Asimov's SF, January 2012 (7 page)

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

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

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

"I have an infant to recycle."

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

"I have an infant to recycle."

Copyright © 2011 Katherine Marzinsky

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Movement creeps to a reptilian halt in the rusty gully;

in the antediluvian stillness broken only by the odd steamy hiss

obsidian-eyed commuters sit frozen in amber as

the archaic machine groans, shudders with effort

and, like its giant forefathers in Battersea

Power Station, sighs its last into industrial inaction.

Soon the green creepers that have claimed the viaducts

and the ropy trees in the margins will enter:

mosses growing over the back of the ancient monster

ferns wearing the wheels into decaying crumbles

until it stands, the stillness of the tropic scene

broken only by the sudden flight of chip packets

and the cicada shrilling of the mobile phones.

London

Between Balham and Clapham Junction Stations

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

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

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

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

No one had ever deciphered their meaning.

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

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

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

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

"I love you, Hutch. Will you marry me?"

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

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

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

"Nothing,” she said.

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

"Okay."

"Best keep focused when stuff is happening."

"I'm focused,” she said.

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

"Okay, Jake."

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

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

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

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

"Jump in one minute,"said Benny.

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

"Doing it now, Captain,"he said.

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

Larry's lamp turned green.

"Thirty seconds,” she said.

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

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

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

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

"What is it, Benny?"

He put it onscreen:

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

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

Hutch stared at the message. The battle over revamping that world had been going on for years. Archeologists wanted to preserve the ruins. But Quraqua would be a priceless asset as a colony. She sighed. “Welcome to Groombridge, Jake,” she said.

Technically, it was Groombridge 1618. Eight light-years from Earth. An orange-red main sequence flare dwarf. Hutch had done her homework. The star was still young, less than a billion years old, and though it was smaller and less luminous than the Sun, it threw off flares that were far more intense than anything seen at home. And the eruptions were frequent.

That was, indirectly, the reason it was of particular interest to biologists. Because it was so much cooler than the Sun, the “Goldilocks” zone, where liquid water could exist, was much closer to it, running from thirty-eight to seventy million miles. That brought any potential life-bearing world within range of the flares, where no terrestrial-style life could exist. Groombridge II, Hibachi's World, was right in the center of the zone. It had two moons, a big one and a small one. And, remarkably, it also had tangled jungles and as wide a diversity of animals as existed at home. No deserts or open plains presented themselves. The only land areas that were not overgrown were at the poles. Biologists loved it, and had spent the past five years on the planet trying to figure out how it had happened.

"We have most of the answers now,” Larry told her. “We're at the point where it's just a matter of filling in the blanks.” He floated behind her, holding onto the back of her chair, watching the planet grow gradually larger on the display.

She swung one of the scopes toward the sun. It looked tranquil. Sedate. “Just how serious are the flares?” she asked.

Larry was tall, thin, self-effacing. He was probably in his early thirties, but his hair had already begun to gray at the temples. He spoke in a relaxed, amiable tone. “Pretty severe,” he said. “Fortunately, you normally get some advance warning before the thing goes off, so that gives everybody time to get under cover. But it limits what you can do."

Jake pushed back in his seat. “You wouldn't want to be out walking around in it, I assume."

"Probably not, Jake. I was glad to see they put the extra armor on the
Copperhead.
I doubt we'll need it, but you never know."

Hutch suppressed a smile. The extra armor lining the ship was for Palomus, a pulsar, where they'd be dropping off supplies in a few weeks. But she said nothing. “How long will you be staying?” she asked. She knew Larry had two young kids.

"Probably a year."

"The vegetation's not green."

"Can't have chlorophyll. Not in this kind of environment."

Had she made the same comment to Eddington, she'd have gotten a detailed explanation, filled with descriptions of protective coatings, energy collection methods, alternative genealogical systems, and who knew what else. Eddington was an oversized guy, big and unwieldy in every sense of the word. He could barely make it through the hatches. He'd been out here before, and he talked constantly about the experience, retelling the same stories.

Isaika Nakamura, the third member of the party, was an engineer. She was middle-aged and bored. She'd come along to inspect, upgrade, or repair—Hutch wasn't sure which—the systems protecting the shelter. She had no apparent interest in the mission itself, and she let everyone know that she was part of the mission because she'd lost a coin toss.

They had emerged about eight hours out from Hibachi's World. The passengers slept and read. The ground station was the Erik Acharius Complex, named after the nineteenth century Swedish botanist. Hutch opened a channel. “Acharius,” she said, “this is
Copperhead.
We have arrived and will enter orbit around midnight your time. How are you doing?"