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Volume V Issue 3 ISSN 1053-8496 December 1993
___________________________________________________
|Q U A N T A December 1993|
| Volume V Issue 3|
| |
|Editor/Technical Director......Daniel K. Appelquist|
|Cover Art.................................John West|
|Proofreading........................Cheryl Droffner|
| |
|Quanta is published as "shareword." It is|
|supported solely by reader donations. If you read|
|and enjoy Quanta, please send $5 to the postal|
|address below. Checks may be made out to Quanta|
|Magazine. Donation, although encouraged, is not a|
|requirement for subscription. |
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| Quanta |
| 3003 Van Ness Street NW #S919 |
| Washington, D.C. 20008 |
|___________________________________________________|
CONTENTS
LOOKING AHEAD.............................................Daniel K. Appelquist
Serials:
To Touch the Stars (Part 2)......................................Nicole Gustas
The Harrison Chapters (Chapter 15)..............................Jim Vassilakos
Microchips Never Rust (Part 2).....................................Eric Miller
Stories:
Excerpts from "Earth Rhetoric".....................................A.Y. Tanaka
Different Circumstances............................................Jason Snell
Quanta (ISSN 1053-8496) is copyright (c)1993 by Daniel K. Appelquist. This
magazine may be archived, reproduced and/or distributed provided that it is
left intact and that no additions or changes are made to it. The individual
works presented herein are the sole property of their respective author(s). No
further use of their works is permitted without their explicit consent. All
stories in this magazine are fiction. No actual persons are designated by name
or character. Any similarity is purely coincidental.
SUBSCRIPTION AND ARCHIVE INFO AT THE END OF THIS FILE
______________________________________________________________________________
Looking Ahead
Daniel K. Appelquist
______________________________________________________________________________
Well, I just got back from Internet World 93 in New York City. Many thanks to
Tony Abbott and Meckler Corporation for arranging for my free ticket. I have
to say, however, that I haven't come away from the conference with any bold
new realizations about the direction of Quanta or electronic publishing. The
main question people at the conference seemed to be asking about the
Internet was "Well, what have we got here?" Unfortunately, the answer at
this point seems to be "Uh... We don't really know." People are unsure how
to proceed, unsure what the immediate future will bring for the Internet.
American politicians are talking about "information super-highways,"
corporations are becoming increasingly Net-aware, commercialization of the
Internet seems imminent and inevitable. Yet those who already inhabit the
Internet seem determined to hold on to what they have, and what they have is
mostly free services and information. It's a tricky balance.
I attended one session on copyright issues which was fairly interesting. One
of the speakers' point of view was that the Internet needs to be "civilized"
so that it will be more attractive to business interests. They pointed out
that traditional ways of doing business, and traditional ways of publishing
simply don't work on the Internet. My reaction to this went something like
this: The Internet, as it exists right now, is a generic information
delivery and access system. The metaphor for document publishing on this
system should take full advantage of the system, and not rely on outdated
concepts propitiated by and originating in the print publishing world. One
speaker at this session railed against the idea of authors retaining the
copyrights to their own works. What's up with that? Why is it so bad for
authors to retain copyright on their own work? We need to re-examine the
commodity-based view we have of publishing (something I believe Mike Goodwin
of the EFF had been pushing earlier in the session, although I didn't catch
his talk). If the Internet does not lend itself to traditional publishing,
perhaps it is traditional publishing which needs to change and not the
Internet.
Now, I'm not saying that the freely distributed journal should be the model
for Internet publishing. In fact, many models were suggested for
revenue-generating publishing at the conference. One of these, proposed by
Brad Templeton of Clarinet, consisted of a fiction database, where, for a
monthly charge, users could connect and read all the fiction they wanted.
The system would keep track of how many users had read which pieces, and
remunerate the authors of those pieces accordingly. This seemed to me like
an extremely elegant solution for that type of revenue-based publishing.
Many other models were also suggested, all of them interesting and worth
thinking about.
An interesting model that's already being pioneered is that of Unit Circle,
published by Kevin Goldsmith (see ad. on page 20). Unit Circle publishes a
print version, which one can subscribe to for a fee, and also publishes a
PostScript electronic version, which is free. Larger magazines, like Wired,
are trying this hybrid format out on a much larger scale (although Wired
only publishes in ASCII text form electronically).
My point, though, is that both models of publishing (revenue generating and
free journals like Quanta and Intertext) can exist simultaneously. I think
the real interesting areas in the next few years will be in hybrid,
quasi-electronic, forms of publishing, and in Internet publishing via
hypertext systems such as Mosaic. By the way, this issue of Quanta will be
available on Mosaic in hypertext form in the near future. The plan is for
future issues to be made available this way as well. I'll be sending out a
letter with information on that as soon as things materialize.
The future of electronic publishing is still mirky however, as mirky as the
future of the Internet itself. I'm convinced something good will come of it.
Electronic publishing has not yet come of age, but we're working on it.
We've got a great issue for you this month. My friend Jason Snell is back
with a new one "Different Circumstances." As a side note, although Jason and
I have been called "friends" for a while by the authors of various
publications, we actually just met recently when I travelled to California
to visit friends and drop in on Worldcon.
We've also got continuations of three serials, and a new piece from A.Y.
Tanaka that's likely to amuse... or was that confuse? At any rate, enjoy!
We'll be featuring a new novella dealing with the exploration of the Moon
... by hot air balloon, called "Moonifest Destiny." We'll also be featuring
the real conclusion to Nicole's serial (To Touch the Stars) as well as
continuations of the Harrison Chapters and Microchips Never Rust.
______________________________________________________________________________
Moving? Take Quanta with you!
Please remember to keep us apprised of any changes in your address. If you
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keep Net traffic due to bounced mail at a minimum. Please send all
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______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
EXCERPTS FROM `EARTH RHETORIC' "For rhetoric is, after all, the use of
(203rd. ed.) language to produce results. But Earth
stands alone in the subtlety and
A.Y Tanaka obscurity of its rhetorical
techniques..."
______________________________________________________________________________
From the Introductory Exhortation:
Charting the rhetorical terrain of most planets is a relatively
straightforward endeavor. Certain patterns of expression are used in certain
standard situations for certain fairly discernible ends. For rhetoric is,
after all, the use of language to produce results. But Earth stands alone in
the subtlety and obscurity of its rhetorical techniques...
____________________
(From Section 7.3) The phenomenon discussed in this section reflects the
continuing underground [figure of speech] resistance to the written word
throughout human history, and the chronic re-emergence of the vocal
apparatus as a medium of self-expression, analogous to the objectively
purposeless use of comparable organs in tour-pacing, key action
(musical/alpha-numerical) and sex (see note 7). We have chosen Benedictine
Recapitulation as our term for this, not for religious reasons nor for its
implications in the sphere of food and drink, but because prominent examples
-- remnants of the earlier oral tradition -- first appear in unrefined form
in the quaintly-apocalyptic Book of the Wars of Baruch (=Benedict). In the
second chapter, Jorak (son of Nathan? son of Julian?), after long brooding
in his tent, sends for Xergorianobis, tending flock on Mt. Negus near Kiryat
ha-Nabim.
Xergorianobis: "What service, my captain?"
"Of weight, my keeper of flocks. Listen well."
"I listen."
"Ride, with no sign of haste (to confound the spies) to Jorak my namesake.
Bid him, thrice on our name and thrice on the stones of prophecy, join his
with ours at Megan Hill before the dawn, thence to surprise the camp of
Rurik of Khoth, who has long done us ill. Choose your fleece well, my keeper
of flocks, for the night is cold, and muzzle your ass in Sarmatia's manner,
for strong teeth are rare. Go now."
Xergorianobis rides as bidden and shortly reaches the tent of the younger
(we assume) Jorak (son of Eben? son of Obed?) but is confronted by Jorak's
ensign, who demands to know why his captain must be disturbed.
Xergorianobis:
"I tell. Listen."
"I listen."
Xergorianobis: "Jorak my captain, after long brooding in his tent, sent for
this humble messenger, long tending flock on Mt. Negus near Kiryat ha-Nabim.
`What service, my captain?' `Of weight, my keeper of flocks. Listen.' I
listened. `Ride,' he said, `with no sign of haste (to confound the spies) to
Jorak my namesake. Bid him, thrice on our name and thrice on the stones of
prophecy, join his with ours at Megan Hill before the dawn, thence to
surprise the camp of Rurik of Khoth, who has long done us ill. Choose your
fleece well, my keeper of flocks, for the night is cold, and muzzle your ass
in Sarmatia's manner, for strong teeth are rare.' Thus he spoke, then bade
me go." Impressed, the ensign wakes his captain. "My captain, a keeper of
flocks brings weight. Tending flock on Mt. Negus near Kiryat ha-Nabim was
he, when Jorak his captain, after long brooding in his tent, sent for him.
`What service, my captain?' he spoke, and Jorak answered, `Of weight, my
keeper of flocks. Listen.' He listened. `Ride,' he said, `with no sign of
haste (to confound the spies) to Jorak my namesake. Bid him, thrice on our
name and thrice on the stones of prophecy, join his with ours at Megan Hill
before the dawn, thence to surprise the camp of Rurik of Khoth, who has long
done us ill.' He further bade him choose his fleece well, for the night was
cold, as it still is, and to muzzle his ass in Sarmatia's manner, for strong
teeth are rare. Thus he spoke, then bade him go."
Fully awake, the younger Jorak orders Xergorianobis in.
"Speak, keeper of flocks."
"I speak. Listen."
"I listen."
"Sire, as rule dictates, tending flock on Mt. Negus near Kiryat ha-Nabim was
I, when my captain, the Jorak of origin, after long brooding in his tent,
sent for this humble messenger. I came. `What service, my captain?' `Of
weight, my keeper of flocks. Listen.' I listened. `Ride,' he said, `with no
sign of haste (to confound the spies) to Jorak my namesake...'"
The younger Jorak thereupon -- see Appendix XVII for the full text.
This and other portions of the Book of the Wars of Baruch (=Benedict) were
taken down [figure of speech] much too faithfully from one of the unlettered
public storytellers of the time, who may have suspected his listeners had
all the time in the world [figure of speech]. How different, how shorter,
the written text might have been had the storyteller sensed bad weather
approaching, or enemy troops, or an impatience among his hearers, or was
himself hungry or tired.
Today, more than a few humans retain these extensive recapitulatory powers.
Examples (condensed):
(a) "So my bless-mom told me to shut up and get out of bed and stick on
my shoes, who cares which ones, and come on over here and pester you to let
me have an extra chair -- the hoity-toity one if you know what's good for
you -- because what the hell [figure of speech] you never get company anyway
with the crap you serve and you won't miss it and besides Uncle Dormus and
Aunt Shelly are coming for a visit but mom calls it an inspection and the
cat scratched up the other chair we got and Mom says Aunt Shelly won't sit
on the chair from the kitchen because she's stuck up [figure of speech] and
expects us to bend over backwards...
(b) "Let's see now, the flag was up so I got dressed and went out and
walked over to the mailbox and got the mail and walked back and sat down and
finished up the coffee and the cream bun and started to snip open the mail
and sure enough right on top was this here long-awaited
just-can't-keep-my-pants-on annual letter from Maude the church secretary
asking what my tithing plans are for this year so they can start in fixing
the plumbing in the parsonage. She and the committee, I guess which is
George, Bibi and Rheinhardt recommend I plunk down five dollars flat every
Sunday for fifty weeks (they won't make a fuss about my two weeks with Bess
and Joe in Portland) which comes out to just about two-hundred-fifty a year.
That's a dollar a week more than they wanted last year -- four dollars a
week for fifty weeks (they didn't make a fuss about my two weeks with Bess
and Joe in San Francisco) which comes out -- came out, that is -- to...
well, just about two-hundred. That's a dollar a week more than they wanted
the year before -- three dollars a week for fifty weeks (they didn't make a
fuss about my two weeks with Bess and Joe at Ft. Drum) which comes out --
came out, that is -- to one-fifty for that year. That's a dollar more..."
(c) "O-dokie, sure, I know, I know, it's two-thirty already but I can't
get there yet `cause the Roach broke down at the ingress to E-62, the tricky
one between 107 and 130 near the VTM building (local's entrance) and the
Montessori school -- you can see it from the Dewer's statue if you sight it
just right. So the slope climbs real steep there, `prox seven degrees above
code -- eight, in fact near the lamp tower, says the [unclear]. The engine
(it's a Milton-cyl job, just tuned a month ago) starts to flutter, so I say
to myself just needs more bean soup, so I press the pad and instead of
vroom-vroom I get ~Eg~=~E~ and then fdzz. Then a 620 slides up behind me,
growling cyls, and a 512 behind him, and a Mickle Hardy behind him, and a
Shadrack 22 behind him (her, really), and then a Montego Pariah, all
hunkered up, than a..."
What triggers these transports? Neither content nor circumstance give us a
clue. Sj's answer -- "Anything" -- may be the one. In example (a) the child,
at another time of day or under a cloudier or sunnier sky, or within the
sound-reach of alternate neighborhood bird species, might have settled for,
"I want your chair and I'll hold my breath till you give me it." In (b) the
church member might have hammered a brief note to the church door: "Enough's
enough; indoor plumbing's overrated." In (c) the driver of the failed Roach
might have just muttered, "Scratch it for today" and slouched back toward
the ingress. The human possessing or possessed by this talent rarely
monitors the episode as it takes place nor recalls much of it afterwards.
The rare subject who recalls it fully finds in it nothing out of the
ordinary. We've lost data on this phenomenon in the less advanced
jurisdictions. Mh fears for the safety of subjects enclaved where Government
is understandably but unnecessarily venerated. The subject's unpredictable
and barely repressible Benedictine faculty is a vocal, if unintentioned,
reminder of humanity's pre-rule past. Sn, less fearful, points out the
overwhelmingly non- controversial nature of the material elicited during
these episodes and has higher hopes for the subject's fate. Mh responds that
it is not the material that endangers, but the performance itself, easily
taken as a declaration of the subject's freedom to expound upon whatever
strikes his fancy [figure of speech]. To bystanders and undercover police --
the potential witnesses at the trial -- it would be distressingly impious.
For Sn, most administrators were not born yesterday [figure of speech], are
not so naive as to confuse form and substance. A compassionate administrator
may even encourage irrelevant superficial discourse _ distract the subject
and his fellow citizens from more frustrating matters.
But for Mh, most administrators are not so bull-headed [figure of speech] as
to arbitrarily distinguish form and substance; for they, as we, are fully
aware form predetermines substance, facilitates it, limits it and, for most
of them, is it. She cautions us with a quaint but valid analogy: The Big
Roach hauling fertilizer this trip, may next trip (once aired out) be
hauling anti-rule printouts; and next trip, anti-rule type-D Indefatigables.
____________________
(From Section 9.02)
Initially troublesome, but to which we've slowly adjusted, is the Spiked
Moat. Examples include (a) through (f) with others available through source
#326:
(a) Art thou not Simon? "Nay, Lord... rather, yes indeed."
(b) Do YOU want back the ten guineas I borrowed? "Hell no -- Shut my
mouth, sure I do."
(c) That's a real nice fence YOU painted there. "Who me? I never painted
any... oh, thanks."
(d) You've seen George? "I don't know any George. Wait, there he is."
(e) What do YOU get when YOU cross a monkeY with a chicken? "Hey, I
never touched that chicken."
(f) Where's Chicago? "I didn't take it."
When the inquirer (and few can resist, can we?) ventures a comment on this
phenomenon, the subject denies the Moat exists. One, more open than most,
explained, "If something's not, it's not. What's the fuss?" Another answered
simply, "Not true."
The rationalia, for Fp, have to do with psycho-analytically elucidible
mechanisms. Ao sees evidence of integrated media-opaque stimulus/response
patterns (habitual tendencies III through VI) since most queries directed to
humans do seem to elicit -- often to require -- a negative response, for
self-preservation ("I didn't do it") or an occasional truth ("I didn't do
it").
____________________
(From Section 9.10) Our local assistant offered the term Blindsiding for
this phenomenon. It originally described a technique often used, and often
advised against, in the hunting of the larger animals. Example:
How about Tuesday?
"Out of the question."
So what do YOU suggest?
"How about Tuesday?"
Rationalia: Bk, as usual, is understanding [figure of speech], sees the
subject hard of hearing or a bit forgetful. But Km sees the subject
consciously and cleverly attempting to disconcert an equal, to render him
(rarely her) in some subtle way subservient. The subject gathers virtue rank
as (a) the one who denies, (b) the one who taketh away and giveth, (c) the
one who redeems false starts, (d) the one who initiates, and, if done right
[figure of speech], (e) the one who creates. Sadly, as with all those
exalted by the befuddlement of their fellows, the subject is never at peace.
His tenure depends on the extent his ploy is recognized, tolerated -- and
imitated. He will be often heard in the shadows desperately rehearsing new
dialogues: How about Wednesday? "Out of the question." How about Chicago?
"Out of the question." How about a cream bun? "Out of the question." So what
do YOU suggest? "How about..."
____________________
(From Section 13.8) The typical subject ("perpetrator" is Yt's term) of
Didactic Incontinence is a parent or concerned other (what constitutes a
"concerned" other is purposely vague) who broadcasts -- without charge,
surprisingly -- advice, instruction and summary exegesis in fields broad and
narrow, in contexts pressing and relaxed, to children of whatever age and to
unproved adults. (What constitutes a "proved" adult is purposely vague.)
No explicit vanity here; the subject shuns the obvious ego-centered patterns
of "I say/believe/think/suggest, strongly advise," to choose the
other-directed patterns of "You ought to, You'd better, Why
don't/didn't/haven't you, Do it this way, Don't do it this way, Don't forget
to, Don't you dare, Don't."
Before we selected our term for this phenomenon we hovered about and were
tempted by a variety of others, some inexcusably gross and vituperative. We
shocked ourselves, for we'd never fully realized how close we lie to those
negative forces from which we claim to stand aloof [figure of speech]. Among
the less offensive were Eternal Vigilance, Didactic Apotheosis, Tutorial
Entropy and the neo-Latin Didacticismo a Codazo Limpio, somewhat difficult
but not impossible to translate: a, "thus, in the manner of"; codo, "elbow";
-azo, a suffix denoting a blow or thrust; limpio, "clean" and by semantic
extension, swift and kinetically elegant. The evocation is of a scholar, a
teacher, a molder of minds, vigorously elbowing his/her way through a mob.
So great the visceral distress we experienced preparing this section, we
chose to forego specific examples. Even a harmless bit of evidence such as
"Don't get your feet wet," heard at a local's restricted beach not too many
years ago, proved strangely disturbing to us. Those whom misfortune has ever
placed on the receiving end [figure of speech] of this theoretically
harmless, potentially valuable but distressingly trying phenomenon will
readily understand our reluctance. Those ignorant of such experience are
truly blessed, in the stellar as well as the terrestrial sense. May their
decline be as pleasant as their youth.
We nevertheless attempt to list some of the possible rationalia driving the
subject:
(a) "To show I care."
(b) "So if anything goes wrong, I'm covered."
(c) "Someone's got to slap some order on this chaos."
(d) "It's good for you."
(e) "Human culture is transmitted through education, from the old to the
young. Don't you know that?"
(f)"Through observation and experience I've found this the most
effective means of functioning in society and of being recognized by it."
(g) "Please -- I'm getting dizzy -- please stop the merry-go-round."
____________________
(From Section 21.04) The Friendly Sparrow(s) ought not be classed with
Didactic Incontinence; many understandably take offense. The original
subjects were attested to in The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter, an
insightful witness of the period. Trespassing in McGregor's garden [figure
of speech?] Peter stumbles into a gooseberry net and is caught therein by
the large brass buttons on his jacket -- a blue one, rather new. He sobs,
helpless should McGregor come this way, but is overheard by some friendly
sparrows, who fly down to him and implore him to exert himself. Mr. McGregor
comes ever closer, but Peter wriggles out just in time, loosing his jacket.
We've already seen him lose one shoe amongst the cabbages, another amongst
the potatoes. Modern examples (source #180) include:
(a) Rabbit, on release from prison: "Jesus [figure of speech?], the
screws in that pen don't let up." Sparrow: "Next time choose your detention
center with more care."
(b) Rabbit: "Ever since I lost my job I've had these lard-and-cheese
patties almost every night, and it's getting to me." Sparrow: "Don't get in
a rut. lobster two-three times a week."
The rationalia, for all but Lj, is self-evident.
____________________
(From Section 28.01) The Sleeping Guru. The subject in this case is the
unexpressive (class IV?) query-receiver responding with equal enthusiasm
("Hmm"/"Mmh"/"Mhm") to both ambiential and substantive queries. (Ambiential:
"So I K-Bosched him, wouldn't you?" "Like, you know, things get uremic, know
what I mean?" Substantive: "Are you in tune with Ishida's discussion of
Weber's thesis?")
Rationalia:
(a) The subject (i) lacks familiarity with the material discussed or
with the speaker's perhaps extra/other-terrestrial mode of presentation;
(ii) suffers from a defective appreciation of the complementary roles of
ambience and substance in successful communication; (iii) suffers from a
unique, perhaps defective, personal interpretation of reality.
(b) The subject has simply chosen not to pay attention, under the
assumption (information from an outside source) that the speaker has been
rated predisposition/prelude-to-rebellion, or otherwise not worth listening
to. Should this be the case, the recommended option for the neglected
speaker is to contact that outside source through a source of one's own, to
suggest by means of bribery, threats or new (not necessarily valid)
information that the original advice to the subject be modified.
____________________
(From Section 31.06) The Smoke Alarm is a loud, unrelenting, infinitely
recyclable request/demand for X's presence; for example, Mac! Mac! Mac! Or,
in an effort to get at the "real" Mac: Maxwell! Maxwell! Maxwell! The
subject is not necessarily a child, rarely an invalid. He calls from the
next berm or from the other end of the fort (Mac! Mac! Mac!) or from the
fort to the field or from the fort to the Roach or from the Roach to the
fort or the field or from the field to the Roach (Mac! Mac! Mac!) or from
one end of the field to the other until "Mac" reaches him and by his
presence shuts him off.
Although Mac hears the subject clearly enough, the subject hears Mac not at
all, whatever the volume, intensity, tone, pitch or fervor of Mac's
answering call, cry, yell, scream, shout, wail, bellow, bleat or ultimate
mutter, be it "Yes?" or "Yes!" or "O-dokie, I'm coming" or "Hold your horses
[figure of speech]" or "All right, all right, shut up already" or "Temper
yourself before a body calls Public Safety" or "Damn your hide, this better
be good."
By Lk's analysis, the subject hears no Mac, though everyone else does,
because his psycho-aural diagram has no Y-juncture to pre-route and
encapsulate an intermedial response. Even so, given the intra-cranial
backlog entailed, any received response would likely be misread by the
subject as (a) Mac's feeble/shameful/cunning excuse for dawdling, or (b) a
cheap conspiratorial substitute for the "real" Mac. (Unusual, this example
of reality associated with the person/thing itself rather than with
his/her/its more durable and reproducible photo/holo/audio image.)
Kq, on the other hand [figure of speech], claims the hear-no-Mac phenomenon
derives from the stressed freq/ampl sines of the subject's own voice
unrolling an endo-sonic barrier impervious to what are perceived as
xeno-sonic transmissions.
Thunderspeak takes this further. The subject performs under conditions most
consider hostile to the human voice. We assume a method to his madness
[figure of speech], some unfulfilled agenda, never revealed. The subject
enthusiastically discusses life and art, loyalty and so on, oblivious to
thunder, howling winds, the slapping of branches against the sides of the
house, the spray of cold rain through the open window, the roar of a passing
bi-train, the rumble of a nearby earthquake, the distraction of a murder in
the room, even the murder of the only listener.
Aquaphilia is a variant of this. The subject shows measurable (on the MZD
scale) discomfort, in both speaking and listening modes, if unable (for lack
of access, say, or some mechanical inefficiency) to trigger the nearest
water tap. In m-level areas this occurs in about 42% of those studied. The
preferences are: kitchen sink, 26%; dishwasher, 7%, clotheswasher, 9%;
bathroom sink, 11.5%; tub/shower, 16.5%; toilet flush, 22%; outside faucet,
8%. For pace-changing, the subject may trigger the radio (4%), the video
(11%), the Harmonium (7%), the food resolver (9%), the Roach engine (10%),
or unhook the telephone to release the dial tone (17%). [Figures adjusted
for use of two or more items at the same time.]
____________________
(From Section 31.12) An apparent contradiction to the active mnemonism
discussed elsewhere is the tendency to perversely forget or maliciously
withhold the local codes. Our researcher was victimized by this (having
stumbled into it unprepared) concluding a data-interview with an otherwise
good-natured kiosk dweller. The informant made no attempt to formally
terminate the interview, thereby preventing the researcher from leaving
(formulaic restraint); in effect, wasting his valuable time. The kiosker was
evidently toying with him [figure of speech], teasing him with false codes
such as "O-dokie, fella, that's it for now," "Well, hope it's what you
wanted," "Good luck on your work, whatever it is," "O-dokie, time's up,"
"Take care now, watch that head-beam going out," "On your way, then," "You'd
better get home before it rains -- rust, you know." Our researcher's strain
was great, kept thus in limbo [figure of speech] until the kiosk dweller
released him at last with the correct form, "It is finished."
For Ln, this phenomenon's Earth-role is less obvious than our researcher,
through us, has suggested. Her rationalia appear illogical.
____________________
(From Section 31.21) The Whynot. In the semi-jurisdictions, rather than ask
"Have you cleansed the Roach today?" the subject asks, "Why haven't you
cleansed the Roach today?" or the more compassionate "Why weren't you able
to cleanse the Roach today?" where the subject in neither case has even seen
the Roach in question. Bf adds, "Nor intends to see it, either, if in fact
it exists -- well, `exists' as other than a false but useful concept." (See
Lk et al. on the legend of the Joneses.)
Purveyors of rationalia share general agreement on the theme: roughly,
Knowing YOU, I don't expect much. This may be so where the Whynot is chosen
from a pool of options, the others being perhaps: (ii) "Have you cleansed
it?" (iii) "I just glimpsed the Roach and it's still uncleansed." (iv) "It
seems that after you cleansed it, some clown [figure of speech] rolled by
and messed it up again." But what to make of a venue where humans use the
Whynot consistently? Addressed with equal vigor to friends/enemies,
journeymen/bunglers, experts/novices alike.
With no choice involved, there are no relevant rationalia. We've in this
case a historical development, comparable to those which led to such
formulae as "Hi there, whatchadoin?" where any damn fool [figure of speech]
can see what you're doing, or "Ah, `tis your vehicle malfunctioning, is it
now?" when, as our assistant put it, "I'll surely'd not be out drenched and
greased by the way's apron just for the blossomin' health of it" [an
approximation].
This Whynot, the consistent one, derives (see Rz) from the injudiciousness
of forebosses on the honor farms where hardly-corrigibles were assigned for
their own good. Newcomers to the farms, exposed to the 5th Lingo phraseology
common there ("Why didn't you, haven't you, won't you, do you refuse to?
What are you hiding? Where is it? Why not? Why don't you cooperate? What are
you up to? Admit it.") came to associate Ling-5 with a higher soc/ec/ed
level and over time adopted it (along with the loud, harsh, impatient,
rasping snorts, which drove their children into therapy) as a mark of
achieved status and high culture.
____________________
(From Section 31.29) We call attention to a more complex variant of
Blindsiding (see above) and Judo (unavailable at press time). One of our
researchers uncovered a rhetorical device obviously conscious and malevolent
-- effective evidence, albeit anecdotal, to counter the revisionists who see
purposelessness as essential to human communication. Our researcher came
upon it inadvertently, while in the process of chiding one of the more
recalcitrant kiosk dwellers for an apparently insufficient display of
respect. Here follows a necessarily rough translation.
Our researcher (feeling for the appropriate figure of speech): "You are [but
a] contemptible swine [an extinct species], a perverter of [hitherto
ordered] minds, a caresser of impure bodies [?], a dreamer of unsanitary
notions..."
Kiosker: "Well fella, you hit the nail right on the head. It's something I
work at every day."
Ours (after a brief pause for evaluation): "You agree -- you agree? It is
not yours to agree. Is your unworthiness of such depth as to render you
neither capable nor desirous of disputation?" (And so continued in this
vein, solidifying the essence of his position.)
Kiosker: "Well, you want me to, so I'll comply. (Give me a moment to get
ready; it's been years now... O-dokie, here goes:) I hereby refute you and
any anyone who smells like you, and declare your words false. Yours, and
theirs. I present myself as without sin, as an active friend of all who
think; of all who try to, at least. So there. Happy?"
Ours (after a brief pause for evaluation): "You challenge -- you challenge?
It is not yours to challenge. What perverse bedevilment [figure of speech]
drives you to such madness...?"
As can be seen, the purpose of the kiosk dweller's clever game (and those of
others of his school) is to confuse, warp and render impotent such
intelligent yet unready minds as that of our researcher, whose short temper
was certainly understandable.
____________________
(From Section 31.47) The variety of pithy greetings we continue to uncover
suggests to us a tendency to formula, while Tr leaves hope for a surviving
rationalism. Regardless of semantic niceties or the lack of them, Ch's
classification remains the respected norm. His early notes, recently
recovered, reveal new insights:
"Reciprocal: Howdy/Howdy, Xylum/xylum, Hi/Hi, Hola/Hola, etc. Reflective:
Xylum Locum/Locum Xylum, Sugar and spice/spice and suqar (formula of extinct
sorority Nu Nu Lambda). In Hola Pepe/Hola Paco (compare Kata Zim/Kata Piro,
Hi Joe/Hi Lynn) the Hola/Hola portion is the reflective greeting, Pepe/Paco
the names of the mutual greeters. But [scratched-out name]'s imprudent view
sees the full Hola Pepe as the initial call, Hola Paco as the standard
response, which would imply the conceivably proper:
(a) `Hola Pepe, Miguel'/'Hola Paco, Ernesto'
(b) `Hi Joe, Roy'/'Hi Lynn, Sam'
(c) `Hi Joe'/'Hi Joe to you, too.'
"When I get a new notebook I'll have to shift some of the reciprocals to the
subclass of continuants or completives (God [?] keep the Tsar/Far from us
[quite widespread recently, despite there being, as we know, no more tsars];
Okowe/Ka-i-ka; Saints, it's you/And who else would I be, now). Kd, as
always, confuses completives with reflectives, which I guess is
understandable. After all, who can say with authority what Howdy/what's up,
Howdy/Doody, Glad to see You/same here, Mornin'/What's good about it and all
the rest really mean?"
____________________
(From section 32.02) "The Vessel of Difficult-to-Measure Content." In a few
small but important jurisdictions one looks on the good side of a good
situation only if one finds no other choice. Rather than elsewhere's "It
looks like a fine day" the subjects tell us "I see no danger." For "Let's
walk on the beach" they tell us "Let's avoid the casino." For "Catch our
newly-painted Roach" they tell us "Note how it's not yet faded." For "He's
got three balls" they tell us "He's not yet struck out."
Here again, analysis of the rationalia indicts the reeducation system, in
which (for good reason, we assume) a positive attitude was long interpreted
as predisposition/ prelude to rebellion, and sternly corrected. Kw doubts
this, suspects the human psyche is not so easily molded, finds in this
phenomenon yet another of their clever means of making communication
difficult; not because the subjects in question value impaired communication
as an ideal worth striving for, but "just for the hell of it" [figure of
speech].
____________________
(From Section 32.07) An unexpected amount of inter-person/species violence
would often result from what was too quickly explained by, "Sorry, my
mistake." Attestation #235 is instructive:
"(Uh, what do I talk into? This one? O-dokie, whatever. Now? `Dokie, here
goes:) Well, I was stringing it down Two-Two-Three Street, near the Julienne
Gardens, and I heard this guy talking, `prox three-four blocks away, saying
something like Mort, YOU blockhead. So I got riled, wouldn't you?"
Interviewer: "But you're not Mort."
"Sure, easy enough to say that now..."
The plethora of documentation of this sort explains the decision in some
jurisdictions to never, neither in conversation nor in private musings,
admit one's own or comment on another's faults, confess one's own or comment
on another's transgressions, because a careless eavesdropper might easily
misunderstand. The effective corollary is to permit that potential
violence-monger to overhear comments only of a positive nature ("You/I/Rosa
keep getting better and better"). Should the subject misinterpret, it would
be to assume the (self-) praise he overhears is for him, that he's getting
better and better.
____________________
(From Section 32.18) Consider this a specialized cognate of Benedictine
Recapitulation. Lr, in their Guidebook, label it Recipe Overcook and
describe it as "humans progressing -- or reverting -- to idyllic
pre-literacy" because of the demands made upon the pre-literate, or
hypermnemonic, area of the midbrain.
Often during conversation one hears, in a breath-prose pattern with minimal
pauses, a discourse comparable to the following, as surreptitiously recorded
by our researcher:
"[...] O-dokie, I'll fold, haven't had a good hand all afternoon, but say, I
was thinking there's another way to finish off all those bananas your cousin
gave you: all you do is take one half cup butter or margarine (Cher uses a
half cup oil -- yuck), one cup sugar (a quarter cup if you bust out of your
clothes a lot [figure of speech?] like Cher), two eggs, seven-eight ripe
bananas (mash `em good, you get about two cups), three tablespoons water --
milk maybe (Cher uses three teaspoons of powdered milk, you can't really
blame her), two cups flour (Cher's fancy-pantsy, makes it one white, one
cornmeal), one teaspoon baking soda (Cher puts in baking powder, tastes
terrible, too much aluminum -- `dokie for them, sure, but --) and a half cup
chopped nuts (anything but peanuts -- too heavy). Got all that?
"You cream the butter and sugar till it's fluffy, beat in the eggs one...
at... a... time. (That Cher, she cuddles the eggs in her hand and says, In
Mexico you know what `two eggs' means, don't you, girls?) So you add the
water and the bananas (You can bet Cher's got something to say there, too)
then you mix in the flour and the baking soda (but if it's baking powder,
forget the whole thing) and shake in the nuts (Cher again). Then you pour
the whole thing in any kind of greased and floured Hot Box (I won't say a
word) and shove it in your slow cooker (who me?) on SOON for say
two-and-a-half hours, and you get a great banana cake, even Cher. And
speaking of slow cookers -- nah, shouldn't say things behind her back. And
that's all there is to it, try it next time, `try it or buy it.' O-dokie
then, who's dealing..."
Fortunately, the recorder had already been turned on, for there was neither
provision nor time for written or keyed notes. Which of course was the
subject's witting or unwitting purpose sees in this phenomenon a trend in
human evolution responding to some obscure genetic or ecological imperative.
For Bj, such extended information-bearing discourse, relying on inborn
retentive skills, shows the resurgent hypermnemone of the subject's brain
striving to contact and stimulate the analogous though still dormant
hypermnemone of the listener's brain.
This reaction within the human brain against its own creation -- human
civilization, of which literacy is a major component -- has been studied by
a variety of our Institutes. The resulting rationalia may be gathered and
purveyed thus:
(a) If left free to grow, this hypermnemonic force will in time bring an end
to the ever discouraged yet ever-recurring cruelties attending the march
[figure of speech] of civilization, especially during its self-guided phase.
(b) The cruelties in question derive not from some evil inherent in
civilization, but from the ever pulsating, not yet completely suppressed,
pre-literate hypermnemone that has always been covertly active in the human
psyche [figure of speech], successfully giving civilization a bad name
[figure of speech], the host bearing the blame for the sins of the parasite
[figure of speech].
We need to know if (a) this subversive force has been steadily gaining
strength over the years, or if (b) our astounding advances in anthropometry
have merely enabled us to observe more of what has always been there.
____________________
(From Section 41.06)
Example:
What'll it be?
"I'll have coffee and a cream bun."
We don't have any cream buns.
"Then I'll have orange juice and a cream bun."
I said, we don't have any cream buns.
"Then I'll have milk and a cream bun.
I said, we don't have any cream buns.
"Then I'll have tea and a cream bun."
I said, we don't have any cream buns.
"Then I'll have yogurt and a cream bun."
I said, we don't have any cream buns.
"Then I'll have cocoa and a cream bun."
I said, we don't have any cream buns.
(Pause.)
"Then I'll just have a cream bun."
This ought not be taken for a variant of Blindsiding; the subject's (the
customer's) supposed purpose is to obtain food, not to disconcert the food
purveyor. Rationalia:
(a) The subject is hard of hearing. Rather then the purveyor's "We don't
have any cream buns," he hears something on the order of "That item you
requested does not go well with a cream bun," implying "Try something else."
(b) The subject is unclear about relationships in the physical world, as
well as disturbingly ignorant of nutrition. He does not consider `+ cream
bun' an independent factor in the equation X + cream bun = breakfast but as
conditional to and dependent upon the factor +X.
For example, in the incantation (for such it effectively is) "I'll
have coffee and a cream bun" the cream bun exists, or will come into
existence, not to manifest its own virtue but to manifest whatever virtue
resides in the coffee. That is:
i. X = coffee,
ii. coffee ~= breakfast, hence
iii. breakfast = ... + coffee + cream bun + ...
If the cream bun fails to materialize, well then, try again. Another
X-factor must be chosen, another incantation formulated: "Then I'll have
orange juice and a cream bun." The climax -- "Then I'll just have a cream
bun" -- is a brief psalm, a confession of impotence in the face of the
cosmos, declaring in effect: "Dear God [Ammon, Kali, Athena], I have trusted
in mine own strength and failed, I have conjured demons and consorted with
them but for naught. I herewith lay bare before thee my soul with its
longings, that thou doest with me as thou wouldst."
____________________
(From the Concluding Exhortation)
...But Earth stands alone in the subtlety of its rhetorical techniques. Many
a researcher has been lost seeking the aims or circumstances of their use.
Millennia of rationalization has enabled this amazing race to internalize
much of its intellectual functioning, leaving its members, in Vr's phrase,
"adrift as carbon-based automatons." Small wonder it was this planet that
gave birth to the subconscious, a concept quaint and irrelevant on some
worlds but of immense practical value on this one. As we are now aware, the
rationalia speak in code.
More than a stylus and recorder with which to keep track of the form and
function of each rhetorical phenomenon, we need an ear [figure of speech]
for the rumble and hum of the human mind, while it is still available for
study.
______________________________________________________________________________
A.Y. Tanaka was born on Maui in 1936, raised in Newark, NJ (safer than the
West Coast); lived, sometimes worked, in Puerto Rico, San Francisco, Hawaii,
Chicago, Amherst, perhaps elsewhere. His proudest achievement was inventing
a phantom senior for his high school yearbook (Weequahic HS, Newark). Since
then it's been downhill. Subsequent honors and attainments are as nought.
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
DIFFERENT CIRCUMSTANCES "The stereo was playing a song I had never
heard before. I was in my apartment, but the
Jason Snell furniture in my bedroom was different. There
were curtains instead of the awful roll-up
blinds I had bought at K-Mart, and framed
pictures were hung on the walls where my
posters had been tacked."
______________________________________________________________________________
Shannon came over to my apartment at seven with the dozen ball-point pens and
extra magazines she wanted to give me.
You've got to understand this about her: she gives people gifts all the
time. Weird gifts. Pens and magazines, paper clips and key chains. When I
asked her where she got all the blue disposable pens, she'd only say: "They
just turn up."
This night, I took them without any questions. I glanced at the magazine
subscription labels, just to assure myself that the mistakes were there. Her
name was Shannon Erica Steinman, but the labels were always addressed to
Shannon D. Steinman or Erica S. Steinman.
Sometimes, to spoil my fun, she steamed off the magazine labels. I never
bothered asking why.
All of us have a few of our own quirks; I'd like to think Shannon's only
weird one is gift-giving. Other than her pen and magazine philanthropy,
she's the kind of person I'd call normal --- working at a day-care center
while toiling with the idea of going back to school to become a teacher.
"I'm not sure, Jer," she told me that night, when the subject came up. "I
like working with the kids, and I think I'd like teaching, but I don't know
if I could stand going back to school."
"If you go back to school, you'll be able to teach kids instead of just
babysitting them."
"Yeah, but now I get paid to go to the beach and to movies and to play
Monopoly with these kids. The biggest decision I have to make during any
given week is whether to play Four Square or Hopscotch."
She and I were up very late that night, mostly because neither of us had
much else to do except talk. Her boyfriend was in L.A. on business and
Shannon didn't have many other friends, so her social calendar was empty. As
for me, well, I'm sort of a hermit. If I weren't, would I be talking to you
now? No offense. I'm just being honest.
So Shannon and I sat around my apartment all night, talking about our shoe
sizes and what our favorite yogurt flavors were and, most importantly, how
early we got up on Saturday mornings to watch cartoons when we were kids.
She got up late, and her mother always made a big breakfast on Saturdays, so
she never got to see any of the cool cartoons that were on early. Me, I was
an early riser back then --- I'd be up in time to catch the end of the farm
report, and then I'd sit through thirty minutes of Mister Ed before finally
hitting the animated excitement I'd been searching for.
We weren't bored by this stuff, believe it or not. The only thing that
finished our conversation was sleep --- at about one in the morning, we
both conked out next to each other on my couch. She shook me awake at
threea.m..
"It's late," she said. "Do you mind if I spend the night here?"
"Sure," I told her. "You take my bed. I'll sleep on the couch."
"No, I'll sleep on the couch."
"No. Take the bed."
"No. It's your bed. I'll just sleep here."
I shook my head.
"Okay," she said. "We'll both sleep on your bed."
"Well, there's certainly plenty of room," I said, nudging her toward the
bedroom door.
That was a running joke of ours --- I had a king-sized bed, one that I
bought during a relationship I'd had a year or so before. Michele and I knew
we weren't going to be together forever, but in the meantime, we needed a
bigger bed.
The day the bed was delivered, Michele and I split up. The two events are
not related, but the size of the bed and its emptiness had become a source
of great amusement to Shannon. It was slightly less amusing to me.
Still wearing our T-shirts and shorts, we slid into bed. Now, I swear I
never gave any thought to the fact that we were in bed together. We were
just friends. That was all we'd ever be.
She snuggled against me, and I put my arm around her. I mumbled a tired
"Good night" and closed my eyes.
"I should warn you," she said. "I turn in my sleep."
"Okay," I said, and closed my eyes.
After a few minutes on her side, Shannon made a low groan and turned onto
her back. A few more minutes, and she was on her other side.
Before she could turn onto her stomach, I was snoring softly.
Somewhere around three in the morning, I felt Shannon move next to me. Then
she turned from her right side onto her back. That was when the world
changed.
The stereo was playing a song I had never heard before. I was in my
apartment, but the furniture in my bedroom was different. There were
curtains instead of the awful roll-up blinds I had bought at K-Mart, and
framed pictures were hung on the walls where my posters had been tacked.
I sorted most of that information out later, though I was flooded with all
of it immediately. Of the most importance, though, was what I found myself
doing as the song I had never heard played in the background.
Shannon and I were making love.
I was shocked, of course, not just because I had never expected anything
like that to happen between us, but because I couldn't remember how we got
from sleeping next to each other to having sex with the stereo on. It was as
if I had blacked out.
I could see in Shannon's eyes that she was also shocked by the turn of
events, but that didn't make her ask me to stop what we were doing.
When we were done, as I held her, I finally noticed the curtains.
"Shannon, what happened to my blinds?"
"Hmm?"
"My cheap K-mart blinds are gone."
A brief pause then: "God, you're right. And your posters are gone, too."
I flipped the light on and looked around my bedroom. The framed pictures on
the walls were mostly prints I'd seen before. They were Shannon's.
One picture, however, was one neither of us had seen before.
Shannon looked gorgeous, of course... her darker complexion balanced well
with the white dress. And though the expression on my face was typically
stupid, the tuxedo made me almost seem dignified.
Below the picture was printed Jeremy and Shannon, September 16, 1991.
I looked at Shannon. She was holding up her hand, showing me the wedding
ring she was wearing.
"What the hell is going on?" I asked her.
She bent over next to the bed, picked up something --- I could see that it
was a magazine --- and glanced at it before tossing it to me.
"Look at the label."
It was addressed to Shannon and Jeremy Alden.
I was about to say something else to her when a wave of dizziness hit me.
Maybe, I reasoned, this is all just a dream. That's it. I'm dreaming.
And I was in bed again, next to Shannon, fully clothed. She was still
asleep, slowly turning to lay on her left side.
Between movements, I was in the right world. The moment Shannon turned to
her left, I felt that world slip away.
I was in Shannon's apartment, in her bed. We weren't making love this time;
it felt like we might have done it a few minutes before, but now we were
just laying in bed, my arms around her, naked.
"Shannon?"
"Hmm?"
"Do you remember the last time? Just a few minutes ago?"
"We were in your apartment. My pictures were on your..."
She glanced around her walls. All her pictures were there, right where she
left them.
"Do you have a wedding ring this time?"
She held up her hand. "Nope. An engagement ring, though."
"What the hell is going on?"
"I think it might have something to do with the magazines," she said. But
before I could ask her what she meant, her bedroom door opened and someone
flipped on the light switch.
It was Steve.
"Oh, no," he said. "You can't..."
For a minute he looked hurt, like I'd expect someone to look the moment he
found his fiancee --- I knew then that the ring on Shannon's finger
wasn't from me --- in bed with another man.
Then Steve made the transition to the other expression I expected to see. It
was rage --- pure jealous rage. He had always been jealous of my
relationship with Shannon because he wondered why she needed to have any
other male companionship if he was around.
Now, in this world, his jealousy had been borne out. I was sleeping with
Shannon behind his back.
He punched me quite a few times, I think. I was so shocked by the whole turn
of events that I wasn't really paying attention. It hurt a lot, I know that.
Shannon was screaming and crying in the background. Steve was yelling at me
to get the hell out, and when I didn't do anything but sit there, he hit me
again.
Then, as he hit me in the head for the umpteenth time, I started to lose it.
I'd never been knocked unconscious before, but it looked like this would be
my chance. Then I felt Shannon shifting, and knew that it wasn't Steve's
right hook that had caused my dizziness.
It was time to leave that world. And not a moment too soon.
She was moving again, next to me, shifting from her left side onto her
stomach. She was awake in the different realities, but here she was still
sleeping.
I think it might have something to do with the magazines, she had said.
Magazines?
Shannon moved to her stomach. The world slid away again.
I could tell I was in a hotel room, just because of the smell. Whatever
hotel rooms smelled of, whether it was carpet cleaner or industrial toilet
bowl cleaner, this was one of those rooms. Light seeped in through cheap tan
curtains.
I was having sex again. It seemed to be a recurring theme, for some reason.
It certainly wasn't because I had a history as a great lover. Far from it.
This time, I wasn't looking down into the deep, brown, loving eyes of
Shannon Steinman. The hair my fingers were running through was long and
blonde, not short and brown. The eyes I was staring at were blue.
"Oh, yeah, honey," she moaned in what could've only been a New York accent.
I almost laughed out loud.
What was this world? The world where I got to shack up in hotels with bimbos
with bad accents?
Okay, I'll admit something else to you, since I've told you so much already.
I've always been attracted to blondes, just like every other American male
around. They're supposed to be the sexiest ones, more inherently attractive
than any dark-haired woman can be.
But with a catch: I've also always said that while blondes tended to be
prettier, the most striking women, the ones that make you turn your head
when you're walking down the street, even if you're walking down that street
with your own girlfriend, have dark hair. There aren't many of them like
that --- Shannon was one.
But like Pavlov's puppies at feeding time, when I see a blonde, I start
drooling. It's undignified and unintelligent, but I do it. Maybe it was the
forbidden nature of them --- they were attractive and I couldn't have them.
I had never even kissed a blonde before.
Now I was having sex with one.
But while it was all going on, a part of me was busy asking questions.
Where's Shannon? What about the magazines?
It turned out that the blonde's name was Holly and she was from New Jersey,
not New York. She and I had first met in a hotel bar two weeks ago and had
retreated to a room upstairs after both of us had a little too much to
drink.
I was lucky. I had managed to prod her into some reminiscence without having
the faintest idea about my history with her. I also found it funny that it
had been too much alcohol that had brought us together because I don't
drink. In 25 years, my total alcoholic consumption was probably five beers
and four glasses of wine.
Not that I was an incredibly moral person, thumping a Bible and preaching
about That Demon Alcohol every time I got the opportunity. I just decided,
fairly early on in my life that not only did I not like the taste of
alcohol, I didn't like the way it changed people.
So I bought into blondes but not into booze. Consider me batting .500 on the
Red-Blooded American Male scale.
But laying there next to Holly, I wondered if that choice was the right one.
Should I have stayed as adamantly different as I was in my own world?
In my life, I had slept with a grand total of one woman --- and I didn't
even love Michele --- and I was an emotional wreck. Here it was different.
It's easy to make moral decisions when you've got no way to see the
alternative. You just make your choices, take your chances and wonder about
what might have been.
I'm insecure enough about my life. I didn't need to be shown what I'd been
missing, but here it was.
I left Holly, found my car in the hotel parking garage and drove home. I
kept waiting for this dream or other reality or whatever it was to end, but
I was still in the world of voluptuous blondes and too many margaritas when
I reached my apartment.
As I jogged up the steps, I knew I had to call Shannon. After all, she was
my only link back to the other world, the one where I was still laying under
a ragged blue comforter with my best friend on her stomach next to me.
Then I opened the door to the apartment. Shannon was standing inside,
holding a baby in her arms.
"There you are!" she said. "I was worried."
I looked at the baby. "Is that..."
"The baby book says her name's Diana Alden, six months old," she told me.
"We're parents. God, Jer, we're parents."
I was supposed to ask her about the magazines, about how we could be leading
the lives of other people who were ourselves. But instead, all I could think
about was a blonde named Holly as I stared into the shiny eyes of my
daughter.
"There's something else," Shannon said, and picked up a magazine off the
kitchen table.
"Huh?"
"Look at the cover."
It was a picture of the embattled president, trying hard to win re-election
despite an economic downturn and a tough challenger. Four years in the White
House had turned his hair markedly gray, but his eyebrows were as thick and
dark as ever.
"President Dukakis?" I asked.
"This world really is screwed up," she said to me.
Oh, Shannon, you don't know the half of it, I thought, and then the
dizziness hit me.
For a split second I thought about waking her, ending this thing we had
fallen into as soon as possible. But before I could even grab her shoulders,
let alone start shaking her awake, she moved from her stomach to her right
side.
The world went one way, and we went the other.
Magazines. I've got to remember the magazines.
I was drinking coffee. I despise coffee, so I put down the cup as soon as I
could, but I still had to swallow the foul-tasting stuff that was in my
mouth.
I was sitting in the living room of a house I had never seen before. Some of
the decorations, however, were familiar --- they were Shannon's.
Across with me, sitting with their arms around each other in what I somehow
knew was marital bliss were Shannon and Steve.
"So, do you like the place?" Steve asked me.
"Oh, of course," I said. "It's great."
"Well, it's certainly better organized now than before the wedding," Steve
said.
Wedding. I was getting good at making these guesses, but I didn't want to
push it too far. I told them that I had to go to the bathroom and excused
myself.
When I came back, they were still there, smiling. I was wondering how
Shannon managed to do it, put up the appearances of knowing all about her
married life with Steve when in her own life they were still just boyfriend
and girlfriend.
"So, how is Michele doing?" Steve asked me.
Michele? Oh, God, what does Michele have to do with this?
"Fine, just fine," I said, looking at Shannon. She raised an eyebrow ---
she was just as curious about Michele being mentioned as I was.
"Well, we can't wait until next month," Steve said, sounding far too much
like a pal and not at all like the guy who had beaten the crap out of me a
few hours before and a universe away. "Saint Anne's is really a pretty
church. You're so lucky to have gotten it."
A "yes" was about all I could manage. Michele and I were going to get
married?
I kept up the conversation for a few minutes more, slowly realizing that I
was never going to get Shannon alone somewhere to talk. Though she might not
like it, in this world she and Steve had become a pair, a joint person. They
were married, and so they were together.
I wondered what it would've been like to be in a world like that, where
Shannon was no longer my friend by herself but just a co-acquaintance, half
of SteveAndShannon.
As I started to become dizzy again and knew that Shannon would be moving
onto her back now --- how many times did this woman turn in one night,
anyway? --- I realized that I might not have to speculate about this
possibility very long.
"Steve and I are supposed to get engaged this summer," Shannon had said to
me a couple months ago.
"So you're engaged to be engaged, is that what you're trying to say?"
"Right."
I didn't know quite how to take it. I didn't have any claim to her myself,
and her boyfriend certainly did. Even though she was my best friend, she had
been dating Steve before we'd ever met.
"Well, congratulations," was what I finally said to her, trying to be a
friend even though I wasn't sure how I was feeling just then.
"Thanks," she said, and gave me a hug. Before she pulled back, she whispered
to me, "You're still my best friend."
I was so wrapped up in thinking that I had no time to stop Shannon's spin.
She settled on her back and reality was torn away again.
She and I were sitting on my bed. It seemed like we were nothing more than
friends.
"Okay, what's the catch?" she asked. "Are we married or single or having an
affair or what?"
"Check your purse," I told her.
She pulled her wallet out of her purse and showed me her driver's license
--- it said she was single, a Miss Shannon Steinman. Her middle initial was
incorrectly --- for me --- listed as G.
"Shannon, would you might telling me what the hell all this is about?
Magazines?"
She sat there for a moment, with her eyes closed and her brow wrinkled. Then
she looked at me and nodded.
"You know the pens and magazines I keep giving to people?"
"Of course."
"Well, I don't buy those anywhere. I find them."
"Where?"
"All over my house. They just show up. You know how everybody else loses
things like ball point pens and key chains? Well, I never do. I find them."
"And the magazines?"
"Same way. Except most of them I can't get rid of, because they've got
President Dukakis or President Dole on the cover. Some of them are just like
our magazines, but they're addressed to Shannon and Steve or Shannon and
Jeremy. I steam those ones off."
"How long has this been going on?"
"A year or two," she said and started looking around the room. "What's
different about this world?"
"I don't know. You seem a little different."
"What do you mean?"
"I don't know. You're not as..." I paused.
"What?"
"Well, I sort of... I think you're an attractive person, Shannon. You're
usually really pretty. But for some reason, you're just not that cute in
this world."
She got up and looked in a mirror, then turned around and frowned at me.
"I look exactly the same," she said. "Too many pimples, like always. But
nothing else is different."
There was a magazine --- okay, I'll admit it, I buy way too many of the
damned things --- next to my bed in this reality, too. I picked it up.
"Maybe Newsweek can tell us what's different about this world," I said.
I leafed through the magazine, with Shannon looking over my shoulder.
Everything seemed the same --- it was exactly the same as the issue I had
next to my bed at home.
I flipped past a cover story about Yugoslavia. On the next page was an ad
for body-building equipment. A large, sweaty football player-type was
lifting a barbell.
"Oh, he's cute," I found myself saying. I immediately dropped the magazine.
"He's cute?" Shannon asked me.
He was cute. I was actually attracted to him. And not to Shannon.
Well, I knew what was different about that world, didn't I? And in it,
Shannon really could never have been anything but a pal.
She moved from her back to her right side in one quick motion, and it all
shifted again.
This time was different, somehow. I was outside for the first time, standing
on a carefully tended lawn. I was by myself, and I realized where I was when
I looked up and saw the headstone in front of me:
SHANNON STEINMAN ALDEN
1968-1992
She was my wife in this place, too. Flowers that I had no doubt just placed
were sitting on top of her grave. The grass growing on the grave was very
short --- I got the impression that Shannon hadn't been dead long.
I felt dizzy, but this time the world didn't go away. Was it just the shock
of contemplating what a world without Shannon would be like? The idea that
I'd never again spend all those hours talking about insignificant details?
I stood at the grave for a long time, wondering just how much Shannon meant
to me. She had been a good friend in my life, but in these other lives she
was always there. Sometimes she was with Steve, sometimes with me...
sometimes even both at once. She was obviously someone I was capable of
marrying and having children with.
I waited for that reality to end, for the brief bout of dizziness to come
and take me away, but it didn't. That was when I began wondering if
something was terribly wrong. After all, Shannon had been alive in all the
other dreamworlds we had visited. If she was dead here... could she be dead
back in "real life?"
I think I panicked then. I remember collapsing in front of Shannon's
headstone and sobbing for a long time. Then, sometime later, I remember
screaming.
The blackness shattered into pieces, each piece pulling me into a different
world that was there and gone in an instant.
Laying on the street, covered with a blanket of newspaper, trying to keep
the night chill from giving me pneumonia.
Laying next to Michele in bed, staring down at the wedding ring on my hand
and wondering how I could have been trapped into marrying someone I didn't
love.
Dancing with Shannon at our wedding.
Dancing with Shannon at her wedding.
Slapping Michele in the heat of an argument we were having in our bedroom.
Sitting in front of a computer, writing computer code as I slowly bored
myself to death.
Standing in the middle of a forest fire, asking questions like any intrepid
journalist should.
Lowering the french fries into the oil. (I knew I'd be working at McDonald's
sometime, I chuckled to myself as the vision slipped away.)
Telling Michele I loved her and lying.
Telling Shannon I loved her. And not lying.
Kneeling at Shannon's grave again and crying.
Looking at another grave, one with my own name on it.
Blackness.
I sat up in bed and screamed once. Shannon didn't move from her position on
her side. I grabbed her shoulders and shook her.
She wasn't breathing when I started shaking her. But as soon as I touched
her, she gasped and opened her eyes. I pulled her up and hugged her as her
breathing started to calm back to normal.
"Are you okay?" I asked her.
"I'm... fine," she said. "I just blacked out. I don't know what happened."
"Me neither," I said. "Me neither."
We sat there for a long time, not saying anything. We had both taken walks
through each other's lives and would-be lives. We knew about what might have
been --- or what might be --- between us. But in some of the worlds, she
was with Steve. There was no One True Path. There were a series of
possibilities, ones that had already passed us by.
After a while, I finally pulled back and looked right into her eyes.
"Now what?" I asked her.
"I don't know," she said. "We'll see what happens."
She gave me a kiss on the cheek. It was completely innocent. It was also the
first time she'd ever kissed me in this life.
"We sure will," I said later, as we tried to get back to sleep again ---
this time in our own world. "We sure will."
______________________________________________________________________________
Jason Snell (jsnell@ocf.berkeley.edu) is the editor of the on-line magazine
InterText and an assistant editor at MacUser magazine. He lives in Berkeley,
California, where he's finishing up his Masters at UC Berkeley's Graduate
School of Journalism.
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
TO TOUCH THE STARS "The man paced like a caged wildcat in
the locked cabin. His right arm hung
Part 2: `Dancing on Tenterhooks' uselessly at his side, the forearm
swinging slightly at the midpoint, bone
Nicole Gustas showing through a gap in the skin. He
didn't seem aware of the pain."
______________________________________________________________________________
Livana arranged Tamsin's unconscious body as comfortably as she could, then
ran down to check on the refugees. She was relieved when she found no one
had been injured in the extremely rough landing. She directed them up to
the galley and rushed to the door. She opened it and saw two men running
toward the spaceship with a number of medical personnel trailing behind
them. As the two men came to the door, she pulled out a blaster and trained
it on them, a cold sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. The danger
wasn't at an end yet. She couldn't let them board the ship until she was
sure who they were.
"Stand and deliver," she called to them, then waited breathlessly for their
response to the code.
"Your money or your life," said the shorter one with bronzed skin and curly
brown hair. "We're from Ground Zero." He rushed up the stairs and into the
ship, the tall, bearded darker one close on his heels. "I'm Chas El Andar,
head of the hospital here. This is Troy Guthridge. Who are you? Where are
Tamsin and Jaysen?"
Livana rushed along beside them, trotting to keep up with their long legs.
"I'm Livana. I've been helping out on the ship, keeping the refugees
organized and trying to get Tamsin to rest. She's extremely ill. She
passed out just after the landing. I don't know where Jaysen is."
"What are Tamsin's symptoms?" asked Chas, taking the stairs two at a time.
"She has an extremely resilient strain of gangrene. I haven't seen it
before. It's resistant to the broad-based antibiotics you have on board
this ship. I've tried to help the antibodies breed, but I haven't had any
luck. If you put me in touch with your chief genetic engineer, we can
design an antibody that should put it out of commission." Livana gasped out
the last few words, out of breath from hoisting her heavy body up the steps
even in the relatively light gravity.
"You were able to analyze the infection that closely with the instruments we
had on board?" Chas asked skeptically.
"No one could do that. It's my Gift; I can link with a patient and view the
infecting cells that way."
Chas stopped and, for the first time, she felt, really looked at her.
"Doctor Livana Oduvai! I've read your papers on substance-induced
tachyocardia!" He shook her hand quickly, then continued rushing toward the
bridge, now within view. "It's a pleasure to have you here. I hope I can
encourage you to join our staff; we're always looking for more medical
doctors."
They reached the top of the stairs and Chas threw open the door. Livana
could see one pale, waxy hand hanging from the pilot's chair. Chas tapped
his comunit. "I need a stretcher on the bridge immediately." He knelt by
her and turned the chair.
Tamsin's face looked like a mask; her skin and lips were the same drained
white. She didn't move as Chas lifted one eyelid and shone a small light
into her eye. "Absolutely no reaction. She's sunk into a comatose state."
A nurse leading an antigrav stretcher came to the door. "Help me get her on
there," Chas ordered. With Troy's help, Chas and the nurse gently lifted
Tamsin onto the stretcher. "Bring her to the intensive care unit in the
quarantine section; start her on amoximyacin immediately. Take her blood
and get Kazimir Raudanitis to start immediately on crafting an antibody.
She's infected with a new strain of gangrene. I'll be sending someone to
assist him in a few minutes. Tell him to use the large lab in the
quarantine section. He can bring in any of the techs he wants." The nurse
nodded and sped down the stairs, maneuvering the antigrav stretcher
skillfully. Livana stood against the wall, out of the rush of action.
Troy tapped his comunit. "We need Layten or Zach up here immediately to
access the computer and get the logs. We have to find out what happened to
Jaysen."
Chas turned to Livana. "Where are the rest of the refugees? We need to put
them in the quarantine units."
"I told them to go to the galley. They're waiting for directions."
Chas turned to Troy. "Get those refugees into the quarantine units; I have
some doctors there ready to process them."
"You need to send some guards here, as well," Livana said. Chas and Troy
looked at her, confused. She straightened her shoulders. "We have a
prisoner down in crew cabin D."
The man paced like a caged wildcat in the locked cabin. His right arm hung
uselessly at his side, the forearm swinging slightly at the midpoint, bone
showing through a gap in the skin. He didn't seem aware of the pain.
"He attacked Tamsin down in the engine room with a laser cutter. She broke
his arm to get it away from him," Livana told Chas. "He destroyed one of
the power receptors. Tamsin rerouted the power, but had to continually
manually stabilize it to keep the ship going."
"What else did he do?" asked Chas.
"He brought a transmitter on board with him. After we launched, he
broadcast our position. I gather some fighters came after us. I wanted to
treat his arm, but every time I came near him, he attacked me." She ignored
the bile that came up her throat at the memory of him rushing toward her,
blood in his eyes.
Chas shook his head. "I can't believe Tamsin and Jaysen could have such
poor judgment! They know as well as anyone else how cautious we have to
be."
"Don't blame them. He was imprisoned by the government and `reeducated'.
They embedded a second personality that was triggered when he made
arrangements to board the ship. No one could have known. Even his Gifted
wife couldn't tell the difference."
The armed guards came to the door. Chas gestured inside. "That's the
prisoner. We'll have more details about him when we get the details in the
ship's log."
The guards opened the door and the man rushed toward them, attacking. One
of the guards stunned him. The guards put their arms under his, and dragged
him from the room, head bobbing limply. Livana felt her stomach begin to
quiet as Chas escorted her out of the ship. She knew she was on her way to
the lab, and she couldn't afford any distractions while she was trying to
heal someone.
"It's unfortunate," Livana said. "He was a kind man. Not very intelligent,
or very driven, but he had a good heart. He was trying to help the Gifteds.
He just wasn't clever enough to avoid being caught."
Chas nodded. "It's happened before. We have a great psychiatric staff
here; they may be able to help him." As he led her across the spaceport and
toward the medical facility, he looked at her quizzically. "How do you know
all this about him, anyway?"
Livana smiled bleakly. "He was my husband."
Livana spent most of her twenty-nine hours of required quarantine with
Kazimir, the genetic engineer, working to develop an antibody that would
keep Tamsin's body from being consumed by the infection, going through the
physical parts of the quarantine procedures when she stopped for a bite to
eat or to use the bathroom. Even with their non-stop work, it was a near
thing. Chas had to cut away the worst of the infected flesh to slow the
pace of the invading gangrene, and replace it with an organic bandage that
would be absorbed back into the body as Tamsin healed. Once the antibodies
began to work, Livana urged the new cells to divide more quickly, speeding
the pace of healing. When Tamsin's vital signs had stabilized, Chas brought
Livana to the temporary quarters that she and her daughter had been assigned
to and told her he'd set up an appointment to discuss her future with the
medical center later in the day. As soon as she opened the door, she was
assaulted by an excited twelve year old.
"Mom, Mom, I'm so glad you're back!" Olanna said, hugging her excitedly.
Her nose wrinkled and she let go quickly. "Whew, you smell! I was worried
about you. I haven't seen you since we got here. They sent one of the
nurses to tell me you were OK, but I was still kind of nervous."
"I'm fine. I was working with the pilot of our ship. She's still very ill,
but it looks like she's going to make it. And I think I got a job." Livana
stood on her toes to kiss her daughter's forehead. Her daughter was already
as tall as she was! She looked like her father, with his creamy brown skin,
so much paler than Livana's own. Livana shook her head as she hugged her
skinny daughter. "Has Kaori been taking care of you?"
"Kaori's boring, Mom. Kalin let me borrow a primary psychology textbook.
It's really neat."
Now that her daughter wasn't wrapped around her neck, she could see a slight
figure standing by the window. She wasn't much taller than Olanna or
Livana. Her hair fell like ebony silk down to her knees, and her black,
tilted eyes crinkled at the corners as she smiled at Livana and held out two
delicate hands, palm up, in greeting. She radiated serenity. I like this
woman, thought Livana immediately. She placed her plump hands, palm down,
atop the woman's. "I'm Kalin," said the dark-haired woman. "I'm with the
resettlement group. I came to ask your daughter if she'd like to go to
school today. We're having an orientation session for the new children in a
few minutes. Would you mind if she went?"
Livana turned to her daughter. "Would you like to go?"
"Of course I want to go! Besides, you'll be sleeping for hours anyway."
Her daughter was accustomed to the routine of her mother the doctor.
Livana yawned. "You're probably right. But isn't it a little late in the
day for school to start?"
"You're still spacelagged. It's now seven-forty-five AM," said Kalin. She
rested a hand on Livana's arm. Livana felt a wave of compassion and -- was
it hope? -- spilling through her. "Get some sleep. I heard what you did
for Tamsin. You deserve it."
After she kissed Olanna good-bye, Livana curled up on the bed and fell
deeply asleep.
She woke to the sound of her daughter quietly puttering around the room.
She stretched and smiled blearily at the girl. "Hi, hon. How was school?"
"It was great. They said they'll put me in an accelerated class if you
don't mind. They also want to test my Gifts, if you think it's OK." Olanna
sat down on the edge of the bed.
Livana stroked her daughter's hair. "I think that's wonderful. Some of the
best teachers are here. I'm glad they'll teach you to use them."
Olanna got up and began straightening her schooldisks, which spilled all
over the dresser. "I checked your v-mail. Chas El-Andar wants to meet with
you at five-thirty. Is he the one who wants to give you the job? And Kalin
invited us to dinner with some other families at seven, to talk about
resettlement. Can I go play with Vasilissa tomorrow after school?"
Livana tried to keep track of the questions tumbling over one another. "Is
Vasilissa one of your schoolmates?" asked Livana, smiling. Back on Narid,
no one would ask a Gifted child over to their house to play. Olanna had had
a lonely childhood. It looked like that was going to change.
"Yeah. I figured you'd be working late."
"Not if I can help it. I want to spend some time with you."
Olanna, eyes alight as they had never been on Narid, shrugged and smiled.
"I'll keep busy. Did you know Kalin is Dad's doctor?"
Livana was used to following her daughter's non-linear conversation, but
this comment surprised her. "She is?"
"Yeah, she's going to try to help Dad get better."
"How did you know there was something wrong with your Dad?" How much did
her daughter know, anyway?
"I found out on the ship. I heard you talking to the pilot about it."
Livana's heart sank. Her daughter knew everything. Olanna held her hand
and smiled at her. "It's OK, Mom. Kalin told me it's not Dad's fault. I
know he didn't want it to happen. If anyone can make him better, Kalin
will."
Livana didn't feel much better. While she and her husband had spent most of
the past few years separated, and he'd had very little contact with Olanna,
her daughter was still at that age where she considered her parents
infallible. When he'd told them he would get them off Narid, it had made
him a hero in Olanna's eyes. It hurt Livana to know that her daughter had
learned what had happened to her father.
"Get up, Mom!" said Olanna loudly, poking her mother and dragging her out
of her self-accusatory thoughts. "It's four-thirty. You'd better get ready
for your interview." She pulled clothes out of the drawers, then turned
back to her mother. "Go take a shower. You don't want to look like you
just got out of bed, do you?"
Livana walked to the bathroom, trying to figure out where the day had gone
and wondering just when her daughter had decided to become her mother.
"The hospital needs a competent administrator, and from all the
recommendations I've received from your coworkers who preceded you here, you
fit the bill admirably." Chas poured her a cup of green tea, which matched
the pale green tunic and pants her daughter had selected for her. ("You're
not going to wear that old outfit, are you, Mom? It makes you look pudgy.
Wear this instead -- it makes you look more businesslike.")
He blew on his tea to cool it as he continued. Even sitting calmly, Chas
seemed to take up the whole room; he was almost bouncing in his chair,
anxious to get up and move around. He spoke quickly, the words leaping out
of his mouth. "One of our people -- I'll introduce you to him later --
managed to coax your records from New Boston Hospital. You had some very
impressive reviews. It's fairly clear that, without the restrictions put on
Gifteds, you would have been titular head of your department by this time,
instead of just doing the admin work of one."
The bronzed man put his cup down and leaned forward. "Ms. Oduvai, I'd like
to offer you the position of Head Administrator at Selene Hospital." Livana
sat back in surprise. She'd been expecting a position as staff doctor, at
best, but nothing like this. "It's a larger position than you've held
before, but I think you have the skills. And, quite frankly, we really need
someone with both medical talent and administrative ability in the position.
I've been trying to do it, but," he made a large gesture, nearly knocking
over the teapot, "I really don't have any talent for it. And I don't have
the time, with all my other duties." He held up a hand in warning. "It's
not the easiest job. You'll be expected to take on some patients. And we'd
also like you to work with our metametric division. They're researching the
various Gifts. Your healing ability is one we haven't had a chance to work
with before. They'd like to help you develop it." He pushed a datapadd at
her. Her eyes opened even wider at the yearly figure she'd be paid. "That
includes a month's paid vacation the first year. After the first year,
you'll also receive a month's paid sabbatical, although I've never seemed to
use mine. You'll find there's not enough hours in the day here on Maris."
"But isn't that always the case?" Livana smiled.
Chas waved his hands, sending his cup teetering on the edge of the table.
"I'm not speaking metaphorically. Since you're from Narid, you're used to a
29-hour day. Here, there's only 22 hours in a day." Livana blinked in
surprise. Now she knew where her day had fled to. "But there's an
advantage; a work day is only 7 hours here. What do you think?"
Livana tried to catch her breath. Chas' enthusiasm was infectious, but she
had to really think about this offer for a while. "I have to admit, I'm
very surprised by your offer. This wasn't what I was expecting at all. My
only concern is...you see, I have a daughter..."
"Olanna is taking an advanced course load, plus beginning metametric
courses. She's also signed up for the Young Explorers and the Drama Club."
He grinned at Livana. "If I were you, I'd be worried whether my daughter
was going to have enough time for me!"
"How do you know all this?" asked Livana, taken aback.
"Your daughter told me when she came to visit this afternoon. She likes it
here. She said she wanted to keep busy when you took your new job."
"She couldn't socialize much in New Boston over the past few years. I guess
she's trying to make up for lost time," Livana said with a wry smile.
Chas stood. "Why don't I take you on a tour of the hospital, and while we
walk, I'll tell you a little more about life on Maris." She left the room
at his heels and kept up with his fast walk down the brightly-colored halls.
"Selene Hospital is the primary medical center and research facility on
Maris. It's also linked with Ground Zero, the Naridian resettlement
project. The colony was established less than a hundred years ago, which is
part of the reason we set up a refugee center here. The colony was thrilled
to get new people, especially highly skilled ones like many of the Naridian
refugees. You'll find no prejudice against Gifteds here."
Chas turned left into the patient wing, leaning a bit to the side like a
racing aircar in a steep turn. His shoes made a soft hissing sound against
the floor. "I want to take you in to check on our new star patient." He
stopped at a door and paused for a second. Livana read the patient's name
on the door -- T. Donner. Chas threw open the door.
Inside, Livana saw Tamsin, slightly less pale than the white sheets. Her
head snapped up guiltily as she withdrew the organic knife she'd been using
to dismantle the bed's computer. Livana wondered absently at the mechanism
that allowed the blade to slide so smoothly back into her wrist. Pieces of
the computer lay all over the brightly colored patchwork quilt spread over
her lap. "Hi Chas. How are you settling in, Livana?" she asked weakly.
Chas sighed. "Tam, you did that last time. Don't you think we've caught on
by now? That's a dummy computer. We hid the real one." Turning to Livana,
he said, "Last time she was here, she realigned the monitoring computer so
it would continue to report that she was here and stable while she snuck out
of the hospital." He turned back to the pale woman in the bed, her hair in
a tangled copper halo around her head. "We've Tamsin-proofed the room, kid.
You're not sneaking away this time."
"Then give me a datapadd or something!" the redhead snarled. "I've been
stuck here, with nothing to read but a hardcopy book of deconstructionist
poetry Kalin gave me. I'd rather be back on intravenous food than eat the
stuff that passes for food here. And no one will tell me what's going on!
Let me out!" She pulled a pillow out from behind her and threw it at Chas.
It fell uselessly to the floor half a meter short of his feet.
Chas picked up the pillow and fluffed it, then walked over behind the bed
and tucked it behind Tamsin's head as she squirmed down under the quilt,
pulling it up to her chin, breathing heavily after her outburst. "If you
were well enough to go home, you would have hit me with that pillow.
Besides, knowing you, you'll find a way to use the datapadd to help you get
out of here."
"Just tell me one thing, and I swear I'll be the perfect patient," Tamsin
said defiantly.
"What do you want to know?" asked Chas.
Tamsin suddenly looked vulnerable and very scared, burrowed almost
completely under the big patchwork quilt. "What happened to Jaysen?"
Livana's stomach twisted. Kasimir, the tech who'd helped her create the
antibody, had told her a lot about Tamsin and Jaysen. If half the stories
of their exploits were true, they deserved great respect. He described the
two as being almost one person in two bodies, so deeply were their souls
intertwined. It wasn't just Tamsin's body that was injured near Narid. She
seemed bereft, torn apart without her other half. When Livana saw people
like this, she felt almost relieved she'd never bonded with anyone, not even
her husband, so strongly.
Chas sighed and patted Tamsin's shoulder. "We still don't know. As soon as
we find out, I'll come right down here and tell you."
Tamsin's jade eyes were hollow and dark. "If they caught him -- Chas, I
don't know if Kalin ever told you what happened to her in there. I remember
what she looked like. I brought her back to Maris."
"I've read the records," Chas said. "Try not to think about it, Tamsin.
You can't do anything from a hospital bed. Now, will you please get some
rest? I'm going down to Layten's office right now. I'm as worried as you
are." He squeezed her hand. "Stop dismantling our equipment, will you?"
Livana slipped out of the room behind Chas. "What happened to Kalin?"
"You remember when the medical center outside New Boston blew up?"
Livana could still smell the charred flesh. "We received a few of the
corpses at the hospital. They never had a chance."
Chas looked grim. "Don't feel too bad for them. I don't know all the
details. I was in transit when everything happened. I think there are some
things they didn't put in the report." He swallowed and continued, speaking
distantly and clinically. "Kalin was methodically tortured. They found
some interesting ways to stimulate the nerve endings. There are areas on
her skin that will never have sensation again. The nerves were burnt out
entirely, and we have no way to replace them, at least not now. They used
cruder methods, too -- they pulled all her nails out by the roots, crushed
the bones in her feet -- it's amazing that she was ever able to walk again."
"But -- that was a medical center! I used to refer some of my patients
there! I'd tried to get a job there because they were known for their
innovative techniques. I can't believe --"
Chas cut her off with a chopping motion. "There's a reason they had those
innovative techniques. The doctors there felt progression of their research
outweighed any ethical questions. They had a lot of subjects to test on,
all the prisoners who were difficult to break. We still haven't seen all
the fallout from the experiments done on the people who were kept there
--\x11it'll be years before all the problems come to light." He pressed his
lips together.
Livana could see him going over the records of the patients in his mind and
could only imagine the horrors he found there. Torture, experiments --
those were all things she only read about or watched in the latest adventure
sagas. She knew, in some part of her mind, that it had happened, but she
couldn't quite grasp it. Kalin was so calm, so serene; how could she have
been through all that and come out intact?
"Anyway, here's our destination -- the computer facility." He led her into
a dim room with a number of holos playing near all the walls. Two men sat
in the center of the room. One with black hair pulled back in a ponytail,
high cheekbones, a dark beard, and bright blue, tilted eyes was tapping away
on a datapadd; the other, slumped slightly, wan, and disheveled-looking, had
his eyes closed. Livana looked at the largest holo to see Tamsin, weary and
pale, in her ship's uniform. "I've lost Jaysen. I believe he's been
captured. We were sabotaged shortly after taking off. Jaysen was boarded
while defending the ship so it could go into warp and depart the system. In
case I don't make it to Maris, I want it known that I take full
responsibility for what has happened here..."
The man with the datapadd paused the image and turned to Chas. "I've been
going through the logs again to see if I can get any more information. No
luck so far. Layten's been trying to access some systems on Narid."
The other man shifted in his seat and began to sit up, tucking his long,
dark skirt around his legs. Livana noticed that, even when alert, Layten
looked like he was trying to blend in with the couch he was sitting on.
"I'm glad to see you're back. I thought you might have gotten trapped in a
subroutine," said the first man.
"You try getting results from a program when there's an eight-hour time lag
between you and the computer you're working on. It's not easy," Layten
said, stretching. Livana could hear his back crack.
"I forgot. Introductions." Chas ran his hands through his hair. "This is
Livana Oduvai; she's going to be head of admin at Selene Hospital. Livana,
this is Zach Shima and Layten Kaige. They run the systems for the hospital
and for Ground Zero. Layten," he said, turning to the man still rubbing his
eyes, "did you find out what happened to Jaysen?"
"It wasn't easy," said Layten. "I sent a search command through most of the
databanks. No luck. I think that hardly anyone even knows they have him."
"You're saying that they do have him, then?" Chas asked excitedly.
"The files were encoded. I just cracked them now." He gestured at the large
holo and the frozen log shot of Tamsin was replaced by text broken up by an
occasional graph or picture. "These are the records of the Killian Research
Facility. They're holding many prisoners there. Total records," he shut
his eyes for a minute, then opened them again, "ninety-four. These people
are considered the most dangerous to the government. They're now being used
as lab rats for new reeducation techniques. The idea, apparently, is to
break them and then get them working for the government. It's a refined
version of what they did to Kalin."
Livana could hear the disgust in his voice. She bit her lip and wrapped her
arms tightly around herself. She'd only seen the quicksilver man who'd
helped her get off-planet once, but that image, as he helped her into the
ship with a quick grin, whispering words of encouragement, had flashed
before her whenever anyone mentioned him. She couldn't imagine him being
tortured.
Then she realized she could and felt even sicker.
Layten continued grimly. "I also accessed the records of former detainees.
Seems they're more successful at killing them than reeducating them."
"What else have you got?" asked Chas.
Layten blinked again, and the text changed to a three-dimensional map of the
building. "This shows the various rooms in the facility. Cross-matching."
He closed his eyes. Livana realized, with a shock, that he was mentally
connected with the computer. She'd heard of people who had cortical
implants allowing them to link with computer systems, but she had never
actually seen one. Most people didn't like to get that close to their
machines. Names began popping up in the rooms on the screen. "Jaysen's
being held here." Layten put his finger in the center of the holo, pointing
at a room at the bottom floor in the center of the building. "Except for
the top two floors, which house the workers at the facility, this building
is completely underground."
"Any chance you can take down their system?" Zach asked.
"Put me on Maris, with a five millisecond lag between me and their computer,
and I might be able to do it. But from here -- impossible. Too many things
change too quickly. I'm not even sure I could dredge any more information
from their system."
"Can you make sure Tamsin knows about this?" Chas asked him.
"I told Kalin as soon as I knew. She's breaking it to Tamsin now."
"We need to bring it up in the Council meeting on Wednesday," said Zach,
"even if we can't do anything. Do you think Tamsin will be well enough to
attend?"
"Do you think I could keep her from leaving her bed?" said Chas, laughter
behind his quick, staccato speech. "She's only been conscious twelve hours,
and I already caught her trying to dismantle the computer in her room. I
don't think I'll be able to keep her here past tomorrow night." He glanced
at his watch. "Look, Livana's got a dinner appointment in a few minutes,
and I want to try to finish this tour. We'll talk about this later, okay?"
"It was nice meeting you two," said Livana over her shoulder, rushing out of
the room on Chas' heels.
"I'd like to show you the metametric research facility," said Chas, speeding
down the corridor. Livana had to nearly run to keep up with him. The first
thing she was going to do as administrator, she decided, would be to get
Chas to slow down. "No one's really done the research full-time on the
Gifts the way we have here. We've conclusively proved that metametric
ability is the result of mutations caused by prolonged low-level radiation
exposure in the first two hundred years of spaceflight. The mutations just
exacerbated a latent ability humans already had to one extent or another.
We found records dating back to three hundred years before commercial
spaceflight that showed humans had these abilities. Unfortunately, most of
them were put under psychiatric care because they heard `voices'. No one
realized they were picking up other people's thoughts. And no one could
teach them how to shut them out. When a telepath can't learn shielding,
they tend to go mad." The corridor they turned into was crafted out of
polished stone, with round windows. A waterfall trickled in an alcove in
one wall. The click of Livana's heels echoed off the walls.
"But how do you explain all these new talents that are cropping up?" asked
Livana.
"Once again, we go back into archaic records. For instance, your talent is
one that pops up repeatedly in religious chronicles. The founders of a
number of Terran religions, for instance, were said to be able to heal by
simply touching a person. Skeptics thought that the people who were healed
simply had psychosomatic illnesses, but some of these healers had amazing
track records. One man, named Cayce, had hundreds of tomes that kept
records on the many people he'd healed. And you, of course, are living
proof. We're hoping that, through you, we can learn how to develop those
skills and teach other people with that talent how to use it."
"There's one thing you haven't told me. How did Kalin and all the rest get
out?" They entered an large atrium which was decorated like an
old-fashioned Zen garden. They stepped on the stone path between the plants
and walked toward the bridge over the free-form pond in the center of the
room. It had an air of tranquillity to it. The atmosphere even seemed to
affect Chas -- his steps slowed, as did his speech.
Livana watched him stare into the water, chewing his lip, his bright,
flowered shirt looking completely out of place in the staid garden. "You
probably read the reports. There was an accident with some flammable
chemicals being stored at the site. Tamsin and Jaysen were near there when
the firestorm happened. They'd been trying to figure out a way to get her
out. When they got to the site, they found the prisoners picking their way
out between the bodies. Kalin and all the other subjects there escaped
unscathed." He paused and grimaced. "Well, no more damaged than they were
before the fire, anyway."
"But that's impossible!" Livana said, shaking her head, remembering the
giant fireball she'd seen from miles away.
"It happened. But we won't know why until we can get into Layten's head to
find out how he did it."
"You mean he..."
"Kalin's husband is a firestarter. He has no control over his talent. He's
only used it in times of crisis. In fact, no one knew he was Gifted until
the one time he used it, when those chemicals ignited. He says he doesn't
know how he did it. He may have a memory block."
"He knew what happened to Kalin?" She'd heard Gifted people shared a mental
bond, though she herself had never experienced it.
Chas nodded, pulling leaves off the elm tree by the bridge and tearing them
apart. "And we still don't have any more details. That's one mutation that
I'm sure has plenty of military uses."
Livana folded her arms and stared down at the worn, purplish wooden planking
of the bridge. "Layten said they're using a refined version of the
techniques used on Kalin."
"Yeah." Chas was leaning against the railing, head in his hands.
"Do you think we can get Jaysen out?" Livana felt a responsibility to the
people of Ground Zero. They'd rescued her, and she'd do nearly anything to
keep them from harm.
Chas looked at her, dark eyes hollow as Tamsin's had been earlier. "If we
can't, I hope he dies quickly."
Tamsin studied the perfectly smooth, glassy water in the kilometer-long
reflecting pool, the just-rising tiny white sun chasing the surface with a
thin coat of silver. She looked to her left, to her right, and then,
cautiously over her shoulder to the shadowed arches of the hospital. She
was alone in the spacious courtyard. She tossed the coins in her hand, then
took one, placing the rest in her pocket. She crooked her finger around the
silver disk, then glanced again around the courtyard. She saw no one. She
tossed the coin precisely at the pool. It bounced off the glassy surface,
once, then twice. As it skipped, the distance of the hops got shorter and
shorter. After twenty-six hops, it sank to the bottom of the pool.
"So, this is where you are every morning," said a mellow contralto to
Tamsin's right.
Tamsin jumped and, by reflex, began to crouch in an attack position facing
the voice. She saw the rose lips curling in a gentle smile and sighed,
dropping back into a more normal stance. "I really hate it when you do
that."
Kalin looked out at the water, the small ripples caused by the recent
disturbance quickly stilling, and then back at Tamsin, glossy jet hair
slipping over her shoulder. "How did you do that? There aren't any pebbles
anywhere around here."
Tamsin took her left hand out of her pocket, clenched in a fist. She opened
it toward Kalin, showing her the three copper and one silver disk that lay
there. "My one inheritance from my mother. Thirty-eight cents."
Kalin inhaled sharply, then breathed out in a low whistle. "Thirty-eight
cents? You could buy some planets with that! Those should be in a museum.
I'm surprised you're throwing such valuable artifacts in this pool. Did you
ever try to sell them?"
"Yeah," shrugged Tamsin. She took one copper disk, shoved the rest back in
her pocket, and tossed it at the pool. Twelve skips. She grimaced. Kalin
had disturbed her concentration. "They're counterfeit." Kalin's mouth
pursed in a silent "oh." Tamsin smiled with some bitterness. "They skip
well, though."
Kalin stared out at the water. Tamsin sent another disk skimming across.
Patter patter patter plop. She turned and stared at Kalin, waiting for her
to break the silence. Kalin just stared at the water, calmly. After a
minute, Tamsin said angrily, "Look, did you come out here to talk to me, or
what?"
Kalin turned to her smoothly. "I didn't want to disturb you while you were
entertaining yourself."
"You've already done that. I probably won't get one skip out of the rest of
these." She balanced on one leg, tugging the boot off her other foot.
"I wanted to talk to you about Jaysen," said Kalin.
Tamsin ripped the boot off her other foot, tugged off her socks, then shoved
her pants above her heavily muscled calves. "I'm going after him."
"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Kalin asked.
Tamsin waded into the pool, the water splashing around her legs as she went
to pick up the first coin. "It's the only thing I can do. I can't leave
him there."
"You're not in good health right now," Kalin said calmly. Tamsin began to
feel a pressure, slight but growing, in her head. "Do you think you could
slip in there in your condition?"
Tamsin was furious. "It doesn't matter what my condition is! I won't leave
him in there!" She kicked violently, sending water everywhere. "And will
you stop doing that! Scheiss'n projecting empath -- it drives me crazy!"
"Scheiss'n?" asked Kalin, one eyebrow raised.
Tamsin shrugged. "Sorry. It's Staatsprache." Even now, whenever she got
angry, she slipped into the rough city language she'd grown up speaking.
Considering who was in control of the government now, it might become
Narid's planetary language in a few years. "You wouldn't want to know."
Kalin smiled apologetically. "I was just trying to calm you down a little.
It feels like you're about to attack someone. But I've never been able to
do that with you. Your shields are impressive. You're sure you're not
Gifted?"
Tamsin wanted to hit something, but there was only water. "I'm not Gifted!
I hate that word! Damn it, that's the whole root of the problem."
"I don't understand."
Tamsin's smile was sharp and brittle. "Of course. You have no idea what
the word Gift means in Staatsprache, do you?" Kalin shook her head. "It
means poison. Where I come from, you wouldn't dare admit you had the
talent, even before the new government came in. It's considered," she
thought for a second for the best word, "unclean. And dangerous. Even the
word, Gifted." Her stress on it was slightly different, the i becoming
nearly an e, the d becoming a soft sh. "How can you think it's a good thing
when it sounds like it's poisonous?"
Kalin's brow wrinkled. "Goddess, you're serious, aren't you?"
Tamsin picked up the last coin and stepped onto the blue brick, trailing
dark stains of water. "And that's why Jaysen is where he is now. Sometimes
I think both of us would have been better off staying in Tiburon." Her
mother had hoped she'd stay; she'd been too old for her work and had wanted
to support herself by selling Tamsin's body instead. But she'd stayed in
school, right next to Jaysen, if only to keep him from being killed by some
of the gang members he'd offended.
"You both would have been dead by now."
"I rest my case." Tamsin picked up her boots and walked across the
courtyard toward her quarters. "There's no way you can change my mind. I'm
responsible for him, and I won't leave him behind." Her boots slapped
against the edge of the arch as she stepped under it, out of the sun.
"Remember when you were a prisoner? Did you think we'd leave you behind?"
"Yes." Tamsin turned, shocked to Kalin, a dark, delicate figure silhouetted
by the light streaming through one of the arches. "I never thought anyone
would get me out. I thought if you didn't, then you'd be safe."
Tamsin leaned a shoulder against the cool stone wall and gritted her teeth.
She'd never cried in front of anyone, and she wasn't about to start now.
"You thought we'd leave you there? You thought we'd let you die?" She
heard her voice break and shut her eyes, trying to clamp down. She would
not, would not, think of Jaysen, trapped in despair.
She felt Kalin put an arm around her waist, felt the weight of her delicate
head against a shoulder. "Tamsin, you got me out. But look at Layten. I
know his nightmares. I feel them every night when he sleeps beside me. The
four of us nearly didn't get away. Are you willing to take the risk again
and have it go the other way?"
Tamsin buried her face in her friend's obsidian hair and pulled her a little
closer, trying to block away the dark hole filling her chest. "I have to.
I can't let him die."
Kalin paused for a moment before the doors to Tamsin's quarters. Layten
stood behind her, a cool rock, providing support mentally as well as
physically. Kalin took a deep breath and knocked on the door.
"What do you want?" came the hostile voice from the other side as the door
opened. Tamsin was curled up on a chair, copper hair pulled back, black
clothes making her look terribly pale as she tapped away at a computer
console.
Kalin placed a datapadd on the desk. "Here's a list of what we'll need."
Tamsin looked up at her blankly. "Need? I don't follow you."
"Supplies. To rescue Jaysen." Tamsin's mouth opened, but she didn't say
anything, just stared. Kalin smiled slightly, the only hint she'd give of
the laughter bubbling inside. She'd always wanted to strike Tamsin
speechless. "You didn't think I'd let you go alone, did you?"
Layten slipped an arm around her waist. I'm going, too.
She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. Of course. Did you think I'd leave
you behind? She spoke aloud again. "There's supplies for three there.
Night goggles, food, camouflage clothing," she shrugged, "big guns..."
"But I haven't even talked to Manda yet," Tamsin said, shaking her head.
"We did," said Kalin. "She understands what you want to do. She figures
she'll tell the rest of the Council after we leave. That way, they won't be
able to protest."
Tamsin snorted as she scanned the list on the padd. "Sounds like our dear
chair is going to get herself into some pretty hot water."
"It wouldn't be the first time," rumbled Layten's deep voice.
"You're going to need to add supplies for one more person. Chas is coming,"
Tamsin said.
"Chas is a doctor. He's got no combat training. Do you really think he's
appropriate?" Layten asked.
"And what do you think we're going to do when we get Jaysen out?" snapped
Tamsin, looking up at him. "Bring him to Arcadia Hospital and say `Hi, our
friend's been tortured, can you patch him up'? Not bloody likely.
Besides," she continued, looking back at the padd, "he insisted. I couldn't
talk him out of it."
Kalin sat down on the sofa. Layten stood against the door, hands clasped
behind his back. Tamsin's sparking green eyes shifted back and forth, from
one to the other. "So. We have four people against about sixty guards. I
love an even fight," she said sarcastically. She propped one foot up on her
desk, drumming her fingers against her knee. "I have an idea on how to get
in there. Layten, do you think you could crash their system?"
Whenever Layten accessed the computer, Kalin could hear it whirring in the
back of her head like it was part of her brain as well. "I can, but not for
long. It's got an automatic reset mechanism."
"That's fine," said Tamsin. "This is going to be a quick in and out
operation, nothing fancy. Our only objective is to get Jaysen out."
"What about the others?" asked Layten.
"If we have time. I don't want to be callous, but there's only so much we
can do." She leaned forward and stabbed a button on the console. A three
dimensional line drawing of the complex filled the center of the room. The
room where Jaysen was being held was tinted gold. "Here's what we're going
to do."
Interlude Two
Jaysen curled up on the hard pallet that passed for a bed, staring at the
gray walls in his perennially twilit cell, rubbing his face as the last
traces of the drug left him. The interrogation sessions came as irregularly
as the food. He didn't even have any facial hair to tell him how long he'd
been there; he'd had it suppressed months ago so he wouldn't have to shave.
He smiled slightly. If only he'd wanted a beard, like Zach.
He pictured his friend, safe on Maris, remembering the last time he'd been
there. Two days before the mission, he'd gone boating with Zach and Tamsin.
He could almost smell the salt, and see Tamsin leaning over the prow of the
boat, her copper hair hanging loose over the water. He smiled, remembering
how he'd pushed her over the side, and how she'd quickly pulled him in after
her, completely ruining his new silk velvet shirt. He hadn't minded; the
ensuing water fight had been too much fun. If Zach hadn't been there, maybe
he would have had a chance...
The gray walls loomed high, and his throat closed. He knew he'd never
survive to see her again. Oh, Tam, he thought, then whispered to the air,
"There was so much I wanted to tell you."
He turned his face into the corner and tried to sleep, using the meditation
techniques Kalin had taught him. But sleep wouldn't come. He kept seeing
Tamsin's green flashing eyes, smelling her, hearing her voice.
A hand touched his shoulder. He sat up in shock, instinctively grabbing the
wrist and pulling on it to unbalance his attacker. The legs before him
shifted only slightly, and he heard a soft snort. "I'm glad you remembered
something from your physical combat classes."
He looked up to see sharp green eyes smiling slightly at him, a red braid
slithering over one gray-suited shoulder. "Tam!" he exclaimed. "What are
you doing here?"
She pulled him to a standing position. "Did you think I could leave you in
here? I had to rescue you." She stopped and stared at him quite closely.
"Answer me one question," she asked him. "Who did you take to our
final-year semiformal at University?"
"I didn't go. I was supposed to take you, but you were busy slogging
through the jungle at the time," he said. Somewhere, a voice inside him
whispered, Don't trust Tamsin. "Why are you asking me?"
She bit her lower lip and looked down a moment. "I had to make sure it was
you," she said. She turned to lead him out of the cell, but not before he
caught the worried look in her eyes. "This has all been too easy. I think
there must be a trap hidden somewhere." She looked up the corridor, then
down. "Coast is clear. Our distraction must have worked. Come on!"
He followed her as softly as he could down the corridor. Voices came from
around a corner, speaking in that peculiar Western drawl so familiar from
his childhood. She flattened herself against the wall as she peered around
a corner. He saw her fists clench spasmodically as she turned back to him.
"Someone's coming." She pulled him to a door, then tapped a quick code on
the lock next to it. The door opened and she pulled him in, then slapped a
panel beside the inner door to close and lock it.
"We're safe for now," she sighed, then slapped on the bright lights. Jaysen
found himself standing at the center of an interrogation room, and his
stomach flipped as it brought back vague memories of questioning. He looked
back to his friend for support as a voice inside said, Don't trust Tamsin.
She was leaning against the door, arms folded, looking at him with a
curiously cold smile. "Something bothering you, Jaysen?"
"How'd you get the code for the door?" Don't trust Tamsin don't trust
Tamsin DON'T TRUST TAMSIN.
She shrugged. "One of the techs gave it to me."
He walked closer to her. "Which one?"
"There are so many," she said, waving a hand and walking toward the table in
the middle of the room.
The voice inside him screamed. He clenched a fist, fighting an almost
overwhelming urge to hit her and grabbed her by the hair, to yank her back.
Something was wrong, very wrong. "There are only two."
Very quickly, Tamsin turned around, wrenching her hair out of his grasp and
grabbed his wrist. With a quick, bone-wrenching twist, she pivoted, moving
his arm behind his back and forcing him, face-first, against a cold wall.
He could feel her body press against his and her hot, moist breath against
his ear. "You should know better than to try that on me, Jaysen," she
whispered, her free hand tracing down his thigh, her voice like a shard of
glass. He shivered. "I've always been better at hand-to-hand than you."
He felt a jolt of pain as his wrist was pulled higher, almost above his
shoulder blades. A tongue quickly flicked on his earlobe, his throat. He
began shaking and couldn't stop.
The hot mouth moved away from his throat and he felt cold metal slide along
it. It moved up to his cheek. He looked down, out of the corner of his
eye, afraid to move any more, and saw a silver blade trace along, felt the
flat of it stroke around and back along his skin to the nape of his neck.
He wanted to laugh, or to cry. It wasn't Tamsin. She never used a metal
knife, not when the two organic blades in her wrists served her so well. He
tried to take a deep breath and couldn't. "What do you want from me?"
Her damp, warm voice whispered in his ear again. "Only the answers to a few
questions." He heard tearing cloth as the knife traced down his spine, felt
the salty trickle of a few drops of blood following it. His wrist was
released as she cut his clothes off, but he didn't dare move, feeling
burning where the blade cut him, on his arms, then again across his back and
down, knowing even the slightest shift could mean worse damage. Her fingers
gently traced the cuts, rubbing wet slick blood into his back, his buttocks,
his thighs. He felt the tickle of her tongue again on his ear as he tried
to lose himself in the pain and ignore her fingers, and the knife. "There's
no reason I can't have fun while I ask," the voice laughed, as the knife
traced down his spine, then lower.
Jaysen lay balled up, shuddering, in a corner of his cell. He felt filthy;
his skin crawled and his mind wouldn't stop screaming, replaying the hours
in the torture chamber. He could feel her hands all over him, and the
ever-present knife. He knew he'd heal soon. He knew she'd be back again.
And he knew, however much he wished for it, she wouldn't kill him.
______________________________________________________________________________
Nicole Gustas (ngustas@hamp.hampshire.edu) recently gave up working 80 hour
weeks in favor of following Duran Duran around the East Coast. (Some people
follow the Dead...) She's interviewing at various colleges, including CMU
and American, in hopes of completing her bachelor's degree sometime before
she's 90. She's desperately searching for a better title for this series of
stories, so if anyone thinks of one, please let her know.
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
THE HARRISON CHAPTERS "Erik slowly inched forward, inadvertently
kicking the globules of blood this way
Chapter 15 and that, as he bent over, shining his head
lamp into a pair of brown eyes.
Jim Vassilakos `Pupil reflex positive. We've got a
live one, people.'"
______________________________________________________________________________
The morning sun's delicate rays curved across Calanna's sloping horizon,
blues and reds mixing together in a strange and beautiful tapestry of seas
and continents spinning gently in the vastness of space. Erik watched from
the open airlock, his eyes full of the gorgeous vista. It had been a long
time since he'd seen a world from orbit with nothing between his nose and
vacuum save for a thin layer of plastic. It had been a very long time,
though it was even longer to fall. "A little closer."
Below them, the target vessel waited in impassive silence, its starboard aft
gaping and gnarled like a crippled beast immersed in deathly slumber. Slowly
it grew, until they were practically upon it.
"Hold us here, bridge. Okay, Beckerson at my back. Gringer and Saloris,
next."
Erik pushed himself into the void, the orange tether his only assurance of
returning. Splintered open by laser fire, the vessel's port airlock seemed
the best entrance. He slipped inside, reaching the inner portal. Its opening
mechanism was obviously damaged, though laser scoring didn't seem to have
anything to do with it.
"Beckerson. What do you make of this?"
The enlisted man stuck his gloved hand in the broken electronics
compartment, fishing around until he found what he was looking for. When it
reemerged, he was holding a small, flattened piece of metal. Erik studied it
apprehensively.
"What is it?"
"Kinetic projectile casing."
"What?"
"A bullet, sir." The others smiled, obviously amused by the exchange.
"Don't give me attitude, Mister."
"No sir."
Erik reached through the door's smashed window, gently pawing the opposite
side for a switch. When the door finally decided to move, he wasn't ready
for it and ended up obstructing its egress into the wall with a padded arm.
"Damnit... stop it!"
Saloris fired his laser into the groove between the door and its compartment
until the mechanical apparatus agreed to surrender its quarry. They
successfully dislodged his arm moments later.
"Well, at least that got it open."
Beckerson nodded, "Good job, sir."
The others managed to keep straight faces this time, and Erik found it hard
to forge a reply, particularly when he saw the corpse, her skin frozen and
eyes sunken inward, the fluid beneath them still boiling away in the silent
vacuum.
"My God."
Beckerson turned against the bulkhead in agreement, for once without a
wisecrack to share as Saloris stepped cautiously over the body, Gringer at
his back.
"Hold, people." Erik squeezed past them, "I'm sorry I didn't warn you. This
wasn't entirely unexpected."
"What the hell are we looking for, sir?"
"Survivors. Exactly as you were briefed. But I remain in front."
Saloris let a wry smile escape his lips.
"Be my guest."
Erik shook his head, "I wasn't asking your permission, Saloris. You're at my
back. Everyone turn on your head lamps."
They reached the intersection in the corridor and turned left. The laser
carbine scuttled silently along the floor as Erik gently nudged it, and the
half-open iris valve showed heavy laser scars. Inside, two bodies rested in
a corner, their vacc suits smothered beneath hundreds of flattened, red,
bubbling spheres. Erik slowly inched forward, inadvertently kicking the
globules of blood this way and that, as he bent over, shining his head lamp
into a pair of brown eyes.
"Pupil reflex positive. We've got a live one, people."
Touchdowns and takeoffs were always the best parts. Those few she
experienced reminded her of life as a young girl, always getting a window
seat so she could see the darting scenery. As a Commodore, her treatment was
much the same. She was cloistered by her aides, pampered by her servants,
and each world she visited seemed like no more than a montage of elegant
architecture and postcard panoramas, not so much because of the worlds
themselves as because of her remote and incredibly detached perspective.
Somehow, after decades of tireless work, she had finally come full circle.
That was the bitter taste of success: to have accomplished all of one's
goals, yet to have ultimately changed nothing.
They treated her as a child, albeit a child to be obeyed. In a strange sort
of way she rather liked it, but it was too rare that she could visit the fun
spots on a planet, even those where the Empire was respected. Instead, her
aides kept her cooped in orbit, tantalizing her with selected scenes from
various travel videos so as to give her the illusion of adventure. She'd
seen the Undercity, the Runyaelin, and even the Palace of Snagarth over and
over again, though to have actually visited any of those places could have
meant her life. Of that, she had little doubt.
She was so used to her sheltered existence, that if it wasn't for the cool,
fresh breeze sifting her hair, she could have imagined herself in an
entertainment booth back aboard the Crimson Queen, watching the local star's
amber rays scatter carelessly across an illusory, purple horizon. A great
risk it was to breathe fresh air beneath a wild, open sky, she thought to
herself, as the guards formed a protective circlet around her.
"Lieutenant."
"Sir?"
"Is it dawn or dusk?"
"Dawn, sir."
"Good."
It meant that real sunlight, not artificial radiation, would touch her for
the first time in weeks. She smiled in anticipation. First, however, she had
business to attend to, and the sooner it was over, the better.
The starport administrator's office was about as plush as Imperial
specifications would allow. General Gardansa sat behind the mahogany desk,
standing and saluting at she entered. It was their first meeting in person,
though she had grown rather used to him during their electronic meetings.
"Commodore, what a glorious occasion. Please be seated. I must warn you that
your visit comes as somewhat of a surprise. What, with the civic unrest, we
have not been able to take all the security precautions..."
"Forget about my security, General. We both know why I'm here."
"Ah... yes. The starport. I assure you, no harm has come to it."
"I noticed you people are without power."
"We shut down the main generator as a precaution. With the nuclear incident,
it was not inconceivable that the rioters would try to take an eye for an
eye."
Reece nodded, "I understand that you had some sort of incident this
morning."
"Incident?"
"...that you ordered an air strike on an unarmed merchant craft which was
harbored at this facility."
The general laughed as he leaned back.
"Ah... of course. As I expected, your information is less than complete."
"Do tell."
"The craft you speak of was smuggling a suspected felon off-planet. It was
in the process of departing when we discovered the crime in-process and
acted accordingly."
Reece arched an eyebrow, mildly amused by the story.
"What sort of felon?"
"I will make all our information available to you in due time."
"Did you manage to catch the person?"
Gardansa frowned, "Unfortunately, no. This was the reason I was so insistent
that our airspace not be violated. By sending down your inspectors at such
an inopportune moment and having your gunships fire on us as we attempted to
pursue our suspect... ah... we we're unable to deal effectively with the
situation at hand."
"I am told that your vessels harassed ours first."
"A misunderstanding, I am certain. However, now that we have cleared the
smoke between us, I hope that you will return our suspect, especially in
consideration of the fact that the vessel we intended to pursue is still in
our airspace."
"It's in orbit."
"Technicalities, merely. May I interest you 