Analog SFF, December 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Katerina sneered, “'As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport.’ But once you've annihilated and recreated humanity enough times, maybe the aliens will get bored. Perhaps, after you've left the Earth once more in flaming ruins and massacred billions, as a parting joke they'll remove your ability to make it right again.

  "Imagine how they'll giggle as you realize that this time you've destroyed the world permanently. As the final curtain falls on the human race, maybe they'll let you hear their applause for a fine performance before they head for another inhabited planet searching for someone else as gullible as you!"

  Martin shifted his feet and tried hiding the doubt bubbling up in his brain. The confident look on his face sagged. “I don't know what to do, Katerina. I want to do the right thing—but I'm not sure what the right thing is!"

  "Then follow the rule Dr. Stone mentioned in one of his classes. He told us physicians always want to give their patients the best treatment—but they don't always know what the best treatment is. So they follow the precept ‘First, do no harm.’ If you're not sure how to use your power—and I pray you aren't—then don't use it.

  "I don't believe you, I, or any human being is wise enough yet to know how to use this much power. If I could, I'd pluck the aliens’ ‘gift’ out of me and fling it back at them! Better to be ‘only’ human and do whatever limited good we can than to be a ‘god’ and commit terrible sins, even with the best intentions!"

  Katerina's mind touched his. “If you could, Martin, would you become human again with me?"

  Martin felt his surroundings melt into a mystical vision. The beautiful woman standing nearby seemed transfigured into a heaven-sent saint glowing with otherworldly radiance, calling him to repentance. The golden cross hanging from her neck swayed like a hypnotist's watch—drawing him into a trance.

  His desire to regain this celestial being's love and approval tempted him to submit to her will. The deadlocked struggle raging inside his soul tilted slightly—just long enough for him to say, “Maybe I would..."

  The smile emanating from Katerina's angelic face almost convinced him he'd said the right thing. Then a sense of intense dread snapped him back to reality.

  Martin's skin tingled with prickling fear. His gaze whipped around the landscape, searching for his terror's source but already knowing what it was. He felt its ponderous presence like the bottom of a giant's foot rushing down to crush him into a Martian grave.

  An impossible living mass of sparkling pinpoint lights writhed and undulated several meters away. Their countless numbers scintillated in every color of the spectrum, like the manic motion of every star and galaxy in the cosmos seen by some eternal being peering in from outside the Universe itself.

  Then he and Katerina waited while the aliens decided their fate.

  * * * *

  Sweat trickled down Martin's sides as the aliens focused their attention on him. A passionless voice rippled at him from infinity.

  You wish to renounce our gift.

  Martin glanced at Katerina. The sad plea in her puppy-like eyes melted whatever resistance he could mount. He whispered, “Yes."

  Then it was Katerina's turn for attention.

  You wish to renounce our gift.

  "Yes!"

  The shimmering lights expanded toward the two of them—twisting menacingly in psychedelic hues.

  You both wish to renounce our gift.

  Martin nodded slightly.

  Katerina screamed, “YES!"

  There is nothing to renounce. You never had the power you thought you had. Your ability to understand and manipulate what you call Nature is limited by your own nature.

  We do not have your limitations. Each time you believed you were manipulating matter, energy, gravity, and time, we responded to your thoughts. We created and did what you wished. Everything you saw, heard, thought, and felt beyond the range of your own minds and senses you did through us.

  Katerina murmured, “So you really are like Descartes’ evil genie."

  Martin frowned. “Who? Oh, you mean the—"

  Katerina interrupted, “I think what you did was a test. You wanted to see what we would do with godlike powers. Well, we don't want them! Yes, we have great limitations—but despite those limitations we're still capable of great things.

  "We don't need to be as powerful as you to love, to feel compassion and caring, to fill our world with happiness and joy. Even if our intelligence is nothing compared to yours, it's enough to let us marvel at Creation and use whatever science we can develop to explore its mysteries. We may never be able to travel to other planets and stars as easily as you—but when we do, we'll have earned that destiny!"

  Martin began, “I'm not sure they're really interested in what you're saying—"

  Katerina continued, “It's that curiosity, our need and struggle to explore, to learn all we can, that makes us what we are and gives our lives meaning! I feel sorry for you if you already know all there is to know. What gives meaning to your lives?"

  Martin cringed—expecting the aliens to be so annoyed after Katerina finished pontificating that they'd zap the two of them into quarks. But as the seconds passed he relaxed slightly. Maybe his overzealous fiancée had managed to beard the lion—

  You are a curious species. Your “Earth” is one of many worlds we tend and nurture. When your planet was young, we made it possible for life to one day arise on it. We moved and settled it into an orbit ideal for life based on water and carbon chemistry to develop over time.

  We made a body similar in size to this one collide with your world to create a moon large enough to produce higher tides, slow its rotation, and reduce its winds to accelerate the development of complex life. We adjusted your planet's axial tilt to make seasons that would moderate its temperatures and directed small bodies rich in organic chemicals to strike it.

  After we prepared your world and sowed those seeds on its fertile surface, we waited to see what forms life would take. When a path proved sterile, with no hope of developing a suitable level of sentience, we altered your planet's biosphere by directing more bodies to strike its surface and by other simple methods. This let other types of life come to dominance and follow new paths.

  Martin shuddered. It was one thing to read a science fiction story—quite another to be living one. If the aliens were telling the truth, those mass extinctions in Earth's past weren't random accidents—

  Your species is the most promising your world has developed. We have given you every opportunity to show us you are suitable. We moved the two planets closest to yours deeper into your sun's habitable zone. We altered them to make it easier for you to travel to and live on them. Then we waited to see if you would send the best your species has to offer to discover why we did it.

  Martin suppressed his chuckle at being described as “humanity's best.” The aliens could read his thoughts—and they might not value humility or self-deprecation.

  As you approached this planet we created an artifact to evaluate your curiosity and encourage you to stay here. We made a second artifact to motivate you as strongly as possible to accept our gift. We have watched how you used that gift.

  All this has been done so you could show us what you are. You have been tested to see if you are suitable.

  Katerina said, “We've shown you our best and our worst—our weaknesses and our strengths. We make mistakes—but we learn from them. We can be foolish—but we're also wise enough to realize that we shouldn't keep your gift. With all our faults, we can still feel love and compassion great enough to even give up our lives to save others. Based on everything you've seen, I hope you do find us ‘suitable.’”

  You have indeed shown us what you are.

  Martin glanced at Katerina. The serene expression on her face was the same an ancient Roman martyr displayed before a mighty emperor—confident he could only break her body and never shake her faith.

  The aliens spoke again. You have failed our test. You a
re like the animals you call cattle and sheep. Your kind has no future.

  We grant you enough time to prepare for your end.

  The shimmering lights lingered for a moment before disappearing. A cold breeze ruffled the clothes of the two human beings standing alone on the silent plain. Each of them pondered the parting words of the vanished aliens.

  Both of them were afraid—and one of them seethed with a growing anger.

  * * * *

  Stone's attention seesawed between the TV monitor showing reports of medical and meteorological miracles, and the mammoth screens in the front of the room. He kept hoping for another transmission from Mars to explain why so many inexplicable good things were happening and to ease his fears that they were the prelude to some catastrophe.

  Then he noticed Nancy Kelley, newly returned from her press conference, huddling at the other side of the room with several of the project's other senior people. The worried expressions they shared indicated that whatever they were discussing wasn't good.

  Kelley separated herself from the group and walked toward Stone. He met her halfway and said, “What's going on?"

  The flight director murmured, “I'm not sure—but if the aliens really have turned hostile, it may mean the end of the world!"

  * * * *

  Martin was the first to move after the aliens left. He ignored Katerina and trudged past her, heading back toward the habitation module.

  She caught up with him. “What do you think they meant, Martin?"

  He scowled wordlessly at her and kept walking.

  After Martin mutely rebuffed that same question again, Katerina resigned herself to patiently accompanying him back home. The tension between them was so strong and distracting she nearly slipped several times—as if the ground were shifting beneath her feet.

  When they reached the module she followed Martin into its communications center. Still waiting for him to speak, she watched him sit down and activate their primary transceiver.

  "Mission Control, this is Slayton speaking, audio only. I'll send a detailed description of the situation here after you acknowledge reception. Over."

  As they waited the several minutes it would take that message to reach Houston and receive a reply, Martin acted as if he didn't see his fiancée sitting beside him. Katerina tried reassuring herself that he couldn't stay angry forever.

  Then he looked at her and hissed, “Is there anything you want to tell me, Katerina?"

  "I don't know what you're talking about, Martin!"

  "No? Just before they disappeared, the aliens gave me a private telepathic message. They informed me you really did sabotage my effort to save humanity! You used your ‘power’ to pull a stunt on me from one of those grade-Z 1950s science fiction movies I showed you during our flight here, Invasion U.S.A.

  "I let you have free access to my mind to show you I had nothing to hide—and you took advantage of my trust! You used your power to put those ideas in my head about how to change human nature—and then you hypnotized me! And while I was in that trance you told me what the aliens said you called a ‘noble lie.’ All those terrible things I thought I did—everything that seemed to happen to you, me, the people at Mission Control and throughout the world—none of it really happened! I thought I'd saved the world by using one bad SF cliché. Instead you made me fall for the biggest cliché of all—'It was all a dream!’”

  Martin shouted, “I only thought I tried to change human nature! I only imagined I destroyed you and the whole human race! Those ‘memories’ I seemed to oh-so-cleverly send back through time were just a noontime nightmare you created inside my mind using my own thoughts, doubts, and fears—a nightmare that seemed to go on for hours but really lasted only moments! It was all just a mental melodrama you deliberately directed—even acting out the role of my ‘innocent’ victim—to convince me I was wrong about how we could help humanity!

  "That's why we failed the aliens’ test to see if we could improve human nature—because you never let me try!"

  A voice at Mission Control crackled from the transceiver's speaker. “Stone here. Please describe your current medical condition and Savitskaya's. Let us know if either of you is in any immediate danger."

  Unintelligible voices murmured excitedly in the background before Stone continued, “I've been asked to tell you that the orbiters at your location and ground-based observations indicate Mars is experiencing a significant new decay in its orbit. The planet's rate of movement toward the Sun is more rapid than when the aliens moved it previously.

  "There's insufficient data yet to determine where or if Mars will resume a stable orbit. If you have any information about this new anomaly, please send it immediately!"

  Martin looked at Katerina contemptuously. “Well? Should I tell them what happened? You were afraid I might accidentally destroy the human race if I tried to help it. Now, because of you, it will be destroyed!"

  "What do you mean, Martin?"

  "You were so sure the aliens were surrogates of Satan, tempting us to accept and use power we shouldn't have, that you didn't think how things might look from their point of view. Instead of improving humanity like they wanted us to do, you tricked and pressured me into joining you in throwing their gift back in their faces. No wonder they decided we were a couple of cowardly obnoxious ingrates and that our entire species wasn't ‘suitable’ for their help!"

  Martin sneered. “Don't look at me like you don't know what happens next. You heard what Stone said about Mars moving toward the Sun again. The aliens practically confessed to redirecting an asteroid to wipe out the dinosaurs and causing other mass extinctions. They also claimed to have created the Moon by slamming a Mars-sized planet into Earth billions of years ago.

  "I think they're planning to do it again with the real Mars—and when those two worlds collide it'll be the last thing the whole human race ever sees!"

  Katerina stammered, “I can't believe—” But the heavy hands that this time grabbed and shook her shoulders for real cut her off.

  Martin glared at the deceitful woman he'd loved and screamed, "What have you done?"

  Copyright © 2009 H.G. Stratmann

  * * * *

  (EDITOR'S NOTE: Martin and Katerina appeared earlier in “The Last Temptation of Katerina Savitskaya” [September 2008].)

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Reader's Department: IN TIMES TO COME

  Our January/February 2010 “double” issue marks the 80th anniversary of this magazine, the oldest of its kind and still a leader in its field. We mark the occasion with a special essay by Ben Bova, the only being in the Universe (literally!) who progressed from being a regular reader of Astounding (as it was known for its first 30 years), to writing for it, then editing it (to wide acclaim), and then returned to being a writer and reader—so he has a genuinely unique perspective. And, of course, we celebrate with an extra-generous dose and wide variety of fiction, including three of the big pieces that are hard to fit in a regular issue. All of those are new entries in popular series—Richard A. Lovett's “Floyd and Brittney,” H. G. Stratmann's “Paradise Project” on Mars, and Kristine Kathryn Rusch's “Retrieval Artist"—but all also break substantial and thought-provoking new ground. We'll also have stories by other authors both new and familiar, including Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff, Michael F. Flynn, Mike Resnick (with collaborator Lezli Robyn), and Eric James Stone.

  The extra room in the double issue also lets us do extra things in the nonfiction area: two fact articles (on the nature of culture and the non-identical nature of twins), and two special features (Ben Bova's aforementioned memoir, and another of Richard A. Lovett's helpful bits of advice on the art of storytelling). All of which makes a package with plenty for everybody.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Serial: TO CLIMB A FLAT MOUTAIN: CONCLUSION by G. David Nordley

  * * * *

  Illustration by Vincent Di Fate

  * * * *

  Even in a place as bizarre as Cube
World, the worst problems humans face are likely to come from other humans.

  * * * *

  Part I synopsis

  Jacques Song wakes up from cold sleep to find himself underwater looking up through the transparent cover of his cold sleep unit (CSU) at a large predatory fish with a huge parrotlike beak. He went to sleep in a hotel room expecting to wake up at a base in the Kuiper Belt of the 36 Ophiuchi system. There he was to take part in a huge expedition to liberate a colony taken over by a cult nasty enough to justify an attempt at interstellar warfare. Something had gone very wrong.

  The CSU's computer has only limited knowledge of what has happened and no knowledge of why. Jacques’ starship, the Resolution, failed to engage its deceleration pellet stream at 36 Ophiuchi and had spent the last thousand years decelerating by other means, losing the last of its velocity by crashing into the atmosphere of the only habitable planet it could reach and dumping its cargo of CSU stored passengers into and around a volcanic crater lake. Running out of power, the CSU has revived Jacques to fend for himself.

  With an emergency kit nobody thought would ever have to be used and no source of power, Jacques must escape the lake floor, evade the predatory fish, and reach shore. All the electronics in the emergency kit are dead. Fortunately, the skin-tight all-purpose survival suit is powered by his body heat and motion and works perfectly. Enclosed in his suit, Jacques is able to flood the CSU, pop the lid, evade the fish, reach the surface, and navigate through huge but gentle waves to a black sand beach. In this effort, he finds himself feeling exceptionally strong and vigorous.

  The world's gravity, it turns out, is about equal to that of the Moon. Still, the feeble stellar wind from its old red dwarf star has apparently been insufficient to blow the atmosphere away. Indeed, where Jacques has landed, the pressure appears to be several times that of Earth's atmosphere. The partial pressure of oxygen also seems greater, accounting for some of his endurance and strength.