Asimov's SF, Oct/Nov 2005

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Not-Toby came down and let himself be tied to the cord. When he realized he was being carried up the stairs he said, “Hey, where are you going?"

  "What, you mean you actually noticed something not right? Could you be starting to wise up? That's right, little feller, I'm going the wrong way."

  "But what about the Actual Reality glasses?"

  "Well, you see, the thing is, there aren't any. Not real ones. They were just Imaginary Actual Reality Glasses."

  "You lied! Let me go!” He thrashed and tried to pinch.

  "Careful there. Whups!” Jacob let the servo slip over the rail, falling freely for a moment, burning his hands a bit as he braked it from crashing all the way to the ground. Then he reeled it in and held it twisting at arm's length. “What's the matter, too much actual reality for you?"

  "They're gone. Where did they ... I can't ... I can't find them."

  "What's that you say? Can't find your other servos to jump into? I guess that makes us both stuck ugly. Kind of scary, huh?"

  "You'll be sorry."

  Jacob dangled him over the rail. “Whups, almost dropped you again. What were you saying? Something about a threat?” He started up the steps again. “Naw, you wouldn't be that stupid. If some stuck-ugly giant had me dangling on the end of a rope and I didn't know where he was taking me, you know what I'd do? I'd shut the fuck up, that's what."

  The top landing of the fire escape was open to the sky, but still a bit too confining. Somebody's cactus plants and barbecue grill were in the way, and the door had its blinds open.

  Looking down over the rail made him giddy, but also, strangely enough, seemed to sober him up. If he could stand up on the rail, there was a clamp holding the top edge of the trailer to the rack that held it up. All he had to do was grab that clamp, and step over onto the rack, then up the criss-cross of girders.

  He coiled the rope over his shoulder, managed to get over, with only one moment of panic when he had one foot on the rail, one on the framework and six mechanical legs digging painfully into his side. But once across, it was easy going up the girders to the top, which consisted of an I-beam with posts sticking up at intervals to accommodate a larger top unit. He scooted over to the post nearest the end and straddled the I-beam with one leg hooked around the post, and sat there breathing heavily, admiring how far down it was, when he was almost tickled off balance by the ripple of tiny legs running down his side, jerked to a stop by the end of the rope.

  "Whoa there, little bug. Where do you think you're going? On your way to the cootie convention?"

  "What are you doing up here? Are you crazy?"

  "Yeah, that's what. I'm crazy. I'm a stark raving lunatic. I caught it from you. You made it look like too much fun, I guess. Hey, did you try looking down? I bet we'd make a crater if we fell down from here."

  He played out a few yards of rope, swinging Not-Toby like a pendulum. “Stop it! You're crazy!"

  "What, this? This ain't nothing. If anything happened to Toby, then you'd see what crazy looks like. This is just having a little fun and games. This one's called, ‘man overboard!’”

  He let some more rope slide through his hands and was hypnotized for a moment, watching it slowly sway, afraid to move. He wanted to wrap his leg tighter around the post so he could hook his foot under his knee, but that wouldn't give him enough room to lean, and the post was too wide to get a really good grip.

  "Okay, get ready,” he said, swinging the rope to arc higher and higher. “You see that moon up there, the bright round splotchy thing? Try to grab it as you go by. One ... two..."

  He swung the servo up and around, letting out a little more rope as it whirled. He was putting all his might into it, and had the loop almost leveled off horizontally, and then it started to tilt of its own accord, and he had to tilt with it to keep it from banging into the side. He leaned until his grip on the post was by his fingertips alone, a grip one of his servos could have maintained, but not his merely human fingers.

  He had only a moment before his grip would fail, and in that moment, without words, he thought he couldn't let go of Not-Toby, and yet, if he fell, they both would fall, and then, almost by itself, his arm found a possibility. With a grunt he tilted the trajectory to bring the rope hard against the post, then all the way around his back, spinning faster as it reeled in and wrapped him up snugly to the post.

  He let out a breath and hitched himself forward to get a good grip and looked around for Not-Toby, who suddenly popped up in his face. “Wow! Awesome, dude! I could see everything. Let's do it again."

  Jacob shook his head, and had an urge to laugh that choked up and didn't come out. “You liked that, did you? That figures.” He sat breathing heavily for a moment, afraid to look down any more. “Tell you what, if I didn't have to worry about what might happen to Toby I might have time to teach you how to fly. Would you like that?"

  "Yeah, fly, like a ... a fly!"

  "We'll make you some wings."

  "Wings, yes!"

  "Control surfaces—I'm going to have to read up on that—so you can control it. Turn you loose, go where you want to go. It's a skill, though. We're going to have to practice night after night. But you look after Toby, that's the deal. Some day he'll take my place in your life, and he'll take you places I could never go, out into space, or to the bottom of the sea. So you take care of him, you hear?"

  "Okay, come on. I want to go around."

  "All right. Let's untangle me here. We'll see who wears out first."

  * * * *

  The moon never quite made it around to the horizon—it just faded away in the glow of dawn. Street lights turned themselves off. One by one, lights came on in the windows of the stacks, but no one had stirred outside yet, except for the little things that lived in the ground.

  Jacob lay with his limbs askew like a vacant servo. His mouth was slack and crusty, his face relaxed, as if he had finally found peace and stopped just before he could utter the secret. Emily hovered over him and stared silently for a moment in horrified disbelief. Then she kicked his leg.

  "What are you doing?” she said. “I thought you were going to set up for me."

  Jacob opened his eyes and sat up on the floor. Emily was dressed up very business-like with a long skirt and a soft shirt open at the collar and a little embroidered jacket. Her face was freshly made up, and her hair was under control, except there was a small brush caught in it. She was stooped over picking up some trash on the floor.

  "Look at this mess!” she said. “Don't you know what time it is? I've got a class in ten minutes. Where's the...” She stood with a double handful of garbage, looking around for the trash can.

  Jacob held up his hands and she passed the junk to him and said, “I just ask you to do one thing.” She turned around and yelled, “Toby! Will you come in here and help us please?"

  "Don't worry,” said Jacob, getting to his feet. “Plenty of time. You look great. Good enough to ... want to ... have a meaningful relationship with.” She was scowling at him as he went out to the fire escape. He toyed with the trash can absent-mindedly, righting it with his foot, and suddenly remembered something as he dumped his garbage into it. He felt his empty pocket and looked around. He spotted what he was looking for way down on the ground, a tiny glint of broken glass and plastic. He cursed and went back inside.

  Toby was coming down the hall, moving strangely, his arms out wide. His eyes were closed, and there was a green plastic servo with froggy eyes and four long legs gripping onto his shoulder. “Look, Dad. I don't need eyes. It feels like I'm walking backward."

  "Toby, stop that! Open your eyes! What do you mean you don't need eyes?"

  Toby's eyes opened and the servo's eyes closed. Jacob could see he'd startled the boy. “It's okay, son. It's just that you shouldn't go around saying foolish things. You need your eyes. Of course you need your eyes."

  From the next room Emily said, “Will somebody please give me a hand?” Jacob helped her set up a large blue screen in p
lace as a backdrop behind the desk chair. “Toby, boot me up, will you?” she said. “Both screens."

  Toby booted up the computer and took it online. One screen started filling up with panels, blank now except for labels bearing the names of students. Emily sat down and adjusted the pc camera. Her face appeared on the other flat screen, and she began scrolling through backgrounds to fill in over the blue screen.

  Jacob was looking down at his son. “Why are you using that servo? That's a baby toy. You're better than that."

  "Yeah, but look what I can do.” He held out his arm and the servo went walking out on it.

  "Not bad. But you still think too much. And open your eyes, for Christ's sake. What did I just tell you?"

  "But it's easier...."

  "Doesn't matter. Did you notice your thumbs twitch when you close your eyes? When did that start?"

  Emily turned on him. “Jacob! What are you doing?"

  "I'm just telling him...."

  "Don't just tell him. You're the expert. Teach. He needs to know why. Why don't you want him to close his eyes?"

  Jacob felt himself blush. The way she looked at him, through him—she knew. Or did she? Maybe she was fishing around, waiting for him to blurt. Luckily she turned to her son. “Toby, do you know? Think about it. Why is it important to keep your eyes open when you move the servos, even though it's easier not to? Hmm? How about you—what's his name?—Doggit. How about you, Doggit? Do you want to be hanging on Toby's arm, looking out the back of his head or ... or..."

  Toby's face lit up. “So I can learn to be in two places at once!"

  Emily looked smugly at her husband. “There you are. Isn't that how you sold it to me? It will expand his mind. He'll be able to work multiple servos and think thoughts no unaided mind could ever think. What's the matter, Jacob? Don't you believe it any more?"

  "That'll be cool,” said Toby, “when we start adding modules."

  "Oop—School bell. Run along now.” She turned her attention to the screen and began greeting students as their faces popped up in their boxes.

  "Come on, Tobe,” said Jacob.

  Toby walked beside him, still excited. “It'll be so cool. Some scuzzball tries to tell me, ‘Oh yeah, you and what army?’ ‘Uh, excuse me, me and this army,’ and this whole army of servos turns around, kicks his butt."

  "Yeah, cool,” said Jacob. “Hey Toby, why don't you fix me a bite to eat. I'm running late."

  Not only late, but falling behind. He grabbed a shirt and tried to think about getting through the day. Now he regretted not having put in more time last night on the simulator. He couldn't stand the thought of that big-mouth Kennie Calhoun making the cut instead of him. The guy had no finesse, and never would. No, practice or not, that wasn't the problem in the long run. It was these young guys coming up who didn't have the disadvantage of having to unlearn the old servos before they could get rated on the new models. That was Toby's advantage. He was the cutting edge that would make them all obsolete.

  He didn't want to think about what might be coming up after Toby.

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  Copyright © 2005 by Steve Martinez.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Pericles the Tyrant by Lois Tilton

  A Novelette

  Lois Tilton's last story for Asimov's, “The Gladiator's Tale: A Dialogue” (June 2004), was nominated for the Nebula Award. Where her previous story took an alternate look at Spartacus, her newest tale takes a sideways glance at “Pericles the Tyrant".

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Under a white-hot summer sky, the waters of Panormos Bay glinted with reflected sunlight. Wreckage rocked slowly on the waves, the shattered timbers of ships. When the air stirred, it brought with it the sick odor of drowned men. At the harbor, chained Carthaginian prisoners sweated at their labor repairing fortifications, naked men burned almost black by the relentless sun. Pericles and I were supposed to be guarding them, but we had retreated slightly from our assigned post to the shade of a broken column, which offered a little relief from the heat. While the prospect of military service had first appeared exciting to a pair of sixteen-year-olds, the reality of leaning on a spear for hours in the sun had diminished our enthusiasm.

  Although we were fellow Athenian citizens and members of the same age-group, I did not meet Pericles son of Xanthippos until the Persians burned Athens and we all fled to Sicily to found a new city. His father had taken him away into exile four years earlier, when the older man had been ostracized. This was a custom the Athenians had in those days, because they feared the rise of tyrants. But when the Persians threatened to attack the city, Athens recalled all its exiles home.

  I once asked Pericles if his father was bitter over the lost years, but he said pridefully, “They only ostracize the men who really matter. Everyone in my family has been exiled.” They were aristocrats, the Alcmeonid clan, though Xanthippos in his ambition had connected himself to the popular faction that was then rising into power.

  My own father was no aristocrat and his own political leanings were conservative, but as members of the same age cohort, Pericles and I both were sent for military training before the Persian invasion, though normally boys our age would still have been consigned to the care of our schoolmasters. But we were given no chance to test ourselves against the Persians. Athens’ allies, led by the Spartans, deserted us, and the generals made the decision to abandon the city rather than become slaves to the Persian Great King. Now all Athens was in exile, and there were no schools in Sicily's Panormos Harbor where our fleet had just defeated the Carthaginians.

  We called it an act of the gods that had brought our fleet of Athenian exiles, fleeing from the Persians, into Panormos Bay just as the Carthaginians were about to make their assault on Syracuse, then the foremost of all the Hellene cities in Sicily. In fact, there was a very human element in the timing of the enemy fleet's appearance. Carthage was a Persian ally, and the Persian plan was to move its vast army and navy against the cities of mainland Hellas while Carthage at the same time would sail against Syracuse to prevent its tyrant Gelon from sending us aid. As it happened instead, the Athenians refused Gelon's aid, then arrived in Sicily just in time to save Syracuse. This is what we tragedians call poetic irony.

  Watching the chained Carthaginians hauling heavy blocks of stone into place, I reflected that the poets were right when they said a brave death in battle was better than slavery. I pitied the captives their fate, but not very much, because after all they had sailed here to defeat and enslave the free men of the Hellene cities on Sicily. And they were barbarians—appallingly and fascinatingly alien to any properly raised Athenian.

  "I hear they sacrifice children to their gods,” I said to Pericles, staring at the men from Carthage. “They throw them alive into the fire."

  "My father says their commanding general threw himself onto the flames when he saw his fleet being defeated,” Pericles replied.

  I shivered with delighted horror. “Think of that scene on the stage! The ultimate sacrifice!” Then hybris made me add, “I write tragedies.” Which was true if it didn't mean actually finishing one, or having it produced on the stage.

  "Let me hear something, then,” he challenged me.

  "I'm still working on this one,” I told him, but in fact I was rather pleased with my efforts. So I took an actor's stance but spoke the lines instead of singing them properly, for fear of the taxiarch in charge of the guard overhearing. “I call it The Trojan Exiles. It starts with an oracle brought from Delphi:

  Why do you stay, doomed men of Troy? Flee while you can,

  As far as you can, abandon your homes, your high stone towers,

  For fire and pitiless War, driving out of the west,

  Will leave them all in ruins.

  "You didn't make that up!” Pericles interrupted me. “It's just the oracle Delphi gave Athens about the Persian invasion! Everyone knows it. All you did was change Athens for Troy, and east for west. If you w
ant to write a tragedy about the war, why not just say Athens?"

  I objected rather hotly, “A tragedy has to be about the gods, the ancient heroes—sacred things. Not something that just happened the other day!"

  "That's not so. Didn't Phrynichos or someone write a tragedy, The Capture of Miletos, after the Persians sacked the city?"

  "And the generals fined him a thousand drachmas for performing it. I don't have a thousand drachmas.” In fact, I doubted there was an Athenian in Sicily who could raise a thousand drachmas at that moment, with everything we owned in ashes, except what we brought with us from Athens on the ships.

  "Write a victory ode, then."

  "My father says we shouldn't be celebrating a victory, not with Athens burned to the ground and the Persians occupying all Hellas."

  Pericles dismissed this opinion with the superior tone of one whose father is a member of the Council of generals. “That's backward thinking. We need to look forward. We're in a position now to take over all of western Sicily from Carthage. Within a few years, we can be ruling the entire island. There aren't any Spartans to block our ambitions here."

  "What about Syracuse?” I reminded him. “My father says Gelon's army is larger than the Spartans'. He says that if the Hellenes had accepted his alliance against the Persians and stood together with him, we could have beaten them.” This was still a painful issue among the Athenians. Gelon of Syracuse had offered his fellow-Hellenes the aid of three hundred triremes from his own fleet and twenty thousand hoplites—a greater force than any other city could muster, but on the unacceptable condition that Gelon be named commanding general.

  Pericles spat angrily on the ground at the mention of Gelon's name. “If our Spartan allies had stood up with us instead of deserting, we could have beaten the Persians! We didn't need help from Syracuse!” He took on the tones of an orator, as natural to him as breath. “All Sicily is ruled by tyrants, and they have to fight their wars with mercenaries, because they can't trust their own people. The Spartans were at least free men. Not like them.” He pointed to the chained prisoners with a movement of his spear. “My father says Carthage fights its wars with mercenaries and foreigners—and look at the result! But we are Athenians, and the people rule us, no one else."