Asimov's SF, September 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Crockett sliced what was fair in half.

  He would have done it for free, happily. But then again, he was still a little upset that his girlfriends had so brazenly ignored him.

  * * * *

  2

  During those years and decades while the caldera slept, tourists arriving at the hamlet were as likely to gaze at the sky as to stare at the Luckies. Onboard the Great Ship, every habitat wore an elaborate disguise—false horizons painted on cavern walls, with suns and stars wheeling overhead on what was only rock and timeless hyperfiber. But most of these illusions demanded pragmatism over accuracy. A green sky might show clouds and two lovely suns, and then the suns would set, revealing stars by the thousands aligned in a pattern that matched a cherished view some thousand light-years in the past. But modest telescopes focused on any of those stars would reveal the fiction: This artificial cosmos was composed of simple, bland specks of light. Only the brightest few pretended to spit out flares and gas. Only the nearest few were accompanied by the faint glows of other worlds. The universe was rendered accurately enough to fool both casual and lazy eyes—the familiar, indolent vision common to those who have lived for eons inside the same house. Even the most attentive species had limits to their skies. Point telescopes at the blackness between any two stars, and a thousand dimmer suns should be waiting to be found. And if you built even larger mirrors out of polished glass and photon traps, and then peered between the intricate dusts or out toward some galaxy floating on the edge of Creation, there always came a point—that well-defined and inevitable line of exhaustion—where the stars and dim galaxies that should be visible were missing. Were not.

  It was the same for the Luckies. But their ceiling was managed by an army of dedicated AIs working with the best available squidskin—an intricate medium that produced light and darkness on a near-atomic scale. Seeing where the illusions broke down ... well, that kind of telescope was far beyond what most tourists could carry or drag up to the hamlet, much less all the way to the high ridge.

  “I love this view,” Crockett allowed, hoping to generate conversation. Or even just a neutral comment.

  But the alien seemed to cherish its silence.

  Luckies loved their sky, and with reason. Their home world was tucked inside a thick bright arm of the Milky Way, not far from an active star nursery. Gaze north, away from the ridge, and the false sky had a beauty and majesty that even the shallowest soul would notice. But the local space was even richer: Five massive moons orbited a substantial brown dwarf, and the brown dwarf was dancing with a quiet little K-class sun, each orbit taking years to accomplish. The Luckies lived on the third moon, tidally locked and constantly massaged by its hefty neighbors. The inner neighbors were volcanic superstars, baked in radiation and their own fierce internal heat; while the outer moons were originally ice-clad and exceptionally cold, but with deep seas waiting beneath their surface.

  Crockett liked the illusion of this sky more than the illusion of the landscape. Distant cavern walls were decorated with images of a frigid, bleak and deceptively bland terrain—a slow-moving illusion showcasing volcanoes and stubborn glaciers and wide expanses of lifeless, inert stone.

  The Honored Guide turned, and not quite looking at those enormous white eyes, he introduced himself by name.

  His companion offered no sound or visible motion.

  “Luckies have rules,” warned Crockett. “A resident like myself ... I'm allowed to live here because ages ago, I won a lottery. I'm exceptionally lucky, for a human. And with my address comes the understanding that only my friends can be brought up to the ridge...."

  The alien offered a soft chirp.

  “Let's go through the motions,” Crockett suggested. “For the sake of law and custom, tell me your name."

  A moment passed, and another. Then the alien chirped again, and its translator said, “Doom."

  “Doom?"

  The translator spoke for itself. “That is my best approximation. But it is imperfect, and I apologize."

  “What language does the creature use?"

  “I cannot say."

  “You aren't free to name it?"

  “Perhaps I am. But my expertise feels incomplete."

  The cable car had been accelerating since leaving the station, riding on a nanowhisker too small to be seen. Once and then twice again, descending cars sped past them, brightly lit and filled with visitors and their newfound friends. Crockett waved at his neighbors. Then he shut down his car's lights, allowing the full effect of the sky to work on odd, silent Doom.

  The brown dwarf was a flattened disk barely visible through the vaporous clouds. But an inner moon lay far enough to one side to be visible—a rough orange and black blister of a world, chunks of its crust melting and exploding outwards with a violence that only looked impressive.

  “You know,” Crockett began. “All the computing power that goes into these stars, the brown dwarf, and every major and minor moon..."

  Then he consciously stopped talking.

  After a long pause, his companion said, “I am listening."

  “The Luckies have peculiar personalities. And a unique biology, as I understand it. They're an old species, yet it took them a long time—a billion years, nearly—to build starships. Not that they weren't interested in their own sky. You see, their preferred habitat are these hot caldera lakes. Each caldera had its own vantage point, its unique and distinct view of the stars. And whenever different populations spoke, they spent a great deal of time explaining what they could see—star for star; moon for moon."

  Doom did not speak. But the big eyes were gazing upward, at least accidentally showing interest.

  “You probably know all this,” Crockett continued, “but during their entire history, the Luckies have built only a handful of starships. Elaborate ships and very reliable, but exceptionally difficult to piece together.” Then he held up his hand, squeezing two fingers close together. “A single Lucky is only this big."

  The size of a dust mite, in essence.

  “But of course, they're never found as individuals. Autochemotrophic metabolisms. Low energy, minimal complexity. Not only aren't they particularly bright creatures, when taken alone, but they're pretty much helpless, too."

  Was he interesting his client, or boring it? Either way, Crockett was enjoying his impromptu lecture.

  “A few million Luckies are about as sharp as one average human brain,” he mentioned. “But they aren't happy until they number in the hundreds of trillions. That's what lives on the other side of this mountain. A nation of tiny entities all tied together. Together, they build giant eyes that float on their lake home, catching every wandering photon. And when enough of the Luckies think hard on one subject, they can dream up the greatest thoughts imaginable.” He shrugged, adding, “So what if it took millions of years to accrete a workable starship out of hot ores and salty, acidic water? They had time, and the patience. Really, if you want my opinion, they're incredible, wonderful organisms."

  Several more cable cars passed by, looking like gaudy balloons quickly losing altitude. Without exception, the faces inside the balloons were happy, either glad for their adventure or glad to be returning home again.

  “Wonderful creatures,” he repeated.

  Doom was certainly alien, but Crockett sensed emotion. The eyes were jumping inside their sockets now, and the mouth was cocked in a way that didn't look comfortable. It was nervous. He was nervous. Plenty of species lacked a sense of gender, but Crockett had spent most of his life riding inside these cars with aliens, and that gave him a healthy respect for his own intuitions.

  “Luckies have a weird, interesting model of reality,” Crockett continued. “I'm sure you know this. But the idea enjoys repetition."

  A tight little breath was audible over the cold hum of the wind.

  “Our universe is nothing more, or less, than a very pretty and intensely busy picture. An image that happens to exist on the wall of someone else's living room.” With
a sweeping gesture, Crockett explained, “If we had some eye that could reach out far enough—into those realms hidden by the Grand Inflation—then the stars would cease to be. The galaxies and quasars and dark-matter masses ... all those magnificent illusions would simply vanish...."

  “Nothing is real,” Doom whispered.

  “To the Luckies, everything and everyone are fictions. And existence is simply the oldest, finest illusion."

  Crockett's new friend whimpered. That was the best description for the mournful little sound. Then the big eyes closed, the lids rising from below, and he said, “Well, perhaps we should hope these little creatures are correct."

  * * * *

  3

  Regardless of origins and no matter the vagaries of physiologies, trees adapted to severe cold and darkness often shared physical traits. Large, almost weightless leaves, mirrored and spread wide in the daylight, gathering the glow of the weak illusionary sun, bouncing it into a central bud or vein that was always black or purplish—a spherical receptor encased within an organic crystal, transparent but heavily insulated, clinging to every trace of useable heat. What was living inside any tree was tiny. Think of a man's dead body with a busy heart still beating in the chest; those were the normal proportions. Trees growing in the hamlet had the richest, easiest environment. Warmth leaked from the homes, and the streetlamps were blessings. But it took even the most vigorous Gany-mede pine a hundred years for its bulb to expand as much as a good heart filling with hot, living blood.

  Perhaps there were other ways to build cold trees. But Crockett had no experience with them. Since coming to the hamlet as a young boy, he had never left. He couldn't afford to go anywhere, since that meant losing his cherished resident status. But he was free to travel by virtual routes, which he did on occasion—witnessing habitats inside the Great Ship and across the galaxy. In general, Crockett preferred hot bright places where trees grew tall as hills and left behind the beautiful wood that he would buy with a tiny portion of his savings, using it to add accents and warmth to the walls of his own tiny house.

  Beneath the cable car, the meager local forest was vanishing.

  And a moment later, it was gone.

  Half a dozen cable cars were sliding past, and with a rough calculation, Crockett decided that only one or two more remained above. The security officers hadn't given up. Smiling, he let himself imagine the girls waiting for him. He pictured them standing side by side, their pretty faces obscured by the layers of heated clothing, but their breath coming quickly with anticipation, emerging into the gloom and mixing and rising into the rising steam and the falling snows.

  The eruption would come today, or next week. Or after several more months of patient bubbling, the heat would dissipate, the artificial magma allowed to cool until this carefully regulated hazard was past.

  Eruptions were much the same on the Luckies’ home world. Quakes and rising plumes could burst free anywhere. A new volcano might build and then later explode, leaving a gaping wound. Then the heated groundwater would percolate through the fractured crust, filling every hole with a fresh young lake. The first colonists to arrive inside a new caldera were the fortunate ones. They and their descendants ruled until the next eruption. Hence the name: Luckies.

  Most cold worlds were sterile, or, at best, had stunted forests incapable of feeding the slowest bug. But the Luckies’ home world enjoyed its own good fortune. The soggy, constantly shifting crust was filled with microbes using every metabolic trick. They danced with energetic irons and sodiums, carbon monoxides and nitrates. But the real producers were root-like giants—underground forests that choked every crevice, every pore, feasting on piezoelectric reactions and the physical flexing of the ground, even pumping water into the magma pools, creating steam that powered elaborate, turbine-like organs.

  Every eruption was preceded by a season of rapid, joyous growth.

  The Luckies riding the Great Ship had just this one caldera. Cataclysmic eruptions weren't possible, much less sought after. But the general rhythms of their old life held sway: Their lake simmered and then boiled, and their crystalline bodies separated and grew tough spore-like shells. Then the volcano erupted, flinging the water skyward as a scalding cloud, and trillions of tiny bodies were flung high by that carefully calibrated blast. Most of the tiny aliens fell outside the caldera, and they were dead. But those that found their way home again were blessed and knew it, and within a few months, they would be well on their way to rebuilding the society from Before.

  Even locals referred to the rim community as a forest. But except for a passing resemblance to dead, leafless trees, the landscape had more in common with leaf litter, or better, with compost. The pale gray remains of dead roots had been pushed out of every hole, expelled by what was still living underground. Unlike the mirror-forests below, this realm had animal life—small crawlies and bigger crawlies, everything cloaked in fur and fat and tough genetics and variable metabolisms. But instead of the usual chirps and drummings, Crockett heard only silence. This was new. Yesterday the forest was still jabbering away; but now, for the first time, he found himself wondering if the eruption was imminent.

  The cable car slid into its empty berth.

  Only one other berth was filled, its passengers probably on the far side of the ridge, gazing down at the bubbling, seemingly bottomless lake.

  The car stopped, a polite voice warned everyone about the cold to come, and then the main door slid open.

  But the chill wasn't awful. Crockett guessed the air wasn't worse than seventy below—much warmer than the hamlet on any sun-scorched day. He stepped out onto the wide porch where tourists normally paused to acclimatize themselves, investing a few moments in consideration of witty things that he might say.

  His client remained in the car.

  Puzzled, Crockett stepped back inside. Doom was standing where he had always stood, but now his eyes were closed.

  “Have you changed your mind?” asked Crockett.

  The alien didn't speak.

  “You're worried about the eruption,” Crockett decided. “Well, you shouldn't be. It's a surprisingly peaceful event. I've known plenty who stayed up here while it happened. Keep inside the shelters, or even in a likely hole, and your body won't die for more than a few hours."

  Quietly, his friend said, “I will not be returning."

  Crockett blinked. “What was that?"

  “You may go, if you wish."

  “I can't. Not and leave you here."

  “But I need to be here,” Doom said. “And besides, I do not require your presence. Since I have their permission."

  “The Luckies, you mean?"

  “Yes."

  “Then why bring me at all?” Crockett asked.

  Doom had six fingers on each hand, arranged three-and-three. One of his hands had just reached inside his heavy coat, digging deep while the white eyes opened, scanned the Luckies’ false-forest.

  “Maybe I should go home,” Crockett allowed.

  “You will have to walk,” Doom warned. “Neither car is operational. I am certain they will have seen to that detail."

  “Who saw to what?"

  The creature's gaze fixed on a distant point.

  Crockett asked the car door to close, but nothing happened.

  Then Doom began to retrieve his hand, and with a firm, half-loud voice, he said, “My good friend, I am sorry for your involvement in this."

  “Sorry—?” Crockett began.

  And then the world turned to fire and a searing golden light.

  * * * *

  4

  Drifting back into consciousness—in that instant when misery and clarity were roughly balanced—Crockett decided that the caldera had erupted. Where else would the flash of light come from? How else could his body have been flung hard against the floor? But then he gently set his gloved hand against his worst ache—the top of his head—and discovered that the insulated hood was missing, and his long golden hair was missing, and a pal
m-sized patch of the scalp had been burnt down to the hard bone. A thousand emergency systems were awake, throwing their talents into protecting the brain and knitting new flesh. Adrenalin and fancier stimulants enlarged his senses, slowing time to a contemplative crawl. Crockett wasn't scared, much less panicked. He felt alert and focused and incapable of fear, absorbing his surroundings with curiosity and a powerful, intoxicating detachment.

  A focused blast had punctured the cable car, destroying the door and then the far end. The wind blowing up the valley was drifting through the gutted car and then out again, carrying away the final traces of smoke and burnt flesh. Doom lay in a corner, limp and headless. Whatever had knocked Crockett to the floor had struck the alien with its full force, evaporating tough tissues and the skull, and whatever lay beneath.

  Was the brain lost?

  Was his client dead?

  A pragmatic voice asked how this was possible. The slow wet eruption of the caldera couldn't produce the energies necessary to kill. Maybe the rising steam and falling snow had produced some exotic species of ball lightning. But even the most murderous species of meteorology couldn't produce this kind of disaster, he told himself.

  Really, this resembled a military-grade weapon—

  Yes, a plasma gun. Someone higher on the ridge could have taken the shot, gutting the car this way. Except who would own such a device, and why would they, and what conceivable reason would make anyone shoot at Crockett?

  But he wasn't the target.

  If he were, he would be dead. Plainly.

  At long last, a useful terror emerged. Crockett managed a deep breath and dropped down, throwing both arms over his wounded head. Yet a second blast wouldn't be impressed with a few obscuring limbs. He needed to move, to hide. But he discovered that in these few moments, his terror had swollen out of control. He couldn't move, even to save himself. He lay there like a scared, whimpering boy, expecting another flash and the sudden removal of his existence.