ways to avoid problems.

  “I can take care of Lewis,” Matt said.

  “I’m sure you can.”

  Chapter 10

  “IT MUST have been a false positive,” the research scientist said.

  Dr. Barkman studied the holographic image of the molecule. He had it rotate. He walked around it, studying the connections between the atoms. He had such hope for this one. Initial results indicated a 30 percent possibility of success. That was twice as high as any of his previous creations.

  “Run it through the simulator until you get another positive,” the doctor said. “Then run an analysis on the molecules in the positive tests and see if they are exactly the same. Exactly.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “No. Three positives.” Dr. Barkman reached out and tried to feel the molecule, even though it was just a holographic image. “Get at least three positives and then run the comparisons.”

  “Three positives could take a long time,” the researcher said.

  “I don’t care how long it takes.”

  These new scientists didn’t have patience or insight. They expected the computers to do everything for them.

  They were on the verge of a treatment that would literally save millions of lives, and he had to deal with a Neanderthal who was concerned it might take a long time.

  “Dr. Barkman.”

  The doctor turned to see Chief Deputy Lewis enter the lab.

  “Not here.” Dr. Barkman led the deputy down the long hallway to his own office.

  The doctor’s office was filled with photos and awards. Several small holograms were nestled among the awards, showing highlight events from the doctor’s life.

  “How was your first experience with a frontier marshal?”

  “I think we may have a problem,” Lewis said. “Metis’s son was leading a meeting of the men.”

  “They aren’t allowed to have meetings.”

  “I explained that to the marshal but he said he didn’t think that was a just law. He granted a permit to them. After the fact.”

  “Go on.”

  “The boy called for resistance to anyone who would threaten their families.”

  “That will be a problem with Metis. When is the trial scheduled?”

  “The marshal didn’t arrest him.”

  Dr. Barkman sat back in his chair and waited for more.

  “I explained the law that was broken. Even his robot recited the appropriate statute, but Wallace ignored the law.”

  “That doesn’t sound like Marshal Wallace. The law. Justice. That’s his hot button issue. Let me see the hologram.”

  “His robot said there was a malfunction in the recording device.”

  “You don’t believe that?”

  The chief deputy shook his head no.

  “Did you gather testimonies from the other officers present?”

  “He wouldn’t let the others go into the Ghetto with us.”

  “He went in alone?”

  “I was with him,” the deputy pointed out.

  “You got to give him credit. He has balls.”

  The doctor’s request light flashed and he saw an image of Stella, his secretary, outside his door. He knew she wouldn’t bother him during a meeting unless it was important.

  “Enter.”

  The office door opened and Stella came in, with a worried look on her face.

  “What is it?”

  She looked at the deputy and didn’t answer.

  “It’s okay, Stella.” Dr. Barkman spoke calmly. “The chief deputy may hear.”

  “Your surgery for tomorrow.” The woman’s voice was soft but Barkman could sense the urgency.

  “Mr. Turner.”

  Stella nodded. “There are problems with the scheduled donor.”

  “What kind of problems?”

  “He died an hour ago.”

  “Damn!”

  That created a new problem. Mr. Royce Turner, the CEO of Orion Industries. Because of his position he had been fast-tracked for a transplant. If there were delays, the negative feedback might be unpleasant. Mr. Turner was not someone to trifle with. He could be the clinic’s greatest supporter, or he could use his contacts to make life unbearable.

  “Should I reschedule the operation?” Stella asked.

  “No.” Dr. Barkman had no intention of telling Turner they weren’t ready for him. “I’ll meet with him in pre-op. Pretend everything is going well. Have the staff set up a sustain room for him. We’ll keep him under for…”

  Dr. Barkman looked at Lewis.

  “I’ll have one for you tomorrow,” the deputy said.

  “Good. We’ll keep Turner in the sustain room until you arrive.”

  Barkman noticed the grin on his chief deputy’s face.

  “You think you can do this without causing a problem with the Ananke?”

  “They’ll never know.”

  John P. Murphy became eligible for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer with the publication of “Tumbleweeds and Indelicate Questions” in Nature (Feb. 2013), edited by Colin Sullivan.

  Visit his website at johnmurphy.wordpress.com.

  * * *

  Flash: “Tumbleweeds and Indelicate Questions” ••••

  Flash: “At the Old Folks Home at the End of the World” ••••

  TUMBLEWEEDS AND INDELICATE QUESTIONS

  by John P. Murphy

  First published in Nature (Feb. 2013), edited by Colin Sullivan

  • • • •

  IWAS VERY careful to pay no attention to the big gnarly four-eyed alien head peering over my shoulder. Instead, I wiped down the bar and put the glasses into the sink—the work needs to get done, after all, and I sure wasn’t stalling.

  The only two customers left after the rush sat and watched me. I did figure I wasn’t going to be able to weasel out answering their question, but I wasn’t inclined to hurry myself, either. Besides, this bet of theirs was the first they’d stopped arguing all night: I was enjoying the peace.

  “C’mon, Sal,” said the lady in the mechanic’s coveralls. “You’re stalling.”

  “I ain’t stalling,” I protested, “I’m just trying to get my work done so I can get out of here on time.” I should have told her to buy something, but being drunker wouldn’t help matters.

  “It’s a simple question,” the mechanic said. “Did you kill that tumbleweed yourself or not?” She was talking about old Harry—the big hairy head with all the fangs who sat nestled in with the bottles up on the top shelf.

  She’d been the one to bet I’d killed it. The other one, dressed like a lawyer, pretty much called me chicken. They wouldn’t like the answer, and they’d just argue more. But I figured that refusing wouldn’t satisfy honor on the subject, and they’d just go back to bickering anyway.

  “Well, sure you think it’s a simple question,” I said, giving old Harry a big theatrical wink, “but that ain’t so.”

  The other customer shook her head. She sounded like a laywer, too. “I hardly think that if Sal had killed a sentient being, that she’d have proof of it sitting out for everyone to see.”

  “We-ell,” I said. “I don’t know about that. Silver City might be a happening town now with the new spaceport and all, but it used to be a bit of a wild place. Could be maybe I did shoot the old bastard, and just got, whatchacallit, grandmothered in.”

  “I k
new it!” The mechanic grinned and slapped the bar.

  “I didn’t say that I did. And I didn’t say that I didn’t,” I added before the lawyer chimed in. “I’m just saying, that doesn’t prove nothing.”

  I sighed. “Arright. I got old Harry about twenty years ago, back when you had to take them deathtrap shuttles down from orbit. I wanted some adventure, so I hooked up with a crew looking to survey the Dense.”

  The lawyer scowled. “That’s reserved hunting ground.”

  “Well, if we’d knowed that the place already had tenants, let alone that they was decent folks, we might’ve called it off. But we didn’t know that, so we didn’t do that. The Dense ain’t much place for humans, but we hiked for a good week along the river. It got dark, it got humid, and we got eaten alive by those furry little bugs.

  “One night, out of nowhere comes these huge hairy aliens looked like pencil-necked trolls with big old swords. Me and Suki was on guard when they came roaring out of the tendrilbushes, and we got scared and started shooting. Suki took a sword to the neck, sorry to say, but not before we each dropped one of them.”

  “Did their heads pop off?” The mechanic interrupted.

  “Oh, sure, right away,” I said.

  The lawyer frowned, so I explained, “Tumbleweeds can live just fine with their heads off. Times get lean, they wade into the ocean, then they pop their tops and their noggins float away to grow a new body somewhere nicer. Sometimes when they get hurt real bad they do it too.”

  “That why the call them tumbleweeds,” the mechanics said. “Or coconut trolls.”

  “Anyway, things calmed down and we got to talking instead of fighting, and found out it was all a misunderstanding. Apologies all round, and we tended the wounded. One of the tumbleweeds pulled through—nice fella, comes in sometimes to shoot the shit—but the other, Harry, wasn’t so lucky. We buried Suki according to her custom, but we had a problem with Harry. Harry’s clan’s death customs had rules, and we needed to know who killed him to figure out what to do with him. If I’d killed him, I was supposed to eat the ugly bugger. Otherwise, we was supposed to burn him so Suki’s ghost could eat him.

  “But we lost track of their heads in the fight, see? We didn’t know whether I killed Harry or winged his buddy.”

  The lawyer looked smug all of a sudden. “There’s a loophole.”

  I gave her the stink eye, interrupting someone in the middle of her story like that, but she hardly noticed. “That’s right, there’s a loophole: When Suki and I’ve both croaked they can safely burn him and let us sort it out up there. So there the poor guy stays until I kick the bucket.”

  All three of us gave that ugly puss a good long stare.

  “So!” I broke the silence. “Neither of you’s right, but just so’s there’s no hard feelings, next round’s on the house.”

  They finished their drinks in companionable silence and paid their tabs. If they left together, I wasn’t paying no mind, just washing dishes.

  “You’re so full of shit, Sal.” Harry snickered as he climbed off his shelf.

  I just gave him a peck on the cheek and told him to hush.

  AT THE OLD FOLKS HOME AT THE END OF THE WORLD

  by John P. Murphy

  First published in Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show (Nov/Dec 2013), edited by Edmund R. Schubert

  • • • •

  THERE IS AN old folks home at the end of the world, a modest-sized white clapboard building perched at the top of a hill overlooking the sea. A single scraggly rose bush still grows by the front porch. The rose bush is an item of discord: every month or so, Percimandias the Timeless and Enyo the Undying get to arguing over whether the bush ought to be fed with aspirin water or the blood of unicorns.

  It’s a moot point, of course: they have no aspirin, and the last unicorn—along with the last maiden who could lure it—died centuries ago. But they enjoy the argument, and each secretly suspects that the other is right. All they know for sure is that the flowers were more vibrant yesterday, smelled more lovely. They could be right; there are a lot of yesterdays in an old folks home.

  • • •

  At the old folks home at the end of the world, Rama the Terrible takes a walk every morning along the seawall. He rolls up the bottoms of his trousers, wades into the water, and uses his foul magic to patch up spots that look iffy. It’s the same spell he used to use to maintain his impregnable Skull Fortress. He hadn’t really ever intended to leave his fortress, only to visit the codgers for a couple days.

  Days became weeks, months, and years. Decades. He went back one day and found his Fortress growing ivy out of its giant marble nostrils and covered in bird shit. He told everyone that a hero blew it up, and they were very sympathetic about the nuisance.

  • • •

  At the old folks home at the end of the world, anyone who starts a sentence, “Back when I still had minions…” has to put a quarter in the jar.

  • • •

  At the old folks home at the end of the world, Amarahotep the Terrible (who was Terrible long before Rama was Terrible) keeps a secret stash of chocolate under the floorboards. By shaving it once a week with a diamond-encrusted starsteel dagger (scrupulously cleaned of the blood and ichor from its previous use, which earned her the title “Terrible”) this stash has been made to last over two hundred years, and may last another hundred. Amarahotep the Terrible (etc.) has been considering for some time a moonlit sharpening ritual to see about stretching the stash another century still, but is a little uncomfortable with the nudity, and unsure where to find cockatrice feathers anymore.

  • • •

  At the old folks home at the end of the world, Rama the Terrible has breakfast every day in the cove with the shingle beach, in view of the seawall. Sometimes Enyo the Undying sits on a threadbare blue towel on the pebbles, looking out at the tide and cradling a skull: the last of her serious enemies, whose last-ditch effort to put a halt to her diabolical schemes proved not entirely sufficient. It is still wine-stained inside. Now she mostly just talks to it. Apologizes. The other residents speculate quietly and seriously about whether it ever responds, or forgave.

  She’s not at the cove this morning. Rama the Terrible peels both hard-boiled eggs and dips them into the water to salt them. As he eats he looks out on the thousands of thousands of black and gray pebbles on the beach, now half-buried in a fine calcium sand, and he thinks about large numbers. “Million” is not a friendly word in the old folks home.

  • • •

  At the old folks home at the end of the world, the staff have long since grown old and expired, leaving the residents to divvy up chores like cleaning and cooking. The residents tend to think of themselves as management, not labor. Over the years they have formed Committees, Commissions and Boards to address issues as they arise, such as mold, demonic incursions, chicken coop repairs, leaking pipes, demonic incursions that turned out to be leaking pipes, and dry rot. Were it not for sorcerous runes inside the walls and other nefarious protections, these meetings would have resulted in the fiery destruction of the home many times over. Were it not for Amarahotep the Terrible (etc.) being inexplicably keen on keeping the basement dry, the pipes would still leak.

  The residents are even less adept at coming to a consensus about chores and cleaning, but after much wailing and gnashing of teeth there is The Schedule: the longest-lasting constitutional document of its type in history. The Schedule may not be fair, but damn it, it works.

  • • •

  At the old folks home at the end of the world, everyone feels a little bad about the way they treated Krom the Only-Nigh-Invulnerable. It’s too late now, of course.

  • • •

  At the old folks home at the end of the world, Rama the Terrible finishes his inspection of the seawall and casually pokes his stick into the rabbit hole by the path. The King of Rabbits once surrendered to him the secret of undoing dark rituals and revoking immortality, but the King of Rabbits is long s
ince gone. It’s a small thing, really—a wonder they haven’t discovered it for themselves. Rama thinks about maybe telling them all today. But things aren’t so bad at the old folks home, not really, even with bickering and boredom and running out of chocolate. He looks out at the sea and watches the wind blow the water white and black, and thinks about being alone.

  It can wait until tomorrow. There are a lot of tomorrows at the end of the world.

  E.C. Myers became eligible for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer with the publication of Fair Coin (2012), from Pyr.

  Visit his website at ecmyers.net.

  * * *

  Novel: Fair Coin (excerpt)

  FAIR COIN

  (excerpt)

  by E.C. Myers

  First published as Fair Coin (2012), by Pyr

  • • • •

  EPHRAIM FOUND his mother slumped over the kitchen table, her right hand curled around a half-empty bottle of vodka. A cigarette smoldered in the ashtray beside her; it had burned into a gray cylinder up to its lipstick-smeared filter. He ground the butt in the tray forcefully and waved wisps of smoke away from his face.

  “I suppose this is my fault,” he said to her still form. She’d drunk herself into a stupor, but she’d probably blame him for not rushing home from school to wake her for her late shift at the supermarket. He picked up the vodka bottle. Even if he woke her now, she wouldn’t be in any condition for work. Besides, she was already an hour late.

  “Mr. Slovsky’s gonna dock your pay again,” he muttered. Ephraim slipped the vodka out of her hand and took it to the sink. He filled a quarter of the bottle with tap water and swirled it around, diluting the alcohol. It stretched out the liquor supply; they already couldn’t afford her two-bottle a week habit. Of course, it would be better for both of them if she didn’t drink their money away at all. He screwed the cap on tight and thumped it onto the table where he’d found it. She didn’t even stir.