Nebula Awards Showcase 2008

by Ben Bova

  Spur caught a glimpse of a head peeking out of the hatch above him. It ducked back into the hover immediately.

  “So,” Memsen said at last, “let’s choose to believe you, Prosper Gregory of Walden.” She eyed him briefly; whatever she saw in his face seemed to satisfy her. “You’ll have to show us the way from here. Your way. The High Gregory’s luck has chosen you to lead us until we see for ourselves the direction in which we must go.”

  “Lead you? Where?”

  “Wherever you’re going.”

  “But I’m just on my way home. To Littleton.”

  She clicked her rings. “So.”

  “I beg your pardon, Allworthy Memsen,” said Ngonda, tugging at the collar of his shirt, “but you must realize that’s impossible under our Covenant….”

  “It is the nature of luck to sidestep the impossible,” she said. “We speak for the High Gregory when we express our confidence that you’ll find a way.”

  She had so mastered the idiom of command that Spur wasn’t sure whether this was a threat or a promise. Either way, it gave Ngonda pause.

  “Allworthy, I’d like nothing better than to accommodate you in this,” he said. “Walden is perhaps the least of the Thousand Worlds, but even here we’ve heard of your efforts to help preserve the one true species.” A bead of sweat dribbled down his forehead. “But my instructions are to accommodate your requests within reason. Within reason, Allworthy. It is not reasonable to land a hover in the commons of a village like Littleton. You must understand that these are country people.”

  She pointed at Spur. “Here is one of your country people.”

  “Memsen!” shouted a voice from the top of the ramp. “Memsen, I am so bored. Either bring him up right now or I’m coming down.”

  Her tongue flicked to the corner of her mouth. “You wouldn’t like it,” she called back, “it’s very hot.” Which was definitely true, although as far as Spur could tell, the weather had no effect on her. “There are bugs.”

  “That’s it!” The High Gregory of Kenning, Phosphorescence of the Eternal Radiation and luck maker of the L’ung, scampered down the ramp of the hover.

  “There,” he said, “I did it, so now don’t tell me to go back.” He was wearing green sneakers with black socks, khaki shorts and a T-shirt with a pix of a dancing turtle, which had a human head. “Spur! You look sadder than you did before.” He had knobby knees and fair skin and curly brown hair. If he had been born in Littleton, Spur would’ve guessed that he was ten years old. “Did something bad happen to you? Say something. Do you still talk funny like you did on the tell?”

  Spur had a hundred questions but he was so surprised that all he could manage was, “Why are you doing this?”

  “Why?” The boy’s yellow eyes opened wide. “Why, why, why?” He stooped to pick up a handful of the blackened litter and examined it with interest, shifting it around on his open palm. “Because I got one of my luck feelings when we were talking. They’re not like ideas or dreams or anything so I can’t explain them very well. They’re just special. Memsen says they’re not like the feelings that other people get, but that it’s all right to have them and I guess it is.” He twirled in a tight circle then, flinging the debris in a wide scatter. “And that’s why.” He rubbed his hands on the front of his shorts and approached Spur. “Am I supposed to shake hands or kiss you? I can’t remember.”

  Ngonda stepped between Spur and the High Gregory as if to protect him. “The custom is to shake hands.”

  “But I shook with you already.” He tugged at Ngonda’s sleeve to move him aside. “You have hardly any luck left, friend Constant. I’m afraid it’s all pretty much decided with you.” When the deputy failed to give way, the High Gregory dropped to all fours and scooted through his legs. “Hello, Spur,” said the boy as he scrambled to his feet. The High Gregory held out his hand and Spur took it.

  Spur was at once aware that he was sweaty from the heat of the day, while the boy’s hand was cool as river rock. He could feel the difference in their size: the High Gregory’s entire hand fit in his palm and weighed practically nothing.

  “Friend Spur, you have more than enough luck,” the boy murmured, low enough so that only Spur could hear. “I can see we’re going to have an adventure.”

  “Stay up there,” cried Memsen. “No!” She was glowering up the ramp at the hatch, which had inexplicably filled with kids who were shouting at her. Spur couldn’t tell which of them said what.

  “When do we get our turn?”

  “You let the Greg off.”

  “We came all this way.”

  “He’s bored? I’m more bored.”

  “Hey, move, you’re in my way!”

  “But I want to see too.”

  Several in the back started to chant. “Not fair, not fair!”

  Memsen ground her toes into the fake forest floor. “We have to go now,” she said. “If we let them off the hover, it’ll take hours to round them up.”

  “I’ll talk to them.” High Gregory bounded up the ramp, making sweeping motions with his hands. “Back, get back, this isn’t it.” The kids fell silent. “We’re not there yet. We’re just stopping to pick someone up.” He paused halfway up and turned to the adults. “Spur is coming, right?”

  Ngonda was blotting sweat from around his eyes with a handkerchief. “If he chooses.” He snapped it with a quick flick of the wrist and then stuffed it into his pocket, deliberately avoiding eye contact with Spur.

  Spur could feel his heart pounding. He’d wanted to fly ever since he’d realized that it was possible and didn’t care if simplicity counseled otherwise. But he wasn’t sure he wanted to be responsible for bringing all these upsiders to Littleton.

  “So.” Memsen must have mistaken his hesitation for fear. “You have never been in a hover, Prosper Gregory of Walden?”

  “Call him Spur,” said the High Gregory. “It doesn’t mean you have to have sex with him.”

  Memsen bowed to Spur. “He has not yet invited us to take that familiarity.”

  “Yes, please call me Spur.” He tried not to think about having sex with Memsen. “And yes”—he picked up his kit—“I’ll come with you.”

  “Lead then.” She indicated that he should be first up the ramp. Ngonda followed him. Memsen came last, climbing slowly with her small and painstakingly accurate steps.

  As he approached the top of the ramp, the coolness of the hover’s interior washed over him. It was like wading into Mercy’s Creek. He could see that the kids had gathered around the High Gregory. There were about a dozen of them in a bay that was about six by ten meters. Boxes and containers were strapped to the far bulkhead.

  “Now where are we going?”

  “When do we get to see the fire?”

  “Hey, who’s that?”

  Most of the kids turned to see him step onto the deck. Although well lit, the inside of the hover was not as bright as it had been outside. Spur blinked as his eyes adjusted to the difference.

  “This is Spur,” said the High Gregory. “We’re going to visit his village. It’s called Littleton.”

  “Why? Are they little there?”

  A girl of six or perhaps seven sidled over to him. “What’s in your bag?” She was wearing a dress of straw-colored brocade that hung down to her silk slippers. The gold chain around her neck had a pendant in the shape of a stylized human eye. Spur decided that it must be some kind of costume.

  He slung his kit off his shoulder and set it down in front of her so she could see. “Just my stuff.”

  “It’s not very big,” she said doubtfully. “Do you have something in there for me?”

  “Your Grace,” said Memsen, putting a hand on the girl’s shoulder, “we are going to leave Spur alone for now.” She turned the girl around and gave her a polite nudge toward the other kids. “You’ll have to forgive them,” she said to Spur. “They’re used to getting their own way.”

  SEVEN

  I have a deep sympathy with war,
it so apes the gait and bearing of the soul.

  —JOURNAL, 1840

  Spur had studied geography in school and knew how big Walden was, but for the first time in his life he felt it. From the ground, the rampant forests restricted what anyone could see of the world. Even the fields and the lakes were hemmed in by trees. Spur had never been to the Modilon Ocean but he’d stood on the shores of Great Kamit Lake. The sky over the lake was impressive, but there was no way to take the measure of its scale. Spur had hiked the Tarata Mountains, but they were forested to their summits and the only views were from ledges. There was a tower on Samson Kokoda that afforded a 360-degree view, but the summit was just 1,300 meters tall.

  Now the hover was cruising through the clouds at an altitude of 5,700 meters, according to the tell on the bulkhead. Walden spread beneath him in all its breathtaking immensity. Maps, measured in inflexible kilometers and flat hectares, were a sham compared to this. Every citizen should see what he was seeing, and if it violated simplicity, he didn’t care.

  Constant Ngonda, on the other hand, was not enjoying the view. He curled on a bench facing away from the hull, which Memsen had made transparent when she’d partitioned a private space for them. His neck muscles were rigid and he complained from time to time about trouble with his ears. Whenever the hover shivered as it contended with the wind, he took a huge gulping breath. In a raspy voice, the deputy asked Spur to stop commenting on the scenery. Spur was not surprised when Ngonda lurched to his feet and tore through the bubble-like bulkhead in search of a bathroom. The wall popped back into place, throwing a scatter of rainbows across its shivering surface.

  Spur kept his face pressed to the hull. He’d expected the surface to be smooth and cold, like glass. Instead, it was warm and yielding, as if it were the flesh of some living creature. Below him the lakes and rivers gleamed in the afternoon sun like the shards of a broken mirror. The muddy Kalibobo River veered away to the west as the hover flew into the foothills of the Tarata Range. As the land rolled beneath him, Spur could spot areas where the bright-green hardwood forest was yielding ground to the blue-green of the conifers: hemlock and pine and spruce. There were only a few farms and isolated villages in the shadow of the mountains. They would have to fly over the Taratas to get to Littleton on the eastern slope.

  At first Spur had difficulty identifying the familiar peaks. He was coming at them from the wrong direction and at altitude. But once he picked out the clenched fist of Woitape, he could count forward and back down the range: Taurika, Bootless Lowa and Boroko, curving to the northwest, Kaivuna and Samson Kokoda commanding the plain to the south. He murmured the names aloud, as long as the deputy wasn’t around to hear. He had always liked how round the pukpuk sounds were, how they rolled in his mouth. When he’d been trapped in the burn with Vic, he was certain that he would never say them again.

  When Chairman Winter bought Morobe’s Pea from ComExplore IC, he had thought to rename everything on the planet and make a fresh start for his great experiment in preserving unenhanced humanity. But then a surprising number of ComExplore employees turned down his generous relocation offer; they wanted to stay on. Almost all of these pukpuks could trace their ancestry back to some ancient who had made planetfall on the first colonizing ships. More than a few claimed to be descended from Old Morobe herself. As a gesture of respect, the Chairman agreed to keep pukpuk names for some landforms. So there were still rivers, valleys, mountains and islands that honored the legacy of the first settlers.

  Chairman Winter had never made a secret of his plans for Walden. At staggering personal expense, he had intended to transform the exhausted lands of Morobe’s Pea. In their place he would make a paradise that re-created the heritage ecology of the home world. He would invite only true humans to come to Walden. All he asked was that his colonists forsake the technologies that were spinning out of control on the Thousand Worlds. Those who agreed to live by the Covenant of Simplicity would be given land and citizenship. Eventually both the forest and the Transcendent State would overspread all of Walden.

  But the pukpuks had other plans. They wouldn’t leave and they refused to give up their banned technologies. At first trade between the two cultures of Walden flourished. In fact, the pukpuk industrial and commercial base propped up the fledgling Transcendent State. Citizens needed pukpuk goods, even if bots manufactured them. As time passed, however, the Cooperative recognized that pukpuks’ continued presence was undermining the very foundations of the Transcendent State. When the Cooperative attempted to close off the borders in order to encourage local industry, black markets sprang up in the cities. Many citizens came to question the tenets of simplicity. The weak were tempted by forbidden knowledge. For the first time since the founding, the emigration rate edged into the double digits. When it was clear that the only way to save the Transcendent State was to push the pukpuks off the planet, Chairman Winter had authorized the planting of genetically enhanced trees. But once the forest began to encroach on the pukpuk barrens, the burns began.

  The pukpuks were the clear aggressors in the firefight; even their sympathizers among the citizenry agreed on that. What no one could agree on was how to accommodate them without compromising. In fact, many of the more belligerent citizens held that the ultimate responsibility for the troubles lay with the Chairman himself. They questioned his decision not to force all of the pukpuks to emigrate after the purchase of Morobe’s Pea. And some wondered why he could not order them to be rounded up and deported even now. It was, after all, his planet.

  “We’ve come up with a compromise,” said Ngonda as he pushed through the bulkhead into the compartment. He was still as pale as a root cellar mushroom, but he seemed steadier. He even glanced briefly down at the eastern slope of Bootless Lowa Mountain before cutting his eyes away. “I think we can let the High Gregory visit under your supervision.”

  Memsen, the High Gregory, and a young girl followed him, which caused the bulkhead to burst altogether. Spur caught a glimpse of a knot of kids peering at him before the wall re-formed itself two meters farther into the interior of the hover, creating the necessary extra space to fit them all. The High Gregory was carrying a tray of pastries, which he set on the table he caused to form out of the deck.

  “Hello, Spur,” he said. “How do you like flying? Your friend got sick but Memsen helped him. This is Penny.”

  “The Pendragon Chromlis Furcifer,” said Memsen.

  She and Spur studied each other. A little taller but perhaps a little younger than the High Gregory, the girl was dressed hood to boot in clothes made of supple metallic-green scales. The scales of her gloves were as fine as snakeskin while those that formed her tunic looked more like cherry leaves, even to the serrated edges. A rigid hood protected the back of her head. A tangle of thick, black hair wreathed her face.

  “Penny,” said the High Gregory, “you’re supposed to shake his hand.”

  “I know,” she said, but then clasped both hands behind her back and stared at the deck.

  “Your right goes to his right.” The High Gregory held out his own hand to demonstrate. “She’s just a little shy,” he said.

  Spur crouched and held out his hand. She took it solemnly. They shook. Spur let her go. The girl’s hand went behind her back again.

  “You have a pretty name, Pendragon,” said Spur.

  “That’s her title.” Memsen faced left and then right before she sat on the bench next to Ngonda. “It means war chief.”

  “Really. And have you been to war, Penny?”

  She shook her head—more of a twitch of embarrassment than a shake.

  “This is her first,” said the High Gregory. “But she’s L’ung. She’s just here to watch.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Spur. “Who are the L’ung?”

  Ngonda cleared his throat in an obvious warning. The High Gregory saw Memsen pinch the air and whatever he’d been about to say died on his lips. The silence stretched long enough for Penny to realize that there was some diffi
culty about answering Spur’s question.

  “What, is he stupid?” She scrutinized Spur with renewed interest. “Are you stupid, Spur?”

  “I don’t think so.” It was his turn to be embarrassed. “But maybe some people think that I am.”

  “This is complicated,” said Memsen, filling yet another awkward pause. “We understand that people here seek to avoid complication.” She considered. “Let’s just say that the L’ung are companions to the High Gregory. They like to watch him make luck, you might say. Think of them as students. They’ve been sent from many different worlds, for many different reasons. Complications again. There is a political aspect…”

  Ngonda wriggled in protest.

  “…which the deputy assures us you would only find confusing. So.” She patted the bench. “Sit, Pendragon.”

  The Pendragon collected a macaroon from the pastry tray and obediently settled beside Memsen, then leaned to whisper in her ear.

  “Yes,” said Memsen, “we’ll ask about the war.”

  Ngonda rose then, but caught himself against a bulkhead as if the change from sitting to standing had left him dizzy. “This isn’t fair,” he said. “The Cooperative has made a complete disclosure of the situation here, both to Kenning and to the Forum of the Thousand Worlds.”

  “What you sent was dull, dull, dull, friend Constant,” said the High Gregory. “I don’t think the people who made the report went anywhere near a burn. Someone told somebody else, and that somebody told them.” Just then the hover bucked and the deputy almost toppled onto Memsen’s lap. “You gave us a bunch of contracts and maps and pix of dead trees,” continued the High Gregory. “I can’t make luck out of charts. But Spur was there, he can tell us. He was almost burned up.”

  “Not about Motu River,” said Spur quickly. “Nothing about that.” Suddenly everyone was staring at him.

  “Maybe,” began Ngonda but the hover shuddered again and he slapped a hand hard against the bulkhead to steady himself. “Maybe we should tell him what we’ve agreed on.”