Imagination Fully Dilated: Science Fiction Part 7

This was no time to blow the evening on some dumb longing that would result in the same old disappointment like they say doing the same dumb thing and expecting different results was well dumb so dumb de dumb dumb but oh look here's the first stop on the Famous John Wagoner Ladies Tour of the Can of Peaches .

"Here's something interesting," he said. They had come to the place where he could show her a less pretty side of the Can's outside skin.

"s.p.a.cesuits?"

"Later." He opened the door and stepped back to let her enter first.

"No, now," she said. "Which one is yours?"

He came in behind her and closed the door, but instead of seeing the forward display area, he saw thatthey were in staging area 4, where he came at the start of every s.h.i.+ft to check the schedule and see if he was slotted for outside tasks. He had meant to come by here near the end of the tour, but what had happened to all the parts in between? That vague scene of chaos on the bridge surely couldn't have really happened. He had not had that much to drink. In fact, he had had only the one drink before Pam the fire woman talked him into going off against all regulations to see his s.p.a.cesuit.

Oh, yeah, the regulations. It was like he was just now remembering that the whole idea of a private tour was so against the rules he wouldn't ordinarily even consider it. It was one thing to sneak a pa.s.senger into your quarters, it was like they expected that, you were only human, but you didn't take them where they might screw something up or get hurt and sue the company. The arguments she had used were no longer in his head, but he could remember that they had been very persuasive, and now they were where she wanted to be.

"Put it on," she said.

"What?"

"Your s.p.a.cesuit," she said.

"Actually, we're not even supposed to be here," he said. "I can't put on my s.p.a.cesuit without filing the forms."

"Here," she said. "This must be your hat."

"Helmet," he said and took it from her. He didn't remember getting into his s.p.a.cesuit, but if he were going outside, he'd definitely need his helmet.

She put her hands on his shoulders and leaned in close. He could feel her flames licking around his ears.

Then she flowed into his suit like a big burning blue snake slipping into the neck hole or maybe like blue fire water flowing over his shoulders and around his body and down to his toes and up his legs and thighs-little sting-slap burning bites all over.

"Put it on," she said. Her voice seemed to come from everywhere at once.

"What?"

"Your hat."

He raised the helmet and put it on and set the seals.

"Ready?" she asked.

And then it was like when they say, "Okay I'm going to count to three" but then they say "one" and shoot you anyway. There was a tremendous explosion, and he was blown out into s.p.a.ce.

He could see a large landma.s.s, a planet or moon where none could really be-a rough and barren place.

He could not tell if there was an atmosphere. As he tumbled he saw thePeaches going down, debris scattering from a ragged rip in its side. Beyond the s.h.i.+p, he saw a star that might have been the Sun but he was pretty sure it wasn't the Sun. Maybe the Dark Spot was back and theCan of Peaches had fallen into it and they'd all come out the other side light-years away.

He could replay some of the highlights of his life-his boyhood playing with the polar bears on Mars, going into s.p.a.ce (and never coming back, so there!), first love, last love, last week, cheesecake. He'd probably have time to play that much back before he hit the ground. There would never be time to goover everything in his augmented memory banks. You experienced augmem from the outside like looking up an item in a book, but ideally such an item triggered the actual memory, and you experienced that from the inside like those tiny soft hairs on cheerleader thighs in the gym dome on Mars when he was seventeen. Replay. But shouldn't this be all white light or something? Did you think you were going to get some great moment of clarity here at the end? Did you think there would be dancing girls?

His body ached with her blue fire as he fell.

"Are you there, Pam?" He reached out and touched her.

"Thanks for the ride home," she said. "It was supposed to be easier than this."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm going now," she said.

His arm exploded in fire as she left.

At least he could find out what she really looked like. He switched on his "other eye," but she was still a blue fire woman walking out of the Slingshot Lounge.

That couldn't be right.

"Hey!"

She stopped at the door and turned back and gave him a little wave with just her fire fingers.

Well, the bartender was just some guy who needed a shave and maybe a breath mint. He put another Irish on ice down in front of John. There was a crackle of static and he said, "You should have shown her your s.p.a.cesuit, Sport."

John banged himself in the side of the head suspecting a malfunction. Pam just kept burning, but now he was falling toward the surface of the new planet.

His arm really was on fire.

Pam was a graceful blue burning cloud. She dipped and soared and skimmed over the surface until she came to a cave. She disappeared inside.

The Dark Spot sucked up the planet and swallowed it and then disappeared just before thePeaches pa.s.sed through where it had been.

John initiated emergency procedures and got his suit sealed. He would probably lose an arm, but he could make do with a mechanical. He could see that thePeaches was going through a few emergency procedures of its own. Had the s.h.i.+p hit the strange planet from the Dark Spot, all would have been lost, but that hadn't happened. Pam had closed her door just in time, but that didn't let John off the hook.

They would fish him out of s.p.a.ce, and he would be in big trouble.

Maybe if he had worked a little harder, she would have taken him home to meet the folks.

Nohow Permanent

Nancy Jane Moore

We came into Procyon's commercial port on third watch. I'd picked the time and place on purpose.

Bribing third-watch officers is easier than first-watch ones, and the commercial port hustles along little s.h.i.+ps like mine so they can get to unloading shuttles from the big transports parked out in orbit. Plus I grew up around there-my mom worked port crew for a while when I was small-so I know some of the officers. Sometimes that helps, sometimes it doesn't.

My pa.s.senger wasn't happy. Nothing new about that; he'd been griping since I first picked him up.

People on the lam for political reasons always complain a lot. Refugees, now, they tend to be grateful.

And criminals know it's just business. I guess the revolutionaries and other regime opponents think they deserve better for doing what's right; they don't realize no good deed goes unpunished.

He stood next to me on the bridge, staring out the front viewport. "It's dark in here," he said. Procyon is an old moon, and the settled parts-including the port-are all carved out of the interior. The only thing that happens on the surface is regolith mining. There's some natural light through what natives call "The Window"-an opening that always faces the sun. But it's an old sun, far past the visible light stage.

"It's always going to be dark in here unless you get some infrared goggles. Or have a little eye surgery."

My pa.s.senger shook his head firmly when I said "eye surgery." He was still having trouble looking at me, even after a couple of weeks on board. I've got three eyes, myself: one for infrared, one for ultraviolet, and one for what the humans call "normal." Lighting on my s.h.i.+p adjusts to all three, though I'd kept it on visible light for the sake of my pa.s.senger. You jump the wormholes around this part of s.p.a.ce the way I do, you end up seeing suns at all different stages. Best to be prepared.

"I want to stay human," he said. Clear that he didn't think I was.

Which is okay by me. I don't worry about things like that. Though my mom always said we were human somewhere back up the chain.

"Suit yourself." I was looking forward to getting rid of him.

He hadn't been quite as irritating at first. Someone had sent him my way when I was docked at the primary station in the Testudines. He was a well-proportioned man, with the wavy blond hair and tan skin of someone who'd always lived in a place with a temperate climate and friendly sun. Outdoorsy, in a civilized sort of way. Gene tweaks, I'm sure; no planets like that out here. But it's the in look among humans.

He also looked over his shoulder every few seconds while we talked. His left eye twitched, and his hands clutched the handle of a small satchel he carried. He was, in short, terrified.

"I'm Vlad Pyotrvich," he said.

Terrified and dumb, at least when it came to survival. Vlad Pyotrvich was his real name. I recognized it.

He was known far and wide for his blazing critiques of the Yacare government. That took a lot of guts.

Yacare is well known for abusing its citizens and generally being a very unpleasant place to live. I'd heard some of his speeches, and despite my personal tendency to anarchism, I'd felt inspired by his pa.s.sionate statements on civil liberties and the duties of governments to their citizens.

The Yacare government had a different reaction, so they put a price on his head. A high price. Enough to tempt me, despite my respect for his ideas and my inclination to treat bounty hunters as beneath contempt.

"They call me Pogo," I said. It's just the latest in a series of nicknames. My real one is my own business,thank you very much.

Procyon wasn't his first choice. He'd wanted to go to Chamaleo.

"Too risky," I said. "We have to stop at Acinonyx to get there, and they're real friendly with the people you're running from. You'll be safer on Procyon."

"But the Yacare movement-in-exile is based on Chamaleo. They need me."

"You can hop a freighter out of Procyon and work your way to Chamaleo the back way. Much safer."

"That will take years."

I shrugged. He was right. It wouldn't seem like years to him, but by the time he did a few wormhole jumps ten years or more would have gone by on Yacare.

He'd gone looking for another ride, which just goes to show how little he knew about life on the lam.

None of the asteroids that make up the Testudines is very large, and strangers stand out. He'd come back about a half step in front of some bounty hunters. Maybe less than half a step; he was bleeding in a couple of places. Didn't leave him much leverage when it came to d.i.c.kering over price. I didn't get what Yacare would have paid, but it wasn't bad money. Not bad money at all.

"Welcome aboard the Rockety c.o.o.n Child," I'd said that first day.

He didn't laugh at my s.h.i.+p's name. In addition to dumb and terrified, he was humorless.

Given that he was so serious, and that my non-human side seemed to bother him, I didn't expect any unwanted s.e.xual advances. But day two out, he hit on me.

"This thing pretty much flies itself," he said.

"Depends on where we are. But out here in the middle of nowhere"-we were a few hundred thousand klicks from the Testudines, on our way to the wormhole-"the auto pilot takes care of things."

He put a hand on my arm. "So maybe we could, uh, get to know each other better."

I removed the hand. I don't f.u.c.k the pa.s.sengers. Most of the time, anyway. But since we were gonna be together for a few weeks, I made an effort to joke about it. "Hey, you're on the lam. What would I do if you got me pregnant?" It could happen, if I didn't take precautions; despite the eyes and other differences that I was born with, I'm not that far removed from human.

He jumped back. "You're female?"

I raised all three of my eyebrows. On account of his cla.s.sic human looks I'd jumped to the conclusion that he preferred the equivalent kind of girls, but it appeared that what he really liked was not-quite-human guys. I guess he liked his s.e.x on the exotic side.

I shrugged, and said, "Sorry to disappoint," because I really wasn't interested, and I am female. Mostly.

He blushed bright red, and said "sorry" about fourteen times. That was the last that got said on the subject.

As we got close to port, we jacked into Procyon's web for the news. The wormhole jump put us a couple of years from the Testudines (it's a short hole), so the news was way ahead of us. It'll be interesting if some genius ever figures out how to move people instantaneously like info.Yacare had put out a story saying Vlad had died in the Testudines.

"Bet those bounty hunters pulled some DNA out of the blood you left behind and tried to collect the reward," I said.

But he wasn't amused (no surprise there). "d.a.m.n it. I must get to Chamaleo and rally the people there. I should never have let you talk me into coming to Procyon."

I didn't mention that he might really be dead if he hadn't.

We got lucky at the port. My old friend Gordo was on duty, and he came onboard the Child to check us out. Gordo and I grew up together, even if he has gone gray and pot-bellied while my hair's still brown and my wrinkles are few. I could tell some stories, but h.e.l.l, he's a respectable customs official these days, so I won't. He got on at the port when we left school, while I signed on a freighter and started a life of wormhole jumping. The world goes on while you're in the hole, but you stay the same.

Anyway, Gordo being my friend, he didn't stick Vlad for too much to let him into Procyon without papers.

"Might annoy Yacare if we let you in," Gordo said.

"Yacare thinks he's dead," I pointed out.

"They could just be saying that. And if they found out he wasn't . . ."

I raised one eyebrow, the one over the infrared eye. Gordo's known me long enough to know that means I'm getting p.i.s.sed off. "Okay, okay. But keep a low profile, huh? Been a little pressure on us lately."

I helped Vlad buy a set of infrared goggles in the s.h.i.+p's supply store just off the port, told him who to see about some papers and a freighter job, and pointed him in the direction of some cheap lodgings. He took the lift down to streetside. I gave a sigh of relief and went to meet Gordo and some other folks I know for a drink before I headed that way myself.

"Think your man is going to survive out here?" Gordo asked.

"Not my problem. I got him here alive. I transport people; I ain't a babysitter."

"I hear things are real ugly on Yacare. A man like that could rally folks. If some spies find him here, could get bad."

"Like I said, I'm not a nanny. But I'd take it personal if someone I asked to help him out f.u.c.ked him over. Bad for business, if you get my drift."