Asimov's SF, January 2012 Read online

  “You are playing with me.”

  “We're playing each other.”

  “You started out as something like a fish, in your mother's womb,” the alien said. “And most of your body is water. The truth is we are not so very different, you and I.”

  “We both like stories. Or think they're important.”

  “I value yours immensely, and am honored that you have shared it with me. Please. Ask me a question. I will answer it as truthfully as I can.”

  “Maybe another time,” the man said.

  “You have little time left.”

  “Even so. Maybe I want to go out with you owing me something. It would mean I'm not going out empty-handed, you know?”

  “I will think about that, and try to understand.” The alien pushed up on its three legs, knocked on the door to summon the guard, and said, “You don't always understand your own stories. That's what Mr. Springsteen's songs are so often about. People who don't understand the stories they are caught in. The Jackaroo think it will be your downfall. We think it is part of your glory. You don't understand your stories, and you search for their meaning, and sometimes that frees you to do something different. Something new. Something wonderful. As you did, when you smashed the stone and swallowed part of it.”

  “Didn't help me, did it?” the man said. “Know what they call out, when I'm taken outside my cell? ‘Dead man walking.’ “

  “You could have chosen to die in the desert. And your story would have died with you. Yet it lives now, and will live on. Perhaps the part of you bonded to the eidolon will survive to see who is right. Us, or the Jackaroo.”

  “Wouldn't that be nice,” the dead man said, with the trace of a smile.

  Copyright © 2011 Paul McAuley

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  * * *

  Short Story: RECYCLABLE MATERIAL

  by Katherine Marzinsky

  Katherine Marzinsky is a student at Raritan Valley Community College, where she is majoring in English. She lives in Frenchtown, New Jersey, with her Shih-Tzu, Misty. In her first published story, a robot makes some heart-stopping decisions about what constitutes . . .

  Howling with panic, an ambulance rounded the corner.

  Ross's head swiveled to comprehend the intimate velocity. The ambulance swung so close it was easy to read the small words on its side. Willow Ridge Medical Center. Tires bumping over concrete. Changing air pressure. Expect the unexpected.

  Though he made his best efforts to hold onto the white plastic garbage bag, Ross's fingers were never good at grasping weightless things. Ross watched his bag flail upward. Its opaque skin mirrored red light for a moment before getting lost in the darkness. A plastic wraith in a cluttered sky.

  Ross put his hand to his forehead out of pre-programmed habit, as if affixing a hat, but he was in no danger of being blown away. Ross's body was heavy. He had once shattered a tile floor with his steps. Abandoned newspapers fluttered around the robot, but he remained solid.

  Ross lowered his hand once the newspapers had settled. He could still hear the emergency vehicle, a half-mile down the road, its anxiety mingled with street noise. Loud and sleepless city.

  Ross heaved a motorized sigh and dispensed another bag from his chest. He tore the perforated edge with undextrous metal fingers. Determined not to lose another piece of his utility, Ross stepped backward three paces; he looked down the road before fluffing the second bag.

  Ross always learned from the unexpected. And that is why he was good. He was good at what he did. He was good at who he was.

  Robotic Sanitation Services.

  The ones who kept the city beautiful. The ones who cleaned up at night so the day could feel confident. Ross was necessary. And he was good. He was good because he learned from the unexpected. He was good because he was necessary.

  Electricity and servos. Purpose and identity. Car horns and stray dogs. Ross began his journey down the sidewalk, garbage bag in hand. He scooped up a basket of discarded french fries oozing with a fluorescent substance that had once been cheese. Trash. He gathered the unconscious newspapers. Recyclable. Into the canister on his back.

  The sporadic packs of humanity dominating stoops and storefronts paid Ross no mind as he passed. Robotic Sanitation Services was a well-known institution, a respected company whose good and necessary workers had melded seamlessly with urban life. The robot lumbered by, squealing and belching exhaust, but no one heard him.

  With one hand, Ross clamped a dead bicycle lying in an alleyway. Tangled metal. Multicolor streamers. He eviscerated the streamers, snap, snap, snap, and stuffed them into the bag. Trash. A bright orange sticker, tacky with industrial adhesive, printed from Ross's wrist. He stripped the rubber from the tires. Trash. He affixed the sticker to what remained. Notification for the others: recyclable material. The bicycle skeleton was too large for Ross. The canister on his back was not equipped for bicycles. Ross was good because he knew his limitations. Ross was good because he was efficient.

  Slow progression down the sidewalk. Careful eyes. Meticulous attention to unnecessary rubbish. Ross neared a set of dumpsters. He passed them, knowing that objects contained in such metal coffins were not of his jurisdiction. Instead, he harvested the putrefying office equipment lying at their sides, in the open air. Copy toner and shame. Trash. He sorted a collection of crushed soda bottles. Redemption and polyethylene. Recyclable. All the while, Ross bent his wrist at an incredible angle. He swung his simian arm in a precise manner.

  Ross moved on to the next alleyway. Objects too large for him. Orange stickers on cube refrigerators weeping freon.

  And the next one. Apples, oxidized and brown, writhing with maggots, strewn across a cement stairway. Trash. A porkchop coated in breadcrumbs, also writhing with maggots, stuffed into a soggy grocery bag. Trash. A human infant wailing like the departed ambulance. The unexpected.

  Ross narrowed his eyes; he twisted the high resolution cameras into focus. Reaching into the same paper bag with one hand, Ross brushed away clumps of bloody afterbirth, fresher than the porkchop, steaming in the winter air. He flipped the human garbage onto its side, toppling the paper bag. Something thick, like rotting cheese, clung to the infant. It howled. Its limbs flicked spasmodically.

  Ross stepped backward and tightened his grip on his own trash bag. He began to print an orange sticker from his opposite wrist. The unexpected. Always new problems to solve. Ross was good because he learned from the unexpected. Ross was good because he could adapt. He could measure his gait to climb all kinds of stairways. He was efficient.

  Wrapping cold, clumsy digits around the infant's chest, under its arms, between its kicking legs, Ross lifted it from the ground. It was light, difficult to grasp. The infant tried to reach for Ross's fingers, but its muscles were too new, too weak. More flailing. The legs began to slip.

  The infant seemed to work. It could still move; it could still produce sounds from that speaker somewhere in its neck. Ross squeezed harder to prevent the object from falling. He gripped the soft newborn as he had gripped countless soda bottles. It was not trash. Ross completed printing the orange sticker. Recyclable material. Parts of the infant still worked. It was recyclable. Ross's legs had been built from the innards of old economy cars. He reasoned that the humans could use the infant in the same way. He affixed the orange sticker to the left side of the infant's face, covering its eye and one nostril.

  Before setting the object down and continuing onto the next street, Ross froze. His mind clicked and whirred under the strain of its newest puzzle. The infant was small enough to carry. It would be inefficient to leave it for the others. Ross was good because he was efficient.

  Ross whipped his arm backward. He dropped the newborn into the canister behind his shoulders. Thump. He picked up the fluid-soaked grocery bag as well; he threw it into his white plastic garbage bag. Saturated as it was, the paper was useless.

  Three more streets. Moldy shoes. Trash. Coffee filters. Trash. Newspapers. Into t
he recycle canister. Hubcaps. Orange sticker.

  Upon completion of his task, Ross dragged a bulbous trash bag with both hands and started toward his company's district receptacle. On the way, he detoured by one block to stop at the hospital.

  The hospital was clearly the place of human maintenance, the refinery of raw flesh. Broken humans went in, transported by the ambulances; good humans went out, walking with efficient legs and lungs. The hospital was the processing plant the infant would require. No doubt.

  When he entered through the easily accessible doors of the emergency room Ross was met with disgusted stares. An elderly man choked on the smell of coffee grounds and exhaust. A woman with red hair fell forward and vomited onto a pile of gardening magazines.

  “I have an infant to recycle,” Ross said, stepping carefully so as not to damage the floor. His voice was calm, a synthetic thing flecked with static. His trash bag scraped the linoleum.

  The room went silent in the wake of the robot's proclamation, excluding some kind of distant beeping. The triage nurse cocked her head to the side and clutched her pager.

  “You what?” she asked with a heavy urban accent.

  “I have an infant to recycle.”

  The nurse did not move; no one said a word, so Ross dropped his trash bag and reached backward into the recycle canister. He pulled out the infant by its leg. Its cries rent the sterile air.

  “I have an infant to recycle.”

  Copyright © 2011 Katherine Marzinsky

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  * * *

  Poetry: TRAIN DELAYS ON THE SOUTH CENTRAL LINE

  by Fiona Moore

  * * * *

  * * * *

  Movement creeps to a reptilian halt in the rusty gully;

  in the antediluvian stillness broken only by the odd steamy hiss

  obsidian-eyed commuters sit frozen in amber as

  the archaic machine groans, shudders with effort

  and, like its giant forefathers in Battersea

  * * * *

  Power Station, sighs its last into industrial inaction.

  Soon the green creepers that have claimed the viaducts

  and the ropy trees in the margins will enter:

  mosses growing over the back of the ancient monster

  ferns wearing the wheels into decaying crumbles

  until it stands, the stillness of the tropic scene

  broken only by the sudden flight of chip packets

  and the cicada shrilling of the mobile phones.

  * * * *

  London

  Between Balham and Clapham Junction Stations

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  * * *

  Short Story: MAIDEN VOYAGE

  by Jack McDevitt

  Jack McDevitt has been a regular Nebula finalist over the last twenty years. He is believed to be the only former Philadelphia taxi driver to win the award, which came in 2006 for his novel Seeker. Jack lives in Georgia with his wife Maureen, a German shepherd, and the requisite four cats. In his new story for Asimov's, Priscilla Hutchins—a central figure in the author's six Academy novels, premiering in 1994 in The Engines of God—is shown at the start of her career as she is training to pilot interstellars.

  For Priscilla Hutchins, it was the experience she'd always dreamed of: her qualification flight, a mission that would take her to seven planetary systems, and ultimately to her pilot's license.

  The most exciting destination, she thought, would be Fomalhaut, a white main sequence dwarf, about twice the size of Earth's sun, and sixteen times brighter. But that wasn't what had captured her imagination. Fomalhaut's system contained the first extrasolar planet actually seen through a telescope. It was a giant world, three times the size of Jupiter. But the real news came when we'd actually arrived in the system: the largest satellite in its family of moons was home to one of the alien constructs that eventually became known as the Great Monuments. Put in place by an unknown entity thousands of years ago. By the time of her qualification flight, a total of eleven had been discovered, scattered around the Orion Arm. They are magnificent sculptures, placed on moons and asteroids and small planets, and occasionally simply set in their own orbits. The first was discovered long before we had achieved interstellar flight. On Iapetus. It depicts a lizard-like female creature believed to be a self-portrait of the sculptor. And it was a major factor in restarting a long-stalled space program.

  Since she'd been a little girl, Hutch had wanted to see the Iapetus monument, but she'd had to settle for turning out the lights in her living room and looking up at a virtual representation. She'd felt a kinship with the alien creature gazing placidly across that destitute landscape at Saturn, which was permanently frozen on the horizon. Never rising, never setting. Priscilla had sat on her sofa sipping orange juice. She didn't want to pretend to be at the site. She wanted to visit the place. To touch the stone image. To trace with her fingers the alien characters cut into its base.

  No one had ever deciphered their meaning.

  The monument at Fomalhaut was an abstract. A ring with an angled crossbar extending past the sides, mounted on a base. As always, the base had an inscription in characters no one had ever seen before. Not even on the other monuments.

  It was made of rock extracted at the site, but the monument possessed an ethereal strain, heightened by multiple sources of moonlight, as if its natural habitat included trees, water, and the sounds of insects.

  But before Hutch and the Copperhead got to it, there'd be a routine stop at Groombridge 1618 to drop off supplies and passengers.

  Her parents had been unhappy when she'd announced her intention to pilot interstellars. Even her father, who'd arranged for her to touch the sky, had urged her to find, as he put it, a more rational life. She'd been disappointed in him, and it had caused a temporary split between them. In the end, he'd conceded, and he and Mom had thrown an unforgettable party for her. Lou Simmons, the boyfriend of the moment, had attended, and at the end of the evening, as they stood outside on the lawn of the family house, he'd asked her not to go, but instead to be his wife. She liked Lou, even though the long-term chemistry wasn't there.

  “I love you, Hutch. Will you marry me?”

  He'd stared at her, and she'd watched the dismay fill his eyes. And the frustration. And she'd thought how this might be one of those decisions she'd revisit over the years, and eventually come to regret.

  “What are you thinking about, Hutch?” asked Jake.

  It brought her back to the bridge of the Copperhead. She was in the pilot's seat. The scopes were picking up only the gray mist that filled the transdimensional space that allowed vehicles to move among the stars.

  “Nothing,” she said.

  Jake Loomis let her see his disapproval. “Okay, Hutch. Six minutes to jump.” He was seated beside her.

  “Okay.”

  “Best keep focused when stuff is happening.”

  “I'm focused,” she said.

  “Benny's good.” The AI. “But don't assume nothing will ever break down. If something goes wrong out here, it tends to happen very quickly.”

  “Okay, Jake.”

  He waited. Expecting her to say more? Then it came to her. The passengers. She touched the allcom pad, trying to look as if she'd been about to do that anyhow. “Professor Eddington,” she said, “Dr. Andrews, Isaika, we'll be transiting back into normal space in five minutes. If you need to do anything, this would be a good time. Then belt down.”

  She glanced over at Jake. He pretended to be looking at the fuel gauge. “Benny,” she said, “start engines.”

  * * * *

  Jake was a true believer. She suspected he was one of those guys who'd never walk away from the interstellars. He was a big man, with dark skin and black hair and an easy-come easy-go attitude. His eyes had a kind of whimsical look, implying that he did not take her seriously. Did not really trust her. “Benny can get you through most missions,” he told her, “but if a problem devel
ops you need to be ready.” There was something in the way he stressed the last word that underscored his doubts about her.

  Hutch had no reason to question her own capabilities. She had done well through the eight-month program leading up to this final mission, in which she would be expected to function as the captain, while Jake served purely as an observer. The guy who filled out the score sheet.

  “Jump in one minute,"said Benny.

  The panel was showing a red light. One of her passengers had not yet belted in. “One minute, everybody,” she said. “Larry, get into your harness.” Dr. Larry Andrews preferred being addressed informally.

  “Doing it now, Captain,"he said.

  They all thought, or pretended to think, she was actually captain of the Copperhead. Jake had been good that way. He'd implied he was just along for the ride. That Hutch was in charge. It had boosted her confidence. She loved being called “Captain.” But she understood that her reaction was a clear demonstration of her immaturity.

  Larry's lamp turned green.

  “Thirty seconds,” she said.

  She activated her own harness, and Jake settled back in his seat. He'd been about to remind her. But she hadn't forgotten. Almost, but not quite.

  The engines changed tone. “Transit initiated,"said Benny.

  The gray mist dissipated. The navigation display went dark. And a multitude of stars blinked on.

  Moments later, the AI broke in: “Hutch, we have a message from the Academy.”

  “What is it, Benny?”

  He put it onscreen:

  jake, fyi: we just got word that the hold on the quraqua terraform is going to be rescinded. that means you may be bringing a couple of people back with you. frank.

  Frank Irasco was the director of operations. And Quraqua, of course, was an Earth twin. An ideal colony world. But it had ruins dating back thousands of years. It was dry, and the corporates wanted to make it attractive to settlers. Terraforming would mean a cool pleasant climate, with modular beachfront homes. And sure it would put a lot of the ruins underwater. But what the hell?