Analog SFF, October 2008 Read online

  More than anything else, I am a wilderness enthusiast. The week before starting this article, I spent four days in the Oregon Cascades, climbing a ten-thousand-foot volcano and scrambling over glacial moraines to sit for hours above turquoise, green, and azure lakes too tiny to appear on my map. I thought my trip was about solitude and relaxation. Now, I'm not so sure.

  Until an ivory-bill is definitively sighted, nobody will know whether the species has survived. But the recent sightings are more than simply tantalizing. “The reports in Arkansas and Florida give us hope,” says Jackson. And while hope is not proof, he says, “it is the fire that incites us to seek the truth.”

  Amateur birders agree. “When I first heard about the sightings in Arkansas, I was skeptical,” says David Hatfield, a birder from Portland, Oregon. But later, he changed his mind. “That such a large and colorful bird appears to have survived for over fifty years without proof of its existence is good news for the ivory-bill, a positive note on the state of our wildernesses, and a fantastic story,” he says.

  In ancient times, I was once taught, maps had boundaries, beyond which lay unknown terrain. Sometimes the unknowns were simply blank. Other times they were stamped with a phrase that in my youth I took as a warning: Here be there dragons.

  Now, I see those dragons in a different light. Maybe they're resurrected wildflowers. Maybe they're ivory-billed woodpeckers. Maybe they really are the things we like to write about in science fiction. Whatever they might be, what they are, is hope.[5]

  [Footnote: 5 A different kind of hope also persists for the Mimulus tricolor and the peacock larkspur. I've not been back to Corvallis to search for them since 1999, but seeds from both plants are being cultivated by the Center for Plant Conservation's Berry Botanical Garden in Portland, Oregon.]

  Copyright (c) 2008 Richard A. Lovett

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  About the Author:

  Richard A. Lovett is a regular contributor to Analog and author of more than 2,800 newspaper and magazine articles. A science writer, travel writer, and sports writer (among other things), he lives in the Pacific Northwest, where he currently writes most frequently for us, National Geographic News,Running Times,New Scientist, and Cosmos.

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  Reader's Department: BIOLOG: MARK NIEMANN-ROSS

  by Richard A. Lovett

  Mark Niemann-Ross's business card proclaims him to be a developer evangelist for a major software company. “I tell people my job is to make sure the developers I work with are fed and watered,” he says. And, of course, encouraged to make use of his company's tools.

  Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, he cut his teeth on computers. “My dad worked for Honeywell,” he says. “He helped design the software that drives the joystick that controls the pitch and yaw of those big engines.” As a result, his father was always bringing home computer gadgetry. By the time Mark left for college, he was writing computer games in hexadecimal code and thinking about building his own computer. But he decided to study industrial education. “I'm qualified to teach shop in graphic arts,” he says. “Printing presses or photography.”

  * * * *

  * * * *

  Instead, he became a typesetter. “Graphic arts at that time was knives and ink and paper. Nobody knew that Apple would came up with the LaserWriter and overnight the industry would change.”

  But when it did, he had a unique combination of skills. “I understood the graphic arts industry and I understood computers. And I was gregarious: a socialite and a programmer.”

  He was also adventurous. In 1981, he and five friends took a 60-day, 1,400-mile canoe trip across the Canadian Arctic. “We carried 800 pounds of food and 300 pounds of personal effects in three canoes.”

  He's a voracious speed-reader, though he didn't read fiction until a grade school librarian insisted he supplement his steady diet of science books. “She pointed me to the science fiction section and gave me this big fat book,” he says. “I came back next week and said, ‘That was pretty good. What else have you got?'”

  Particularly memorable were Asimov's robot stories. “I ate up the three laws.” He particularly liked the way they opened the door for conundrums. “Programmers deal with this all day. ‘Why is this thing doing what it's doing?'”

  In general, he says, the best science fiction is an extension of known science. But it's more than just the science. “What's fascinating is what happens to the culture when things start to change,” he says.

  I myself have known Mark for years, and drew on his expertise for some of my early stories. But soon enough we were collaborating. Neither of us expects the story in this issue to be our last.

  Copyright (c) 2008 Richard A. Lovett

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  Novelette: STEALING ADRIANA

  by Dave Creek

  New abilities inevitably lead to new crimes....

  As Carrie Molina was about to step into the Humboldt River, she saw Jacob Troyer looking at her, and noted the concern in his expression. Jacob told her, “Don't do anything foolish.”

  “Not unless I really have to,” Carrie said. She ignored Jacob glaring at her as she took several deep breaths to prepare herself, then stepped into the river, which curved all the way around the interior of the New Lancaster Habitat.

  Carrie ducked her head beneath the surface and paused to allow her bio-engineered body to adapt to existence in water. She didn't breathe water, didn't have gills; the term “fish” was a misnomer. She had to surface to breathe the same as a dolphin or whale. That was because water didn't have enough oxygen absorbed in it for the physical exertion she required, and it didn't transfer oxygen into the bloodstream well enough. There were reasons many of the largest sea creatures were mammals. Her heart rate sped up to pump blood furiously through her body to keep it warm, and her lungs expanded to half-again their usual size.

  Carrie swam downstream, toward Malcolm Vicari's compound. She shivered slightly as the micro-dermal ridges of her skin, a trait she shared with dolphins, opened up—a goose-bumply feeling. Though barely visible, they trapped a thin layer of water molecules against her skin. That let her glide through the water with less resistance, since liquid flows against another liquid more smoothly than against the human body.

  Carrie only shivered for an instant, though, as her body made even more severe adaptations. Her blood coursed even more quickly through her veins, and her skin actually thickened slightly. Her legs ached for an instant as they prepared to steal more of her body's energies if Carrie required a sudden burst of speed.

  Having blubber like a whale or dolphin might have been more efficient. But, she thought, that would make it tough to get a date on a Friday night back home in Madrid.

  Not that I'd worry about it here. I can tell the nightlife here in a Mennonite habitat wouldn't be what I'm used to.

  * * * *

  Earlier that day, Carrie was undergoing a brief ritual anyone entering New Lancaster Habitat was obliged to submit to.

  “Ow! That hurts like hell!” Carrie rubbed her neck just below her left ear.

  “Please, Officer Molina,” Detective Jacob Troyer said as he lowered the cylindrical instrument that had just extracted Carrie's datalink. “Language.” He placed the instrument and the link on his wooden desk, which was covered with stacks of paper, a ceramic container filled with pens and pencils, and a small phalanx of rubber stamps. Not a comp in sight, not even the simplest vid or graphic readout.

  Without her link, Carrie felt cast adrift, separated from the rest of humanity. Not that there was anyone to communicate with here in New Lancaster. But there'd always been the possibility of a communication from Earth or another habitat or an orbiting spaceship. Not any more, at least while she remained here. “I'm not an officer,” she said. “And was that actually offensive to you?”

  Jacob looked down his nose at Carrie. He was a tall man in his thirties, and already a bit of gray was show
ing at his temples. He wore a black vest over a plain white shirt and gray trousers, but his face was clean-shaven. “You believe just because I'm a Mennonite—”

  Carrie felt her face grow warm. “I never meant—”

  “—and because I live in an single-culture orbital habitat, that I'm unsophisticated.” His eyes narrowed. “I'm not shocked. But I don't intend for you to make a habit of such talk while you're here.”

  Carrie ran a hand through her short black hair. They stood in Troyer's office in the small police headquarters building at one end of the kilometer-long habitat. 15,000 New Order Mennonites lived here in the “Habitat of the Gentle People.”

  Family farms formed a series of neat and orderly rectangles that curved upwards and met two-tenths of a kilometer overhead. Peppered among them were paved roads connecting small villages containing single-family homes of wood and stone and family businesses that tanned leather, darned socks, or repaired electric cars or telephones.

  Carrie said, “Maybe we should start over.”

  Jacob asked, “So, if you're not a Unity officer, what exactly are you?”

  “A freelance troubleshooter. A fixer. One week I might be searching for an artifact on a world humans haven't explored before. The next I might be helping colonists find just the right asteroid to make their new home.”

  “Which makes you the person to confront and capture Malcolm Vicari.”

  “Detective, I can turn right around and go back down to Earth. That's when Unity officers will come up here. They'll have subpoenas, issue press releases, and the whole thing will be a P.R. disaster for his habitat.” Carrie stopped when she saw the mounting fury registering on Jacob Troyer's face.

  He said, “Do that and it looks as if you're interfering with our culture. Then the Unity has a P.R. disaster of its own.”

  Carrie made herself smile. “Then we understand each other.”

  “We know Vicari as a godly man. Yet you believe these reports he's abused several women?”

  “On Earth and in several orbital habitats.”

  “In Shosha last year, I understand? And Newton?”

  “Yes,” Carrie said. “And New York and London.”

  “And this year, in Minerva Habitat and right here in New Lancaster?”

  Carrie fought not to let her emotions rise at thoughts of Adriana as she said, “And one more. On the Moon.”

  “Most of which embrace advanced tech. Yet he abused people without being discovered.”

  “For every tech capability, there's a counter-capability. He's a nanotech engineer, apparently a genius at it. The same tech that allowed him to commit his abuse also protected him from leaving DNA samples, odor residue, fingerprints, anything. And he always found places where there was minimal recording surveillance. All the evidence is circumstantial in these neural attacks.”

  “Pardon me, the ... what?”

  “Vicari's body is embedded with nanotech—much like a lifesuit for going outside a spaceship. If he touches you, he can send electrical charges through your limbic system. That's—”

  Jacob said, “I know what the limbic system is—modulates emotional responses, memory, sexual desire. ‘Mennonite’ isn't a synonym for ‘uneducated.'”

  “I'm sorry.”

  “You're actually better than most visitors. So—a neural attack?”

  “An electrical discharge in your limbic system can cause symptoms similar to psychosis, or psychotropic drugs. Specifically it affects the amygdala, which helps process emotions. He can evoke a particular emotion in his victim. And he can ... well, the unscientific phrase is that he can absorb it.”

  “How's that possible?”

  “A feedback effect of the electrical discharge. It sears the emotions he captures from others into his memories. He can relive them anytime he likes.”

  “But ... Malcolm Vicari. I've sat next to him at Sunday service. He's contributed money to my neighborhood school. Everyone acquainted with him knows he's a godly man.”

  Carrie said, “Not everyone. Helena Penner, for instance.”

  Jacob rubbed his chin. “I believe I've met her.”

  Carrie muttered, “Small habitat, I guess.”

  “Plenty of barn raisings, you mean. She lives on a farm several lots down from mine. About twenty, lives with her parents, Abram and Maria. What's her connection to this?”

  “She's the one who got away. She was working on his farm, supposedly helping with his bookkeeping. But he assaulted her there. It was the first time he's made that kind of mistake. Ironic, I suppose, that it's the low-tech society where he's discovered.”

  “How'd the Unity learn about this?”

  Carrie shook her head. “There's a lot we don't know. Somehow she got away, sent a message down to Earth. Some sort of link in her home.”

  “Forbidden tech? In that family's home? I'm surprised.”

  “By the time authorities on Earth started looking into it, Helena was back on the link begging them not to do anything, it was all a misunderstanding.”

  Jacob said, “Not unusual for many victims, unfortunately.”

  “Which is why the first thing I want to do is see her.”

  “I agree.” Jacob rummaged through one of the stacks of paper on his desk. “Oh, here it is.” He handed her a sheet of paper and a pen. “If you'd sign here?”

  Carrie looked at the document. “What the he ... I mean, what am I signing?”

  “All very straightforward. Acknowledges that I removed your datalink safely.”

  Carrie rubbed her neck again. “I guess that amounted to ‘safely.'”

  Undeterred, Jacob continued: “It also acknowledges your agreement that while you're here in New Lancaster Habitat, you've brought in no other high technology.”

  Carrie bent over the desk to sign the paper. “This would be a lot easier with some sensors or nano-searchers, or even that datalink. And I'd sure feel a lot safer with a stunner.”

  “A pity,” Jacob said, taking the document from Carrie and returning it to its stack. He opened a desk drawer and pulled out a pistol the likes of which Carrie had never seen before. A fat cylinder ran beneath its barrel. Its grip was made of wood. “This is the only weapon you'll be allowed here.”

  “What the ... heck ... is it?”

  “An air pistol. This reservoir beneath the barrel holds the compressed air. It can power over a hundred shots, but the clip only holds twelve, so that's plenty.” He handed her the pistol.

  Carrie turned the weapon from side to side. “What's it shoot?”

  “Rubber bullets. They're meant to stun you—not as a stunner does, mind you, but by sheer impact. They can break bones or even kill.”

  “And you think this will be enough firepower to take on Vicari?”

  “I can assure you he doesn't have any advanced weapons. Besides, I'm an excellent shot.” Jacob handed over a leather belt and holster. After a bit of fumbling, Carrie figured out how to fasten it securely just above her hips and fasten the flap properly. “Sort of screams that I'm armed.”

  “It's called a duty holster for a reason. Making it clear that you're armed is one of the requirements for a law enforcement officer here.”

  “Fine,” Carrie said. “Oh, there's one bit of advanced tech I can't change.”

  Jacob regarded her with suspicion. “What might that be?”

  “I'm a ‘fish.'”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “Bioengineered to exist underwater for long periods without breathing equipment. Vicari's compound's on the Humboldt River. I might have to make my way there without him realizing it.” She made her expression as bland as she could. “I hope that isn't a problem.”

  Carrie had to admit Jacob easily defeated her when it came to bland expressions. “Our habitat charter doesn't allow discrimination based on your physical characteristics, whether natural or acquired,” he said. Which, Carrie thought, is a long way from saying whether it's a problem or not.

  “Speaking of which,” Jacob said, �
��does it bother you that I'm acquainted with Vicari? You may think I'm prejudiced in favor of him.”

  Carrie thought of ashes, of an end of dreams, of a golden face she would never see again. “That's all right,” she said. “You'll balance me perfectly. Vicari's latest victim was my big sister Adriana.”

  * * * *

  Jacob remained silent as he led Carrie out of the police HQ and to an electric car to head to the Penner farm. His features were unreadable as he pulled away from the curb and drove down a broad paved road through a tiny village and into the countryside.

  Carrie still expected Jacob to demand an explanation from her—how could he trust her to apprehend Malcolm Vicari in a professional manner when she had such an emotional attachment? How could he know she wouldn't lash out violently, perhaps get them both killed?

  But he didn't. Didn't say anything, in fact, as they rode away from the southern end of the habitat, and soon approached the Humboldt River, which was a bright blue band bisecting the habitat. Carrie glimpsed both pleasure boats and larger cargo craft traversing its waters, some heading straight across, others taking the much longer trip “up” and around. A small stream that wound its way through the other side of the habitat, down from a highland area, ended in a waterfall that dropped about thirty meters.

  But not in a straight line. “I get it,” Carrie said, pointing out the curving trail of water curving to the west. “The habitat's rotating away from the falling water.”

  Jacob said, “The water's actually falling in a straight line. It just doesn't look like it.” After a moment, Jacob spoke in a more serious tone. “How did Vicari get away with his crimes for so long?”

  “A lot of it was brute force computing—looking at who had visited each of those cities or habitats during the time frames when women were assaulted. There were more than you might have thought. And in Shosha, he was nearly caught.”