Galaxy's Edge Magazine: Issue 2, May 2013 (13 page)

“
Gwen’s got a boyfriend!
Gwen’s got a boyfriend!
” some of the memory monkeys were chanting.

Then it was onto the data packet and, clinging precariously to a couple of protruding bits, he whizzed along.

***

Marcus flowed through the VR refresh port in Al’s main server, the heavily-armored trolls ignoring this authorized traffic. He rolled off the packet, landing on his feet with poise as he entered a cordoned-off section of RAM serving as a cell for Gwen, Oscar, and Bill. He was
so
glad to see them! And he recognized the server he was in—it was the one from the shop.

“Miss me?” he said, grinning.

Gwen rushed over and threw her arms around him, resting her head on his shoulder. Oscar and Bill patted him on the back. Reluctantly he disengaged from Gwen.

“We’ve got to hurry,” he said. “What’s been happening here?”

“Not much,” Gwen said. “Al’s ignoring us. Ever since they got their new bodies, these two have been going over in the corner, looking at themselves, and chuckling a lot.” She looked at Oscar and Bill. “It’s just
virtual
size, guys.”

“Er…no,” Marcus said. “This is now my real body. We need to convert you guys so that you can help me demolish Al.”

All three nodded at him. They
liked
that idea.

Marcus took out the red buttons he’d grabbed from his tool box. He handed one to each. “All set up. Flip up the cover, press ABORT.” He held up his hand. “Not
yet
!”

Bill gently eased the cover closed again.

Marcus waved up a terminal and the screen showed the view outside the computer. Al and his two goons were there, eating pizza from a delivery box.
Hey, even disorganized criminals have to eat,
he acknowledged silently.

“Here’s the plan,” he said. “When Oscar and Bill press their buttons, they’ll be up there with Al and his gorillas. Kung Fu the hell out of them, guys, before they can get their guns out. You know how now.”

“What about me?” Gwen asked.

Marcus smiled at her. “Your button deposits you outside the server in your apartment. Your old body will be gone and
you
will be
you
.”

Oscar, feeling his oats after years of being old and feeble, gave a wolf whistle.

Gwen stuck her tongue out at him but smiled.

“Then come back here and help us mop up. But…where is here?”

Marcus typed in the air and data streamed on his virtual terminal. “No encrypting of personal or business data for Al, hey?” He stopped the scrolling. “There! 6701 Greenview Avenue. Not too far from your apartment, Gwen. Let’s do it!”

She nodded, opened the cover on her button, and hovered a finger over it reluctantly.

Marcus surprised himself again. “I love you. Press it, Gwen.”

She looked at him, smiling radiantly, and did.
Whoosh!
She was gone.

He air-typed to the terminal and sent a video request out through the open refresh port. There she stood in her apartment, looking with awe at the image of her new body in a mirror.

“Move it, honey,” he said.

Gwen jumped at his voice, but waved and ran out the door.

“So, are we waiting on her?” Bill asked.

“Nope. Press your buttons on three. One…two…
three
!”

They landed with silent grace, already in Kung Fu stances. Al and his two goons barely had time to drop their slices of pizza before they were disarmed and trussed up with electric cords ripped from a lamp, a fan, and the coffee maker.

Oscar and Bill took turns going to the restroom.

Marcus waved up a screen in the air, pulled over a chair, and then—with occasional suggestions from Bill or Oscar after they returned—demolished Al’s porn and spam empires. He was especially careful to erase all mention of Gwen’s work for Al. No need for her to be embarrassed during the investigations that were sure to come.

The office door slammed against the wall under a powerful
open
spell and Gwen stormed in, looking like an avenging goddess. Seeing the trussed-up gangsters, she slid to a halt.

“I’m sorry we didn’t wait for you, Gwen,” Marcus said, “but they were a pushover.”

She shrugged.

“Now what?” Bill asked.

Gwen raised her hand. “I thought about that running over here.”

They all noted that she was not a bit out of breath.

“My brother is a patent attorney with the biggest intellectual property firm in Chicago.” She smiled. “You’ll all be rich, and Marcus can make sure all this ”—she ran her hands up and down her awesomely curvy body— “is used for the betterment of humanity.”

“And software,” Marcus added. “We’re rich, Gwen—you too!” Oscar and Bill nodded enthusiastically. “Guess we should call the cops, huh?”

Gwen took his arm and gently pulled him toward the door.

“Let Bill and Oscar do that. I need you to check my computer.” She smiled a smile that would melt steel and then temper it into something stronger than before.

Bill shrugged and winked.

“Race you back,” Gwen yelled, already out the door.

Marcus pounded after her.

Oscar looked at Bill. “Big?”

“Huge,” said Bill.

“I
love
computers,” Oscar said.

.

.

Original (First) Publication
Copyright © 2013 by Ralph Roberts

.

.

Paperback:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1612420613?tag=arcman-20

.

Kindle:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006VOK8NS?tag=arcman-20

.

Publisher’s Direct

http://www.PPickings.com

Kristine Kathryn Rusch is the only person, living or dead, to win Hugos as both a writer and an editor. “Echea” won the HOMer Award and the
Asimov’s
Readers Poll, and was a Hugo, Nebula and Sturgeon nominee.

.

--------------

ECHEA

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

I can close my eyes and she appears in my mind as she did the moment I first saw her: tiny, fragile, with unnaturally pale skin and slanted chocolate eyes. Her hair was white as the moon on a cloudless evening. It seemed, that day, that her eyes were the only spot of color on her haggard little face. She was seven but she looked three.

And she acted like nothing we had ever encountered before.

Or since.

***

We had three children and a good life. We were not impulsive, but we did feel as if we had something to give. Our home was large, and we had money; any child would benefit from that.

It seemed to be for the best.

It all started with the brochures. We saw them first at an outdoor cafe near our home. We were having lunch, when we glimpsed floating dots of color, a fleeting child’s face. Both my husband and I touched them only to have the displays open before us:

The blank vista of the Moon, the Earth over the horizon like a giant blue and white ball, a looming presence, pristine and healthy and somehow guilt-ridden. The Moon itself looked barren, as it always had, until one focused. And then one saw the pockmarks, the shattered dome open to the stars. In the corner of the first brochure I opened, at the very edge of the reproduction, were blood-splotches. They were scattered on the craters and boulders, and had left fist-sized holes in the dust. I didn’t need to be told what had caused it. We saw the effects of high-velocity rifles in low gravity every time we downloaded the news.

The brochures began with the Moon, and ended with the faces of refugees: pallid, worn, defeated. The passenger shuttles to Earth had pretty much stopped. At first, those who could pay came here, but by the time we got our brochures, Earth passage had changed. Only those with living relatives were able to return. Living relatives who were willing to acknowledge the relationship—and had official hard copy to prove it.

The rules were waived in the case of children, of orphans and of underage war refugees. They were allowed to come to Earth if their bodies could tolerate it, if they were willing to be adopted, and if they were willing to renounce any claims they had to Moon land.

They had to renounce the stars in order to have a home.

***

We picked her up in Sioux Falls, the nearest star shuttle stop and detention center to our home. The shuttle stop was a desolate place. It was designed as an embarkation point for political prisoners and for star soldiers. It was built on the rolling prairie, a sprawling complex with laser fences shimmering in the sunlight. Guards stood at every entrance, and several hovered above. We were led, by men with laser rifles, into the main compound, a building finished almost a century before, made of concrete and steel, functional, cold and ancient. Its halls smelled musty. The concrete flaked, covering everything with a fine gray dust.

Echea had flown in on a previous shuttle. She had been in detox and sick bay; through psychiatric exams and physical screenings. We did not know we would get her until they called our name.

We met her in a concrete room with no windows, shielded against the sun, shielded against the world. The area had no furniture.

A door opened and a child appeared.

Tiny, pale, fragile. Eyes as big as the moon itself, and darker than the darkest night. She stood in the center of the room, legs spread, arms crossed, as if she were already angry at us.

Around us, through us, between us, a computer voice resonated:

This is Echea. She is yours. Please take her, and proceed through the doors to your left. The waiting shuttle will take you to your preassigned destination.

She didn’t move when she heard the voice, although I started. My husband had already gone toward her. He crouched and she glowered at him.

“I don’t need you,” she said.

“We don’t need you either,” he said. “But we want you.”

The hard set to her chin eased, just a bit. “Do you speak for her?” she asked, indicating me.

“No,” I said. I knew what she wanted. She wanted reassurance early that she wouldn’t be entering a private war zone as difficult and devastating as the one she left. “I speak for myself. I’d like it if you came home with us, Echea.”

She stared at us both then, not relinquishing power, not changing that forceful stance. “Why do you want me?” she asked. “You don’t even know me.”

“But we will,” my husband said.

“And then you’ll send me back,” she said, her tone bitter. I heard the fear in it.

“You won’t go back,” I said. “I promise you that.”

It was an easy promise to make. None of the children, even if their adoptions did not work, returned to the Moon.

A bell sounded overhead. They had warned us about this, warned us that we would have to move when we heard it.

“It’s time to leave,” my husband said. “Get your things.”

Her first look was shock and betrayal, quickly masked. I wasn’t even sure I had seen it. And then she narrowed those lovely chocolate eyes. “I’m from the Moon,” she said with a sarcasm that was foreign to our natural daughters. “We have no things.”

***

What we knew of the Moon Wars on Earth was fairly slim. The news vids were necessarily vague, and I had never had the patience for a long lesson in Moon history.

The shorthand for the Moon situation was this: the Moon’s economic resources were scarce. Some colonies, after several years of existence, were self-sufficient. Others were not. The shipments from Earth, highly valuable, were designated to specific places and often did not get there. Piracy, theft, and murder occurred to gain the scarce resources. Sometimes skirmishes broke out. A few times, the fighting escalated. Domes were damaged, and in the worst of the fighting, two colonies were destroyed.

At the time, I did not understand the situation at all. I took at face value a cynical comment from one of my professors: colonies always struggle for dominance when they are away from the Mother country. I had even repeated it at parties.

I had not understood that it oversimplified one of the most complex situations in our universe.

I also had not understood the very human cost of such events.

That is, until I had Echea.

***

We had ordered a private shuttle for our return, but it wouldn’t have mattered if we were walking down a public street. I attempted to engage Echea, but she wouldn’t talk. She stared out the window instead, and became visibly agitated as we approached home.

Lake Nebagamon is a small lake, one of the hundreds that dot Northern Wisconsin. It was a popular resort for people from nearby Superior. Many had summer homes, some dating from the late 1800s. In the early 2000s, the summer homes were sold off. Most lots were bought by families who already owned land there, and hated the crowding at Nebagamon. My family bought fifteen lots. My husband’s bought ten. Our marriage, some joked, was one of the most important local mergers of the day.

Sometimes I think it was no joke. It was expected. There is affection between us, of course, and a certain warmth. But no real passion.

The passion I once shared with another man—a boy actually—was so long ago that I remember it in images, like a vid seen decades ago, or a painting made from someone else’s life.

When my husband and I married, we acted like an acquiring conglomerate. We tore down my family’s summer home because it had no potential or historical value, and we built onto my husband’s. The ancient house became an estate with a grand lawn that rolled down to the muddy water. Evenings we sat on the verandah and listened to the cicadas until full dark. Then we stared at the stars and their reflections in our lake. Sometimes we were blessed with the Northern lights, but not too often.

This is the place we brought Echea. A girl who had never really seen green grass or tall trees; who had definitely never seen lakes or blue sky or Earth’s stars. She had, in her brief time in South Dakota, seen what they considered Earth—the brown dust, the fresh air. But her exposure had been limited, and had not really included sunshine or nature itself.

We did not really know how this would affect her.

There were many things we did not know.

***

Our girls were lined up on the porch in age order: Kally, the twelve-year-old, and the tallest, stood near the door. Susan, the middle child, stood next to her, and Anne stood by herself near the porch. They were properly stair-stepped, three years between them, a separation considered optimal for more than a century now. We had followed the rules in birthing them, as well as in raising them.

Echea was the only thing out of the norm.

Anne, the courageous one, approached us as we got off the shuttle. She was small for six, but still bigger than Echea. Anne also blended our heritages perfectly—my husband’s bright blue eyes and light hair with my dark skin and exotic features. She would be our beauty some day, something my husband claimed was unfair, since she also had the brains.

“Hi,” she said, standing in the middle of the lawn. She wasn’t looking at us. She was looking at Echea.

Echea stopped walking. She had been slightly ahead of me. By stopping, she forced me to stop too.

“I’m not like them,” she said. She was glaring at my daughters. “I don’t want to be.”

“You don’t have to be,” I said softly.

“But you can be civil,” my husband said.

Echea frowned at him, and in that moment, I think, their relationship was defined.

“I suppose you’re the pampered baby,” she said to Anne.

Anne grinned.

“That’s right,” she said. “I like it better than being the spoiled brat.”

I held my breath. “Pampered baby” wasn’t much different from “spoiled brat” and we all knew it.

“Do you have a spoiled brat?” Echea asked.

“No,” Anne said.

Echea looked at the house, the lawn, the lake, and whispered. “You do now.”

Later, my husband told me he heard this as a declaration. I heard it as awe. My daughters saw it as something else entirely.

“I think you have to fight Susan for it,” Anne said.

“Do not!” Susan shouted from the porch.

“See?” Anne said. Then she took Echea’s hand and led her up the steps.

***

That first night we awakened to screams. I came out of a deep sleep, already sitting up, ready to do battle. At first, I thought my link was on; I had lulled myself to sleep with a bedtime story. My link had an automatic shut-off, but I sometimes forgot to set it. With all that had been happening the last few days, I believed I might have done so again.

Then I noticed my husband sitting up as well, groggily rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

The screams hadn’t stopped. They were piercing, shrill. It took me a moment to recognize them.

Susan.

I was out of bed before I realized it, running down the hall before I had time to grab my robe. My nightgown flapped around me as I ran. My husband was right behind me. I could hear his heavy steps on the hardwood floor.

When we reached Susan’s room, she was sitting on the window seat, sobbing. The light of the full moon cut across the cushions and illuminated the rag rugs and the old-fashioned pink spread.

I sat down beside her and put my arm around her. Her frail shoulders were shaking, and her breath was coming in short gasps. My husband crouched before her, taking her hands in his.

“What happened, sweetheart?” I asked.

“I—I—I saw him,” she said. “His face exploded, and the blood
floated
down.”

“Were you watching vids again before sleep?” my husband asked in a sympathetic tone. We both knew if she said yes, in the morning she would get yet another lecture about being careful about what she put in her brain before it rested.

“No!” she wailed.

She apparently remembered those early lectures too.

“Then what caused this?” I asked.

“I don’t
know
!” she said and burst into sobs again. I cradled her against me, but she didn’t loosen her grip on my husband’s hands.

“After his blood floated, what happened, baby?” my husband asked.

“Someone grabbed me,” she said against my shirt. “And pulled me away from him. I didn’t want to go.”

“And then what?” My husband’s voice was still soft.