Escape Velocity: The Anthology (38 page)

       “
What are you doing here? I thought you didn’t like to stray from home.”

       “
I travelled in time!” said Jutzi. “But I ended up in the future instead of the past. How did you get here?”

       “
We took the road, same as we always do when it’s time to come in for supplies.”

       “
You mean... this isn’t the future? My time machine
didn’t
work?”

       “
It’s still nineteen-fifty, you daft sod, and if by ‘time machine’ you mean ‘bucket of cheese with a pitchfork sticking out of it,’ then no, I don’t suppose it did.”

      
Jutzi was slightly crestfallen, but he’d learned so much as a result of his experiment that the particulars scarcely mattered.

       “
I guess a ‘town machine’ isn’t a bad second...”

       “
How
did
you get here, anyway?” said Otto.

       “
By, er, karz,” said Jutzi, referring to his notepad.

       “
Oh yes? You’re lucky you’re so dim-witted or I’d tell your father you were riding in one of those contraptions. Go on then, get on up and we’ll take you home.”

      
Jutzi climbed into the cart, already thinking of ways to make it go faster by the application of stripes. Yes, his great grandparents would be proud.

Relativity

Gareth D. Jones

Dominique
, she was called, a fast cruiser bound for numerous ports. In typically secretive space service style Leo had been given no details about his shipboard assignment. He reported to dock sixteen and stumbled as the smart, grey-clad sentry welcome him aboard. A barely acceptable salute completed his less-than-impressive arrival. He recovered his composure in time for the gruff-looking Lieutenant Barrington to take him in tow and give him a whirlwind tour of the ship.
Dominique
was lumpy, grey and ugly on the outside, but inside she was a thing of functional beauty - every console had purpose and every bulkhead had function. Leo quickly realised his initial impression of Barrington too had been superficial. The lieutenant might be gruff on the outside, but he was proud of his ship, kind to the nervous Middie and seemed to be on friendly or even jovial terms with the whole crew. It was almost enough to alleviate Leo’s home-sickness.

      
Now that he was part of the space service, Midshipman Leo Paterson had cast off all ties with his family. He would be travelling the stars and didn’t expect to return home for years, if ever. Dad was still working a desk somewhere, the same dull job he had occupied for Leo’s whole life. Mum was involved with her therapy clients, always full of inane stories of what they got up to. With his sister gone they were all he had left, and now he had left them behind.

      
He didn’t remember much about his sister. He had only been seven when she had gone away. He recalled images of a big, dark haired girl, gangly and awkward. She was always loud and often yelled at him and his parents. He could never understand what she said; it was just noise. He remembered her face though, her softly curved chin, rosebud lips, broad features that made her look wise. Her eyes were a brilliant green, like emeralds that had caught the light, and she would stare with such intensity that he was sure there was something special there, just beyond his vision.

      
She especially loved looking up into the night sky; both of them did. Dad would take the two of them out into the garden on a clear night and point at the moon and find constellations for them to look at – Draco, Orion, the Plough. She was always calm, looking at the stars. Leo was fascinated and wanted to go and see the stars close up one day.

      
Other times she would fly into a rage and attack him - if he took something she wanted or got in the way of something she was staring at. Mostly mum or dad was there to hold her back, and then she would attack them instead, beating her fists against them and kicking her heels with all her might. It was only years later that he realised there had been something wrong with her. She was five years older than him and he learned later that he had been an attempt at salvation, another chance to have a normal child.

      
He thought of her occasionally, but not often, as he grew up. Her absence was a source of relief rather than a source of puzzlement. His parents were quiet on the subject, saying only that the authorities had taken her away to take care of her. He wondered if they felt the same way about him, now he had gone to work for the authorities.

      
Leo was assigned to navigation feeding in data and monitor system functions. Somewhere, protected in the heart of the ship, sat the real Navigator, wired straight in to the navigation systems, guiding them safely on their way. The shuttle pilots that operated between Earth and the orbital stations worked on the same principal, controlling their craft by thought. They jacked themselves in and, for the duration of the flight, the cockpit, their flight crew, everything inside the ship was gone from their mind as they thought their way to their destination. It was something Leo wanted a chance to try one day – the freedom to switch off from the world and feel the glories of space; at least, that was how one of his instructors had described it.

      
With barely any time to himself, and hardly an idle moment for gossip or chatter, Leo slowly immersed himself in the operations of the ship. He met the Captain on one occasion, during a routine departmental inspection. She was a striking woman with ebony skin and shaven head. They stood to attention. It felt like the first time in a fortnight that he had stopped working. He saluted her as she approached, but didn’t get to speak. She looked over the area with her intense gaze and then moved on without acknowledging Leo’s existence.

       “
You’ll get there,” said Barrington, smiling at Leo’s crestfallen face.

       “
When?”

       “
Give it time, lad.” They turned back to their work as the inspection party disappeared into the distance, the smell of cleaning fluid and concentration filling the air. Leo was determined to prove his worth to the lofty figure.

Three weeks out, Leo was woken early by a Barrington who looked nervous for the first time.

       “
Exec wants you,” he said brusquely.

        
Leo felt his chest go tight. “What for?” He leaped from his bunk and swiftly pulled on his shipsuit.

       “
He’s the exec. You don’t ask questions.”

      
Leo followed Barrington swiftly to the navigation section in the heart of the ship. The lean exec arrived a moment later, dressed in an immaculate grey shipsuit that made Leo feel scruffy.

       “
This way,” were the exec’s only words. He led the way along a corridor that had been out of bounds until that moment, feet thudding dully on the floorplates. “Absolute silence when we enter.”

      
Leo followed the exec into the navigation chamber, a ritual for all new officers that would finally take him to the heart of the ship. He discovered the details afterward, after time to absorb what he had seen. The Navigators were like the shuttle pilots, but this job was far more intense. There was no room for any extraneous thoughts or distractions. Not ever.

      
In a coffin-like couch at the centre of the chamber lay the navigator. The body shrivelled, atrophied, unrecognisable, kept functional by a profusion of wires and tubes that Leo cold not bring himself to look at. But the face was unforgettable; sunken, vacant, but still familiar – the broad features, the rosebud lips, the softly curving chin, her dark hair cropped close. In life, a waste, her brain unable to cope with living. Wiped clean, a blank canvas to process the intricacies of space travel.

      
Her brilliant emerald eyes stared up at the ceiling, unfocused, unaware of anything within the room. What was her name? His mind numb, he could not remember. Now she was Dominique. Now she saw the stars.

Oveio

Kevin Gordon

Dammit, when are you gonna get it done? I mean, you lay around as soon as you damned well please to get home, putting up those bricks you call feet, smokin’ on a rolled turd, when I’ve actually been doing somethin’, pushin’ somethin’, makin’ somethin’! Are you listening to me, ya damned piece of—

      
He moaned, as his own words rumbled through his memories.

      
This quarter, last quarter, what quarter have you even come close to any kind of projection you’ve put in writing? I’ve got dozens of status reports from the people that actually seem to work here, and they all can make some progress, can get something real and tangible and, most of all, profitable done! How long are you going to lie on your ass and keep soaking up the allotment I waste on you?

      
Answer me!

      
His voice hammered with a big bass thud in his brain. He glanced down at the still-warm emdec lying on the ground, reeking of sulfur, bathed in blood.

The world was full of promise. The grass was new, the trees only recently born; the air itself conjured out of the death of what was before. The old ones still living, who had experienced the world that was, that tired, foul, polluted waste of a world crammed with a trillion souls, spoke of how delicious it was just to breathe. They waxed poetic about the rays of the morning sun, sung odes to the dew of night, and wrote verse after verse about the taste of a fresh root, washed down with an untainted glass of pure water. There was one of them at his work, and after hearing him talk, he felt bad just breathing, like he was doing it all wrong.

       “
Hey Eldis,” waved Oveio, the boss’ new assistant. “I don’t think we’ve met.”

      
His reply was short, swift, and mercilessly to the point. “Nope.”

      
Oveio hovered over his station, in all her despicable perfection. Bathed in what must have been the combined joy of a million saints, she glowed with purity and love, from the silken locks that framed her sublime bronze face, to the mathematically elegant curves that defined her lithe, young body.

      
A part of him suddenly wanted to ride her like a cheap carnival whore. Another part of him wanted to lay prostrate before her in worship, forever adoring a purity he could never possess. However, she was as common as a blade of grass, for many others in this new world echoed her perfection and precision. Eldis felt like vermin in paradise, tolerated, but never enjoyed.

      
She pressed on, undeterred by his misery. “So . . . you’ve almost finished this cycle’s plotting?”

      
He was late – again – because he couldn’t seem to focus. He had started having dreams a few weeks before, intense dreams whose content he couldn’t really remember, save for a lone image or two that would hang over his mind like a storm cloud threatening lightning.

      
Eldis cued up a report of his progress, squinting, moving his gray hair aside to press his head close to the screen to make sure he hit the right commands. “Yeah, I’ve got all the gridwork established for Unia. The orbital emdecs can be configured to fire, once the other two projects have completed.”

      
Oveio leaned over and waved a TMSD over his station, downloading his work. Her body was close, and intoxicating. “They were done a few days ago. We’ve just been waiting for you.”

      
Eldis flopped back in his chair. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

       “
Didn’t want to bother you. After all, so much is going right, so much is being accomplished!” Her voice was full of the light of the sun; weightless, yet nourishing to the soul. “This is the dawn of all that will be, a reset of anything and everything that went wrong in the past. In a few months, the new city of Unia shall rise from nothingness, and join her brothers and sisters in our new utopia.” She grasped the back of Eldis’ chair, squeezing it once as if she were comforting him. “I know you’re a child of the Envoys. There are just some things you’ll never do as fast as we will.”

      
We
. It was a disgusting word he now loathed.
We
will get it done.
We
are making it happen.
We
are building it,
we
are shaping it,
we
will inherit it! ‘We’ was a word now owned by the perfect children of Novan, and Eldis, and the few who remained like him, had lost claim to its usage.

      
She walked away, and something about the movement of her crisp, pressed pants made him remember a fragment of his dream. A dream that he knew foretold the day’s events, but that he never could quite remember enough to make any sense.

      
It’s almost like I’m just supposed to know that I’ll keep on living.

For ten weeks he trained in the gym of his building, running ten miles each morning before work, grunting and lifting weights for two hours afterward. The first five days were murder—his body was well past its prime, and every time he thought of Oveio, he wanted to lie down and sleep. Through sheer will, he conquered his aging body and pressed forward.

      
His wife yelled at him more frequently, cursing him, and calling him an old fool. He paid no attention. For the first time since Novan was resurrected, he felt as if he belonged again. He could sit in the company of others and take solace in their glances, in their words, in their actions. They were knit so tightly, that even their thoughts became known to one another. He even was one of the select few allowed to attend the meetings, deciding on whom they would recruit, whom they would avoid, and what lay in their own future.