FSF, March-April 2010 (15 page)

"Oh,
those
guys,” she said.

A spider dropped into the corridor from above. It was followed by another, and another, and yet another. In moments, there were dozens of them filing past Nozaki and Wolverton, anchoring the spurs at the tips of their spindly legs in the hatchway's seam.

The spiders formed a circle around the hatch, clinging to the ceiling and the bulkheads as they tugged at the seam. It began to give, and they yanked it open with a loud clang.

Wolverton ducked his head to get inside. He saw a wide view of LGC-1's surface. Part of the horizon and the starfield were blocked by the advancing bubble.

The engineer stood at a console. He shouted and pointed a pistol at Wolverton.

Thunder sounded in Wolverton's ear as a bullet spanged off the metal hatch. Before the engineer could get off another shot, Wolverton tackled him.

Caught by surprise, the engineer dropped the pistol as they both tumbled over a chair. It clattered against the console.

Nozaki frantically worked a panel on the console while the two men fought.

"I don't know how to stop it!” she said.

"Then help me!"

The engineer punched Wolverton in the jaw, hard.

When he emerged from his daze, Wolverton was sprawled over the console. He saw that the engineer was on the floor. Nozaki stood over him, holding the pistol. Behind her, the bubble loomed.

But Nozaki was looking at something else.

"Wolverton!” She pointed at a hologram.

It was an image of the primordial black hole. The spiders ringed the electromagnets, their legs linking.

"They're going to cut off the current!” Wolverton shouted.

The spiders weren't here to help him. Their mission was to free the tidal forces, imploding the digger and everything near it.

"We've got to get out of here!” Nozaki cried.

"This way!” Wolverton took her by the hand and led her through the hatch. He loped into the corridor, dragging Nozaki behind him.

"No, Wolverton! Up there!” Nozaki pointed at a catwalk above the control center.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, come on!"

The digger veered wildly, almost knocking them off their feet.

"The reaction's starting!” Wolverton shouted.

They clutched handrails and made their way up a ladder and across the catwalk.

Pressure suits hung on the other side of a bulkhead.

"Put one of those on,” Nozaki said.

"But I...."

"Don't argue. The air tanks are untapped."

Wolverton got into a suit as quickly as he could. The floor shook underfoot, making it difficult, but Nozaki helped him. As soon as he was suited, he sealed the helmet lining, and a sweet nitrogen-oxygen mix flowed into his helmet.

"Ready?"

"Yes."

Nozaki slammed her palm against a jutting switch in the bulkhead. The roof opened, and they were flung out into space. The red corona of Gamma Crucis's hydrogen shell seared the landscape.

The arc of their flight was slow. They landed lightly on the asteroid's smooth surface and tumbled to a stop.

Wolverton got up and gave Nozaki a hand. They turned to see the digger quaking and lurching. The waspish ship rose from its back.

"He's getting away,” Wolverton said.

The digger buckled as the black hole pulled matter into itself. The ship rose into space, but not fast enough. Its progress was retarded, and then halted, and finally fatally reversed as it was drawn back toward the black hole.

The ship fell into the collapsing digger.

The digger imploded and shrank into nothing.

The warping of local space advanced rapidly toward Wolverton and Nozaki. The red landscape transformed before their eyes, shriveling as it was pulled toward the event horizon.

They ran for the bubble.

It was just ahead of them, but the tidal forces were expanding rapidly.

Wolverton held Nozaki's hand and ran for all he was worth. Despite his long legs, she kept up with him.

Darkness yawned in front of them.

More and more of the asteroid's surface was sucked into the event horizon, as if a rug were being pulled out from under this reality.

They leaped through the bubble.

On the other side now, they kept moving through the darkness, jumping ten or twelve meters with every step. At last they turned to stare at the tidal forces transmogrifying the bubble's parameters.

Wolverton put his arm around Nozaki's shoulders, encumbered by the bulky pressure suit. For the first time, he realized how small she was.

They waited for the end.

The bubble began to shrink, negated by the black hole's anisotropism. Its amorphous outline dwindled. It was consumed, reduced from a vast anomaly in the fabric of the continua to nonexistence.

Wolverton and Nozaki stood on the shadowed, barren surface of LGC-1.

"We made it,” Nozaki said.

Wolverton tried to catch his breath, but he found that he was sobbing.

Nozaki embraced him, her dark eyes sympathetic as she gazed up at him through her visor. “It's all right, Wolverton. I know how you feel."

But she didn't. How could he tell her that he was crying because he loved her? He was sure she'd never feel the same way about him. Now that they were back in their own reality, he felt alone again, even though Nozaki was right there beside him.

"We're going to have to take the long way around,” Nozaki said.

"Yes,” Wolverton said, regaining his composure, “to avoid the sunrise."

"Would you mind carrying this for a while?” Nozaki asked, handing him the portable field generator.

Wolverton was surprised by its lightness. “Jyoti's going to have fun with this."

"Won't she, though?"

They started back, jumping easily to sail over ground that hadn't existed for them just a few minutes earlier. Wolverton started to feel a little better.

"Will it come back?” he asked.

"The bubble?” Nozaki said. “I don't know."

"Maybe it's better if it doesn't. We don't want to get mixed up in a war."

"It may be too late for that, Wolverton."

"What do you mean?"

"We've taken sides, and I've seen enough of their militaristic society to know they won't forgive us. We better hope they never find their way here again, because I'm pretty sure they'll want to punish us for what we've done."

"But what choice did we have?"

"None,” Nozaki said. “I told them the digger would destroy our compound, but they wouldn't listen."

"And they're
human
?"

"All too human. They're descended from us."

Her comment gave Wolverton an idea he was afraid to voice.

"Things are going to be different when we get back, aren't they?” he asked.

"Yeah. For one thing, there will be two of you now."

"And three of you.” Wolverton recalled the sight of his body lying in state on the green planet. He still didn't understand how the consortium had known to bring him here, unless they had extracted information from his slumbering mind. In any case, they'd used him as a decoy so the spiders could do their work. He couldn't much blame them. His jaw was sore, but other than that things had worked out pretty well.

The flyby passed overhead, and they waved at it. They walked on, and after a little while a question occurred to Wolverton.

"Which one are you?” he asked. “Are you the one who left me behind?"

"Not this time,” she said.

"Nozaki,” Wolverton said, knowing that if he didn't say it now he never would. “I love you."

"Well, I love you, too, Wolverton,” she said, smiling. “After what we've been through, how could I
not
love you?"

Wolverton wasn't sure she meant it in quite the same way he did, but it would have to do for now. He was still thinking about what she'd said when the lights of base camp came into sight.

It was good to be home.

[Back to Table of Contents]

Michael Reaves says that this story happened exactly as he depicts it here, except for the parts that he made up.

I am a very lucky man. The reason for my saying this is obvious: I'm standing before you, accepting this award for Outstanding Alumnus. But the reason behind the reason is that I became what I wanted to be.

I'm lucky because, for as far back as I can remember, I've wanted to be a writer. Ever since I was a kid, five years old, sitting down in front of our new black-and-white TV to watch
The Adventures of Superman
. I was hooked the first time I saw George Reeves leap into the air and fly. Actually, he was lying on a board in front of a cyclorama screen with a wind machine blowing his hair and cape, but I didn't know that at the time, of course. I do remember wondering even back then, however, why he always leveled off at a cruising altitude of 30,000 feet even when he was just going a couple of city blocks away.

I'm not what you would call a mainstream writer. I have an unabashed preference for genre fiction—specifically, horror. And, like most horror writers, I've drawn most of my stories from childhood fears and experiences. I grew up in this town—you wouldn't think a place on the edge of the desert would be particularly spooky or atmospheric, but you'd be wrong. The desert can be a terrifying place.

If you'll indulge me, I'd like to tell you about one of those childhood experiences. Oddly enough, I've never written about it, or even spoken of it, before now. I'm not sure why. Perhaps my reasons will become clear—to me as well as you—during the telling. After all, good fiction is supposed to illuminate as well as entertain, isn't it?

I was seven years old, and this took place in 1955. It is probably impossible to convey to you all how totally different a time it was. It was, first and foremost, a much simpler time. You all have console games that tremble on the edge of virtual reality; we had Winky Dink. You have cell phones that can video and text and Twitter; we had party lines. And, of course, you have computers capable of processing gigabytes that you can hold in one hand, and we had UNIVAC.

But it wasn't just the technology that was simpler. It was a more
trusting
time. Back then, parents thought nothing of letting their kids roam all over the neighborhood, as long as they were home in time for dinner. Somehow or other, adults back then were much better at protecting the young from fearful realities. It's true that we were aware of those realities—ever hear of “duck and cover"? But kids were allowed to be kids back then. They weren't exposed to the rampant cynicism and smut that you all imbibed along with your baby food. Don't get me started.

It was spring, I remember, around the end of April or the beginning of May—you'd think that, considering what happened, the date would be burned into my memory. It had to have been a Saturday, because school wasn't out yet. I was playing with a couple of friends—Tom Harper and Malcolm James. We'd gone up into the hills a few blocks from my house to play cowboys and Indians. We were armed and ready for trouble.

When I say “armed,” I mean something different than what the word might connote today. I was carrying my trusty McRepeater Rifle, which made a very satisfactory bang when the wheel atop the stock was turned. Tom had a deadly Daisy 1101 Thunderbird, and in addition was packing twin cap pistols. And Malcolm...well, Malcolm was carrying his Johnny Eagle
Magumba
Big Game Rifle, which he'd insisted on bringing even though he had a perfectly good Fanner 50 cap gun back in his bedroom. Some people just won't get with the program.

We were hunting Indians, or, as we called them, “Injuns.” The term “political correctness,” let alone the concept, wasn't exactly widespread back then. It was the middle of the afternoon and, though it was early in the year, it was already hot enough to raise shimmers of heat waves from the dirt road. The hills were still green, but you could see that slowly the vegetation was dying. Another month, and brown would be the dominant color, announcing the beginning of the fire season.

For now, however, it was still pleasant, or as pleasant as those hills ever became. We were walking cautiously through the Badlands of our fantasy, alert for the slightest sound that might betray an Apache ambush. This was more difficult than it might seem, because every few minutes Malcolm would drop into a crouch and spin around, spraying the mesquite with imaginary bullets and going “
Kachow!! Kachow!!
” Tom Harper finally grew tired of this, and demanded to know how we were going to get the drop on the bad guys with Malcolm constantly announcing our presence to everyone in the county. To which Malcolm replied that it was only make believe, and that the most we might hope to flush from the underbrush was a rabbit or coyote.

We knew that, of course. We all knew that. It's important to keep this in mind.

"Knock it off,” Tom finally said, exasperated, “or I'll drop-kick your ass into next week."

That got the desired result. Tom Harper's right leg ended in a stump just above the knee—legacy of a car accident. He wore a prosthetic, a hinged contraption made of wood, metal and plastic, and when he ran, he used a sort of half-skip in his locomotion which the rest of us found very amusing. We were careful not to show it, however, because Tom could turn that half-skip into a devastating kick that could easily deliver the recipient as far up the calendar as Tom wanted. Malcolm said nothing more that in any way damaged the fantasy
gemütlichkeit
we had constructed. And again, it's important to remember that we knew what we were doing.