Asimov's SF, April-May 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

  She hadn't told him about the caverns. She didn't want her assistants down here. From Chavo's reaction, he hadn't known about the cavern, either.

  She had been keeping secrets.

  Too many of them.

  “You're beginning to understand,” Salvino said.

  “Or you're lying to me to cover up your own plan.”

  She sighed. “My plan was simple. I wanted to get into this dig to see if there were valuables to loot. The cave diving was a gift. Then we were able to map the caverns, and—”

  “How did you map the caverns?” he asked. “Dr. Reese didn't.”

  “Dr. Reese was afraid of her site,” Salvino said. “She didn't want to use equipment because of the Spires.”

  “You believe that?” he asked. It could have been a good excuse to keep everyone else from finding the caverns below.

  “Yes, I believe that,” Salvino said. She picked up her suit, folded it, and shoved it into her pack. “All the scientists worried that the Spires were too fragile to handle much of anything.”

  He had seen that in some of his research.

  “We decided to try scanning from the ground, just outside the secure zone. But we were looking for the caverns.” Salvino picked up the other pack. The blanket started to slide off her shoulders. “No one else ever did.”

  Meklos put the blanket around her, then took both packs. “How did you know about the caverns?” he asked.

  “We didn't. But when I realized we were going to see the Spires, I hired an expert, a man by the name of Zeigler—”

  “I've heard of him,” Meklos said.

  She gave Meklos a measuring look. “Then you know why I trusted his instinct. It turned out to be right.”

  Meklos nodded. He would check Salvino out, but her explanations made a lot of sense.

  “Lying about your cave diving experience could have killed you,” he said.

  She shook her head. “Nothing in my information packet was a lie. I've dived a lot, mostly on jobs like this. You'd be surprised how many ancient cities are flooded.”

  “Nothing was a lie,” he repeated. “But you left out a lot.”

  “I erased everything that was important, figuring no one would bother to check. I was right.”

  His cheeks warmed. “I checked,” he said. “But the equipment here—”

  “Worked to my advantage,” she said. Her teeth were chattering.

  “What's your plan now?” he asked. “Go to the surface and arrest Dr. Reese?”

  “No,” Salvino said. “There's no reason. The caverns are empty.”

  “So you say,” Meklos said. “There's no way to check. For all I know, your companion is taking valuables out now.”

  “I'll let you check our ship,” she said. “You can examine everything we have.”

  He gave her a measuring look. She seemed truthful, but he had no real way to know. Although deep down, he trusted her. And he had never trusted Dr. Reese.

  * * * *

  38

  As they climbed the stairs, Meklos explained what had happened above ground to Navi. He explained his defense system theory.

  It made sense. It made her disappointment fade.

  She had wanted to see the museum. But that didn't exist—or no longer existed, at least not here. The defense system was almost as good, maybe better, since it probably had applications in the modern era.

  And it would prevent Gabrielle Reese from robbing this place blind. Because she wouldn't be in charge any longer.

  The Scholars got most of their funding from government grants from all over the sector. Various governments would want to know how this defense system worked. They'd bid for the rights to study it.

  This entire place would become famous. Dr. Reese wouldn't have untrammeled access any longer. They had nearly reached the top of the stairs when Navi put her hand on Meklos's arm.

  “Check me out,” she said. “As soon as we get to the surface. If what you say is true, then you can use proper communications equipment right from the city and it won't cause any harm. With a more powerful system, you'll see my bio, even without the disk I gave you. You'll find it all.”

  He stopped beside her, moving the packs to one hand. “Why should I do that?”

  “Because we're going to hire you. You'll guard this place for us until we can bring in reinforcements and take control from Dr. Reese.”

  “She found this place. By your own admission, she hasn't done anything,” he said. “You were right. There is no reason to take her off the dig.”

  Navi smiled. “I'm glad you understand. She truly is a gifted expert in her field. She should be allowed to stay. But you need to make sure everything else stays as well.”

  He grunted, which she took as an assent. Although she wasn't sure.

  She climbed the remaining steps into the building. People combed the walls, scanning everything. The site looked completely different than it had in the morning.

  “Are there really caves down there?” one of the graduate students asked her.

  The kid was so excited he apparently didn't notice the white all over her clothing or the blanket around her shoulders. Or the way her teeth were chattering.

  “I'm not at liberty to say,” Navi said. She let Meklos lead her into the sunshine.

  The warm sunshine that seemed to have a life of its own. It undulated like water toward the building that Gabrielle Reese had called the temple.

  Clearly it wasn't a temple at all, but some kind of central control station.

  “You want to see it?” Meklos asked her.

  Navi nodded. She wanted to see it, then she wanted to go back to the building she'd been staying in. She wanted to sit alone in the darkness and shake.

  She wanted a few minutes to let the fear ease away before she had to be completely professional again.

  * * * *

  39

  The light was almost to the end of the Spires now. Gabrielle studied the light moving through the two-dimensional drawing as if it were alive and about to attack. A few of her team had gathered around as well, asking questions that she mostly ignored.

  Then Meklos came inside. People parted from him as if he were going to harm them. He had a woman with him, and it took Gabrielle a moment to realize it was one of the divers.

  “What did you find?” she asked, barely able to control her excitement. The museum? Treasures? She wasn't sure she could hide any of it now, but that mattered less than the fact of the artifacts. She wanted to see the famous Spoils of War Museum that the Denonites had created.

  “Nothing,” the woman said. She sounded tired.

  “It's a long story,” Meklos said. Obviously, he already knew what the story was.

  Gabrielle glared at him. He was still getting in her way.

  But he didn't seem to notice her glare. Instead, he was staring at the drawing.

  “This is brilliant,” he said to the diver. “This is how the Denonites protected themselves against siege. Those passages below had to have once been easily visible from the ground. The Denonites built this so that they could track anyone entering.”

  “And prevent them from coming into the city with those barriers,” the diver said.

  “What barriers?” Gabrielle asked.

  But they ignored her. She wasn't used to being ignored.

  She was about to ask the question again, when the light moved to the last part of a Spire. It flickered for a moment, and then disappeared. There was a grinding above her. The ceiling closed. The lights were gone.

  “What was that?” she asked.

  But she didn't expect anyone to answer her, so she hurried outside. The light no longer flowed down from the Spires.

  The city looked normal—as normal as it had before the sirens had gone off. The defense system had shut down, but she didn't know why. She was beginning to think she didn't know anything.

  She was torn between awe at the system she'd seen and a disconcerting sense of unease, as if life as she had k
nown it had suddenly and irrevocably changed.

  * * * *

  40

  “He got out,” Navi said softly. “He got out.”

  She felt more relief than she'd expected to.

  “I'll give him a few minutes, and then contact the ship.”

  She looked at Meklos.

  “I can't believe he got out.”

  Meklos smiled. He seemed calmer, too. “He got out and the system shut off. This thing is brilliant. The threat is gone, so the entire system is back in wait mode.”

  “We're going to be studying this for a long time,” Navi said. “Will you help?”

  “When everything checks out,” Meklos said.

  She nodded. She understood that. She took her pack from Meklos, dug into the pouch, and grabbed her communicator. Damn, it was nice to use a powerful system again. She held it up to him. His smile widened.

  She walked to the door. Gabrielle Reese was sitting on the stairs outside, looking lost. And she had lost. The woman was smart enough to know that the change in the Spires made the dig something completely different.

  Oddly, Navi wanted to comfort her, to tell her that what she would lose financially, she would gain in reputation. Gabrielle Reese would forever be the woman who'd discovered the long-lost technology of the Denonites.

  But Navi didn't say that. Instead she stepped into the street, bathing in the warmth of Amnthra's bright sun. She held up her communicator, pressing it on. She didn't use any identifying words. The signal from the comm should have been enough.

  “I'm checking on Roye,” she said. “Is he all right?”

  He looks like he's made of snow, the pilot of her deep exploration ship answered. But he's all right. Glad to be out of there. You coming to join us?

  She looked over her shoulder. There were too many changes here, too much going on. Much as she trusted Meklos Verr, she had a hunch he didn't trust her. And there was too much at stake to leave to a man she'd just hired.

  “No, I'm staying. I'll send up a full report tonight. We're going to need a lot of experts on the spot very fast. And not the kind that we have. We're dealing with technology now, not ancient art.”

  Figured out that much, the pilot said. Roye wants to know if you're all right. Does he need to come over the mountain to find you?

  “I'm fine,” she said, then she took a deep breath of the warm air.

  More than fine. She was thrilled.

  Everything had turned out much better than she'd expected.

  “Tell him,” she said, “I'm just fine.”

  * * * *

  41

  It didn't take Meklos long to check out Navi Salvino, now that he had the proper equipment. He spent most of his time digging through information logs from far away, ones she never would have thought to tamper with.

  While he did that, Meklos had his team set up a better perimeter. He put robots and motion detectors all around the rim of the crater, like he'd wanted to do from the beginning.

  He was going to accept her offer. He wanted to study the Spires system. It fascinated him. He'd been in countless cities that protected themselves from attack, but not like this place. He wanted to know more.

  And he had a hunch there would always be more to know.

  He lifted his face toward the Spires. He'd thought them beautiful when he'd first seen them. But now he realized they were more than beautiful. They were fascinating and, more importantly, useful. He smiled at them—and silently promised he would always keep them safe.

  Copyright © 2009 Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  * * *

  Department: ON BOOKS: WHAT KILLED TOM DISCH?

  by Norman Spinrad

  THE WORD OF GOD

  by Thomas M. Disch

  Tachyon Publications, $14.95

  ISBN: 978-1892391773

  This is going to be an unavoidably personal essay, since it must deal with two great writers who happen to have been long term friends of mine, one of whom, Thomas M. Disch, recently committed suicide on the heels of, or indeed perhaps as a deliberate part of, the launch of his last novel, if novel it can be said to be, The Word of God, in which he trashes the memory of the other, Philip K. Dick.

  Believe me, I didn't want to have to write this, I thought I would just review The Word of God along with several other books in the same column, and leave it at that. But in the end, I realized I just couldn't shirk this arduous and painful task because it simply has to be written, and the karma of it is that like it or not, and I really don't, no one that I know of is in a position to write it but me.

  Tom and his “significant other” Charles Naylor, and I and my “significant other” Dona Sadock, had a four-way friendship, a friendship of couples, not the most common of friendships, going back three decades. And Tom's “significant other,” or “partner” or whatever other awkward terms will have to suffice for lovers living together until someone invents a good non-gender specific-term in English, equivalent to the French “compagnon” is a significant part of this story and of The Word of God, since the not-that-less-recent death of Charlie Naylor played a major part in Tom's apparently carefully planned decision to end his life.

  This I know for certain because the last time I spoke with Tom he told me so.

  He also talked about suicide, and not in a jocular manner. At the time, I didn't quite realize that it was imminent, but I did realize he was speaking seriously enough to discuss it seriously with him in an effort to dissuade him.

  Though in the end, in retrospect, by my lights, and certainly by his own, Thomas M. Disch had rational reasons for choosing to write The Word of God as his not-so-fond farewell to the literary world, to the world of science fiction, and to choose its launching as the time to shuffle and soft-shoe his way off this mortal coil. If you've got good reasons to do it, and you're going to do it, do it with style and class, and with a juicy finger pointed skyward.

  Though on the other hand....

  But I'm getting a little ahead of myself. Just as I had somehow felt it would be getting ahead of things to read The Word of God before going to see Tom read from it at an event at New York's South Seaport Museum. And upon reading it after the event, I was glad that I hadn't....

  Though on the other hand...

  The New York Review of Science Fiction sponsors a monthly series of readings by science fiction and fantasy authors at the Seaport Museum in New York. I have done readings there several times—I hadn't seen Tom for years, hadn't even spoken to him since Charlie's death and neither had Dona. So for all these reasons, I decided to attend his reading to see him again and invite him to dinner.

  When Tom arrived he was obviously in bad physical shape, walking with a cane slowly, haltingly, and seemingly painfully, and otherwise seeming in fragile health, and de-energized. He seemed depressed and somehow a bit out of it when we spoke briefly before he went on about our mutual publishing woes and the depressed state of so-called major SF publishing that had relegated him to small press author status, and about his terrible real estate woes which I would hear more of later.

  But as soon as he went on to even introduce his reading from The Word of God, his demeanor and energy level went through a drastic positive transformation.

  The conceit of The Word of God, if that is what you would like to call it and what it certainly was to Thomas M. Disch in literary terms, is that the book is not a novel, not a collection of stories and poems, but a confessional autobiography in which he reveals for the first time that he is God, presents His version of various Truths, and, good-naturedly though rather diffidently for the Deity, invites the reader and anyone else who might care to worship Him.

  Well, any one who knew Tom Disch personally or who has read much of his fiction and particularly his novel The Priest, in which he gives what for to the Church and its clergy, will know that this is neither an attempt at piety nor sincere Divine Madness—indeed, not sincere at all, but a final massive dose of Thomas M. Dis
ch's peculiar knife-edged brand of superciliously tinged irony, or ironic superciliousness. It's the sort of irony that allowed him to write a short story called “Feathers From the Wings of an Angel,” which is a deadpan and perfect fictional reproduction of a piece of prize-winning inspirational Christian fiction but not quite satirical at all.

  It was in precisely this spirit that Tom introduced his reading, announcing his Godhood, inviting worship in a genial and undemanding manner, beaming and grinning with a not quite fatuous not quite uncomical deadpan demeanor, and lit up like, well, the proverbial Christmas tree, come fully alive with charismatic energy and seeming to be enjoying himself immensely—a brightness, good humor, and strength that continued throughout his reading.

  Tom always was a powerful, humorous, well-schooled dramatic reader, who somehow made the listening experience all the more enjoyable by the way he so clearly enjoyed doing it himself—a reader with the talent of a Harlan Ellison who didn't exactly take himself seriously, but wasn't exactly taking the piss out of himself either—a mode that mirrored much of his written fiction, particularly his short fiction, and some of his poetry.

  The section of The Word of God that he chose to read was a previously published short story called “The New Me,” in which the first person narrator, a nebbishy teacher, must change his personality to become more assertive for career reasons. This story was written long before The Word of God, but Disch neatly segues into it with a sequence of reminiscences about his one-time infatuation with Western gear and fashion, including the notion that if Jesus had been incarnated in our time, it would have been as the “Good Cowboy.” This is a perfect segue because a cowboy persona is the first one that the story's narrator adapts, and the story itself has him ending up a born again cowboy Christian of a particularly sleazy and hilarious cheapjack type.

  This will give you a hint of only one aspect of The Word of God, and not really the dominant one, the point here for present purposes being that Tom Disch went through his whole performance with such enjoyment and such high energy that even his physical impairments seemed to be magically burned away by it, along with his previous depressive state.