Analog SFF, May 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

  The black mud stank of things dead and incompletely decayed. In another few million years, Tim thought, this would be a nice bed of fine-grained black shale, holding the fossilized remnants of old tires and beer cans. He wondered how future paleontologists would determine the taxonomy of fossil tires.

  A man wearing waders was standing in the middle of the muck. Tim wasn't sure, but he thought he'd seen him drop something as they came up.

  "Sonny Dupree?” Sally called out.

  "Who wants to know?"

  "Fish and Wildlife. Come on out here so we can talk."

  "What if I don't want to?” the man called back.

  "Then I'll have to shoot you."

  He gave a snaggle-toothed grin. “You do that and you'll have to wade out here to get me."

  Sally wrinkled her nose. “Nah, I'll just gut-shoot you and wait until the tide carries you in."

  Tim was pretty sure she was kidding. Snaggle-tooth apparently had his doubts. At least he waded out of the water and scrambled up on the bank without further comment

  "We're looking for Jimmy Harker."

  A shrug. “Ain't seen him around recently."

  "What about Bill Fontaine or Joey Putnam?"

  "Ain't seen them either."

  "I hear Jimmy's found some new stuff that's real popular with the high-class places."

  "Yeah,” Dupree said, grinning. “I hear Jimmy's business is real good."

  "You know where he's been catching that good business?” Sally asked sharply.

  He shook his head. “No idea. Someplace new."

  "You believe him?” Tim asked as they climbed back into the pickup.

  Sally concentrated on starting the truck with the apparently mandatory dose of profanity. “That Harker hasn't been around? Yeah, that's likely. He made a big haul and he's off drinking it up somewhere. He'll turn up in a couple of weeks when his money runs out and they throw him out of whatever whorehouse he's holed up in. About Harker not telling? Sure. These guys don't trust each other when they hit a rich patch.” The truck lurched over a bump and she pulled a quick shift that made the gears grind in protest. “That he doesn't know where Harker was getting the stuff? I'm not so sure. Pirates spy on each other a lot and word is Dupree's found something too."

  * * * *

  Sally and Tim spent the rest of the day checking out mud flats, bars, and topless joints, looking for the names on the list Sally's informants had put together. Three of the other five names weren't to be found and the other two swore, convincingly, they were involved with the “new stuff."

  "You know, there's something funny here,” Tim said as Sally drove him back to his place. “Bill Fontaine is going great guns selling this stuff, then he drops out of sight. Joey Putnam starts up and goes away after a few weeks. Then Harker steps in and after a few weeks, he vanishes. Plus we've got two or three other guys whose names we don't know, but who don't match the description of either Harker, Putnam, or Fontaine, and they haven't been seen for a while, either."

  "I told you, these guys aren't real stable. Give them some money and they're not going to work until it's all spent. Besides, just because we can't find them doesn't mean they aren't around."

  "I wonder if we should put more effort into finding them? I mean, check the registrations on their vehicles, or something."

  Sally snorted. “Most of these guys don't bother to transfer title on the junkers they drive. I told you, they don't want to be found and as long as they're off drinking away their money someplace higher-class than the dives they usually frequent, they're damn hard to find. Hell, I'll bet half of them have outstanding warrants anyway."

  They drove on a bit in silence, except for the noise from the Suburban's leaky muffler.

  "What's your next move?"

  "We're going to follow him when he heads out tomorrow."

  "We?"

  "I need you to identify this stuff if we catch Dupree with the goods."

  "Oh,” Tim said, stifling a yawn.

  "Not that bad, is it? Come on, I'll buy you a cup of coffee on the way home."

  * * * *

  Sally, and the ratty green Suburban, showed up at Tim's door just before dawn the next morning. Tim was already dressed and outfitted for the day with a fanny pack, water bottle, and a jungle knife in a canvas sheath.

  "What the hell is that?” Sally asked, pointing to the two-foot-long knife hanging from Tim's belt.

  "It's a Belize pattern machete."

  "You think we're going into the damn jungle?"

  "You think there's much difference between a jungle and the local second growth?” Tim retorted. “The only difference is the stuff here has more thorns and Belize doesn't have poison oak."

  "Well, come on, George of the Jungle.” With that, she jerked open her door and climbed into the truck. Tim followed, feeling really silly about the machete. He thought about taking it back inside, but Sally was already backing the truck out of the parking space.

  * * * *

  Dupree lived in a group of ramshackle apartments down by the waterfront. Sally parked at the end of the street and waited for Dupree's truck to drive off.

  "How do you know he's going fishing today?"

  "Because it's getting toward the end of the week and those fancy restaurants want to stock up for the weekend. Now there he goes.” It's hard to be inconspicuous in something as big as a Suburban, especially when it's a rusty government green with a failing muffler, but Sally hung well back and Dupree apparently wasn't paying attention. Their quarry led them south again, paralleling the Sound as the road ran through a mixed commercial and industrial district. Tim settled in for a long trip, figuring they wouldn't reach their destination until they left civilization—if you could call this “civilization"—well behind.

  Dupree had other ideas. Tim saw the ruby glow as his brake lights added to his tail lights and the pickup moved over to the side of the road without signaling a turn.

  "He's turning off,” Tim said urgently. “You're going to lose him."

  Sally shook her head. “I know where that road goes and this isn't exactly a stealth vehicle. We'll find a spot further along to pull off and double back on foot."

  A few hundred yards down the road, Sally pulled into the parking lot of a Burger King. Leaving the truck, she led Tim down a narrow path through the undergrowth. They pushed through the brush and followed another trail that led along the top of a bank. Through the trees Tim could catch an occasional glimpse of the Sound and a more frequent sight of the backs of other commercial buildings.

  Sally moved easily along a footpath littered with fast food wrappers and less appetizing detritus as it wound among bushes, brambles, and head-high saplings.

  They topped a small rise and looked down at an asphalt-paved alley with Dupree's truck parked in the middle of it. There was a metal grate, perhaps four feet by five, in the middle of the asphalt. Sally pulled him down behind some bushes while Dupree was preoccupied with lifting and dragging the grating aside

  "That's a storm drain!” Tim whispered, scandalized.

  "It used to be a creek, before they paved it over,” Sally whispered back.

  "They get shellfish out of there?"

  "They get shellfish wherever they can find them. Now shut up, will you?"

  Dupree unloaded a bunch of stuff from his truck and stashed it in the weeds beside the alley. Then he got back in and with a roar and cloud of blue smoke took off down the alley. A few minutes later he walked back down the road to the grate and his hidden equipment.

  "Oyster tongs,” Sally whispered. “And crab pots."

  "Figures,” Tim whispered back. “Trilobites probably filled crabs’ ecological niche.” Sally put a hand on his arm to quiet him and they watched as Dupree used the tongs to reach into the storm drain and stir the muck at the bottom.

  "This is wrong,” Tim whispered urgently. “You don't find rudists and trilobites in the same place."

  "He does. Now shut the hell up."

 
There was a splash, as if Dupree had brought something to the surface and then lost it off the tongs. Something big.

  "We've seen enough,” Sally said. “Come on.” She started down the hillside with Tim following.

  They were almost to the bottom of the hill when there was a hoarse yell. Dupree was staggering back from the storm drain, clutching frantically at a rope wrapped around his body and leading back to the drain. Tangled in his own crab pots? Tim thought. But the rope was much too thick, hawser-like.

  It wasn't a rope, Tim realized. It was a tentacle. Something had hold of the oyster pirate and was trying to drag him into manhole.

  Without thinking, Tim rushed toward the struggling man, who was inexorably being pulled closer to the hole. He tugged his machete loose, swung it over his head, and brought it down hard on the tentacle. It was like striking a piece of rubber hose, but the tentacle jerked and twisted under the blow. He struck again and again. The third blow severed the tentacle and left it writhing on the pavement.

  Dupree was on all fours, backing away from the hole and gasping for breath. Sally and Tim each took a shoulder and dragged him back well away from the grate. Then they looked back at the cut-off tentacle still twisting and flopping madly.

  "Baiting the trap,” Sally said hoarsely. “When you fish for crabs, you put fish guts or something in the trap to attract them.” She looked at him. “And if you knew crabs could communicate you'd be very sure to take them only when there were no other crabs around."

  Tim shuddered. “Jesus."

  * * * *

  In the following six weeks, extensive searches of the drain brought up nothing but sewage-contaminated mud, a few worms, and a pale, anemic specimen of an undeniably modern crayfish. The tentacle turned out to belong to a cephalopod, family unidentified, but probably closer to an octopus than anything else.

  The hard-eyed men with the neat suits and shoulder holsters apparently talked to their Italian equivalents because Professor Sforza never said anything. There was a brief craze in Seattle sushi shops for serving shrimp concoctions with plastic additions that looked like a trilobite carapace. Tim suspected strongly that was at the suggestion of those same hard-eyed men.

  Three weeks later Sally moved into Tim's hilltop house. They seem quite happy with each other.

  And both of them have acquired a sudden, vengeful, taste for octopus.

  Copyright © 2010 Rick Cook

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  Novelette: TEACHING THE PIG TO SING by David D. Levine

  We place great value on standing up for one's beliefs. But does it matter where those beliefs come from?

  The loss of connectivity ached like a missing tooth. Every few seconds I tried again, and every few seconds . . . nothing but silence and emptiness, where my relatives and peers should have been. I kept trying to stop myself. It didn't help.

  Deep breath. Try to calm my beating heart.

  They knew what they were doing, whoever they were. I was restrained, shoulders to ankles, in something so strong not even I could get loose. Four numb spots throbbed on my skull where the data nodes in each temple, the main antenna across the top, and the tiny, X-ray-transparent tracker on the right near the back had been removed. That last one was supposed to be a state secret. There was another numb spot in my lower back, which I couldn't correlate with any of my implants. But it seemed they intended to keep me alive; when I rubbed my head against the rough sterile paper of my pillow I felt and heard the crinkle of bandages and smelled the cold astringent stink of antiseptics.

  Focus. Concentrate. Plan. What was my situation, what were my options? Cool air blew steadily across my brow above the heavy blindfold. The bed to which I was bound rattled when I wriggled, sounding like metal rather than plastic or nanofiber. From the echoes, I was in a small room, hard surfaced. Apart from those rattles and the soft sigh of the air vent, the only sounds were occasional footsteps, too faint and distant to tell me much.

  The door clicked open, with a squeak of hinges. One pair of footsteps approached my bed. I readied myself to strike if the opportunity presented, but kept my breathing slow and regular.

  "You needn't pretend to be asleep.” Not a voice I knew. Male, mature, speaking English with an American accent, but not entirely uncultured. “We're monitoring your vital signs, using the same sensors your ‘friends’ at the Institute implanted."

  I couldn't stop myself from probing the network again. Silence. “You won't keep me long,” I replied in English, the words rasping across a leathery dry tongue. I swallowed, licked my lips. “Even without the tracker, we have other means of locating royals. My troops are closing in on this facility even as we speak. But if you surrender now, I can promise you leniency.” Bluffing cost little and could have great benefits.

  A wry chuckle. “If we hadn't removed your data nodes, you'd know we've already had you for nineteen days.” Nineteen—? The last thing I remembered was the sound of a breaking window behind me, the hiss of gas, a sharp medicinal smell . . . and then I'd woken up here, on this bed, a few minutes ago. “Sadly, your charred body—well, a convincing simulacrum, complete with your own DNA—was found in the wreckage of our getaway vehicle, not far from the palace. So I'm fairly certain we'll have no difficulty keeping you here as long as we wish. Or perhaps I should say, as long as you wish."

  "Well then, I wish to leave now."

  "Don't be so quick to assume that.” The speaker stepped closer, bent down over me. “I do intend to clarify this for you, but first I need to ask you a few simple questions so we can assess your mental state. Please answer truthfully, and keep in mind that we are monitoring you. Once you have answered, I will remove your blindfold and loosen your bonds. Is this clear?"

  Withholding information from the enemy was always a good idea, but increasing my own ability to act was an even better one. If I didn't like the questions, I could just keep my mouth closed and I'd be no worse off. “I understand."

  "Thank you. First . . . what is your name and title?"

  I turned my head directly toward my captor's voice, firmed my jaw, and replied in my best command voice. “I am Edvard Roderick Zachary Sigmund von Regensberg. Defender of Humanity, Viceroy of Germany and Austria, and Royal Colonel of the European Army. Do you require the rest of my titles?"

  "No thank you, that will be sufficient. Your age?"

  "Twenty-two."

  He hesitated, and for the first time I sensed uncertainty. “What is your reaction to the following sentence: ‘The nations of the Earth should be independent and self-governing, without interference from the Institute'?"

  "It's disgusting."

  But even as the words emerged from my mouth . . . I realized that I felt nothing.

  Nothing!

  The first time I ever heard a subversive statement like that, I would have been six or seven years old. My sister Sissi and I, along with a half dozen of our germ line siblings, had just emerged from a session in the education tank; we were still blinking in the light, saline solution dripping from our hair. One of the white-coated teachers had sat us down in a group and asked us what we thought about the idea that humanity would be better off without royalty. “Eeuw!” we all chorused, and he'd smiled and told us we were very good boys and girls. I remember well the physical revulsion and nausea that accompanied the idea, and which had returned every time since that I'd considered such heretical notions.

  I believe, I subvocalized experimentally, that humanity would be better off without royalty.

  The idea was still abhorrent . . . wrongheaded, ignorant, and shortsighted. All my reading and everything I had seen in my extensive travels supported the idea that humanity had been rescued from the brink by the Institute's guidance and continued to benefit from it. But that was only an intellectual reaction. The revulsion I'd always thought of as the natural, even inevitable, reaction to such ideas by any properly brought-up young person . . . wasn't there.

  "Thank you. We have all the information we need now.”
My captor leaned in close. Cool fingers slipped beneath the blindfold's elastic straps. “I'm removing your headset now. You may wish to close your eyes."

  I kept my eyes open as the heavy blindfold was lifted away, but they winced shut by themselves as the room's light came flooding in—enhanced night vision had its downside. In that brief bright glimpse I saw my captor's face: Caucasian, with a slim black mustache. I blinked away tears, which ran down into my ears.

  The room was harshly lit by a single old-fashioned LED fixture in the ceiling. The walls were cheap, recycled construction blocks, unpainted; there were no windows and only the one door. Tacked to one wall was a long band of paper, a printout of some complex graph heavily annotated in colored pen. “That's a chart of your mind,” my captor said, noting my gaze. He was wearing camouflage fatigues with no insignia. “What they did to you is actually rather impressive, if you ignore its moral reprehensibility."

  I was getting tired of this man's games. “This is all well and good, but what do you want from me?"

  He leaned down suddenly, hard gray eyes and sour breath just centimeters from my face. “Freedom from tyranny. And you are going to help us achieve it."

  Our gazes locked for a moment, then the man seemed almost embarrassed by his own intensity and backed off a bit. “Further explanations will be forthcoming, I assure you.” He pulled a tissue from a box behind my head and dabbed the tears from my cheeks and ears.

  Coming so close to me was a mistake. With my enhanced reflexes and strength, I could certainly catch his hand in my teeth and probably take off at least one finger.

  But I did nothing. My strategic sense told me it wouldn't help.

  One of my butlers once asked me to explain the royals’ strategic sense. My teachers would tell you that it's certain genes selecting for specific traits of observation and intelligence, combined with rigorous childhood training, but what I told him was this: If you hold a ball above the floor and let go, you just know it's going to fall, and you have a pretty good idea where it will land. You don't have to think about it; you just feel it in your gut. The strategic sense feels like that to me—it's unconscious, intuitive, and more often than not correct. But I can't tell you how I do it.