Nebula Awards Showcase 2006 (66 page)

And they all wanted to keep talking. Except for poor Danny, the cookie said nothing about whether they still existed
outside
. In a way, knowing each other now was what kept them real.

Dixie Mae could tell that Danny felt that way, even when he complained: “It’s just not safe having to contact unrelated people, depending on them to get the word to up here.”

“So, Danny, you want the three of us to just run and run and never know the truth?”

“No, Dixie Mae, but this is dangerous for you, too. As a matter of fact, in most of your runs, you stay clueless.” He waved at the history. “We only see you once per each of our ‘year-long’ runs. I-I guess that’s the best evidence that visiting us is risky.”

The Ellens leaned forward, “Okay, then let’s see how things would work without us.” The four of them looked over the oldest history entries and argued jargon that meant nothing to Dixie Mae. It all added up to the fact that any local clues left in Rob’s data would be easy for Gerry Reich to detect. On the other hand, messing with unused storage in the intranet mail system was possible, and it was much easier to cloak because the clues could be spread across several other projects.

The Ellens grinned. “So you really do need us, or at least you need Dixie Mae. But don’t worry; we need
you,
and you have lots to do in your next year. During that time, you’ve got to make some credible progress with what Gerry wants. You saw what that is. Maybe you hardware types don’t realize it, but”—she clicked on a link to the bulleted list of “minimum goals” that Reich had set for Rob and Danny—“Prof. Reich is asking you for system improvements that would make it easier to partition the projects. And see this stuff about selective decoherence: Ever hear of cognitive haze? I bet with this improvement, Reich could actually do limited meddling with uploaded brain state. That would eliminate date and memory inconsistencies. We might not even recognize cookie clues then!”

Danny looked at the list. “Controlled decoherence?” He followed the link through to an extended discussion. “I wondered what that was. We need to talk about this.”

“Yes—wait! Two of us get rebooted in—my God, in thirty minutes.” The Ellens looked at each other and then at Dixie Mae.

Danny looked stricken, all his strategic analysis forgotten. “But one of you Ellens is on a three-month cycle. She could stay here.”

“Damn it, Danny! We just saw that there are checkpoints every sim day. If the NSA team were short a member for longer than that, we’d have a real problem.”

Dixie Mae said, “Maybe we should all leave now, even us . . . short-lifers. If we can get back to our buildings before reboot, it might look better.”

“Yeah, you’re right. I’m sorry,” said Rob.

She got up and started toward the door. Getting back to Customer Support was the one last thing she could do to help.

Rob stopped her. “Dixie Mae, it would help if you’d leave us with a message to send to you next time.”

She pulled the tattered printout from her pocket. The bottom was torn and smeared. “You must have the whole thing in the cookie.”

“Still, it would be good to know what you think would work best to get . . . your attention. The history says that background details are gradually changing.”

He stood up and gave her a little bow.

“Well, okay.” Dixie Mae sat down and thought for a second. Yeah, even if she hadn’t had the message memorized, she knew the sort of insults that would send her ballistic. This wasn’t exactly time travel, but now she was certain who had known all the terrible secrets, who had known how to be absolutely insulting. “My daddy always said that I’m my own worst enemy.”

Rob and Danny walked with them back to the vault door. This was all new to the two guys. Danny scrambled out of the pit, and stared bug-eyed at the hills around them. “Rob, we could just
walk
to the other buildings!” He hesitated, came back to them. “And yeah, I know. If it were that easy, we’d have done it before. We gotta study that cookie, Rob.”

Rob just nodded. He looked kind of sad—then noticed that Dixie Mae was looking at him—and gave her a quick smile. They stood for a moment under the late afternoon haze and listened to the wind. The air had cooled and the whole pit was in shadow now.

Dixie Mae gave Rob a smile and her hand. “Hey, Rob. Don’t worry. I’ve spent years trying to become a nicer, wiser, less stubborn person. It never happened. Maybe it never will. I guess that’s what we need now.”

Rob took her hand. “It is, but I swear . . . it won’t be an endless treadmill. We will study that cookie, and we’ll design something better than what we have now.”

“Yeah.”
Be as stubborn as I am, pal.

Rob and Dan shook hands all around, wishing them well. “Okay,” said Danny, “best be off with you. Rob, we should shut the door and get back. I saw some references in the cookie. If they get rebooted before they reach their places, there are some things we can do.”

“Yeah,” said Rob. But the two didn’t move immediately from the entrance. Dixie Mae and the twins scrambled out of the pit and walked toward the asphalt. When Dixie Mae looked back, the two guys were still standing there. She gave a little wave, and then they were hidden by the edge of the excavation.

The three trudged along, the Ellens a lot less bubbly than usual. “Don’t worry,” NSA Ellen said to her twin, “there’s still two months on the B0994 timeline. I’ll remember for both of us. Maybe I can do some good on that team.”

“Yeah,” said the other, also sounding down. Then abruptly they both gave one of those identical laughs and they were smiling. “Hey, I just thought of something. True re-merge may always be impossible, but what we have here is almost a kind of merge load. Maybe, maybe—” But their last chance on this turn of the wheel was gone. They looked at Dixie Mae and all three were sad again. “Wish we had more time to think how we wanted this to turn out. This won’t be like the SF stories where every rev you wake up filled with forebodings and subconscious knowledge. We’ll start out all fresh.”

Dixie Mae nodded. Starting out fresh. For dozens of runs to come, where there would be nothing after that first week at Customer Support, and putting up with boorish Victor, and never knowing. And then she smiled. “But every time we get through to Dan and Rob, we leave a little more. Every time they see us, they have a year to think. And it’s all happening a thousand times faster than Ol’ Gerry can think. We really are the cookie monsters. And someday—”
Someday we’ll be coming for you, Gerry. And it will be sooner than you can dream.

This page honors our colleagues who have recently died.

 

ANDRE NORTON
FRANK KELLY FREAS
F. M. BUSBY
JACK CHALKER
HUGH B. CAVE
SONYA DORMAN
PAT YORK
ROGER D. ALCOCK
ALFRED COPPEL
TETSU YANO
ROBERT MERLE
JOHAN SPRINGBORG
DILIP M. SALWI
ROXANNE HUTTON
KATHERINE LAWRENCE
ROBYN HERRINGTON
REX MILLER
BRIAN McNAUGHTON
PAULA DANZIGER
MICHAEL ELDER

T
hroughout every calendar year, the members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America read and recommend novels and stories for the annual Nebula Awards. The editor of the “Nebula Awards Report” collects the recommendations and publishes them in the SFFWA
Forum
. Near the end of the year, the NAR editor tallies the endorsements, draws up the preliminary ballot, and sends it to all active SFFWA members. Under the current rules, each novel and story enjoys a one-year eligibility period from its date of publication. If the work fails to make the preliminary ballot during that interval, it is dropped from further Nebula consideration.

The NAR editor processes the results of the preliminary ballot and then compiles a final ballot listing the five most popular novels, novellas, novelettes, and short stories. For purposes of the Nebula Award, a novel is 40,000 words or more; a novella is 17,500 to 39,999 words; a novelette is 7,500 to 17,499 words; and a short story is 7,499 words or fewer. At the present time, SFFWA impanels both a novel jury and a short-fiction jury to oversee the voting process and, in cases where a presumably worthy title was neglected by the membership at large, to supplement the five nominees with a sixth choice. Thus, the appearance of extra finalists in any category bespeaks two distinct processes: jury discretion and ties.

Founded in 1965 by Damon Knight, the Science Fiction Writers of America began with a charter membership of seventy-eight authors. Today it boats over a thousand members and an augmented name. Early in his tenure, Lloyd Biggle, Jr., SFWA’s first secretary-treasurer, proposed that the organization periodically select and publish the year’s best stories. This notion quickly evolved into the elaborate balloting process, an annual awards banquet, and a series of Nebula anthologies. Judith Ann Lawrence designed the trophy from a sketch by Kate Wilhelm. It is a block of Lucite containing a rock crystal and a spiral nebula made of metallic glitter. The prize is handmade, and no two are exactly alike.

The Damon Knight Grand Master Nebula Award goes to a living author for a lifetime of achievement in science fiction and/or fantasy. In accordance with SFFWA’s bylaws, the president nominates a candidate, normally after consulting with previous presidents and the board of directors. This nomination then goes before the officers; if a majority approves, the candidate becomes a Grand Master. Past recipients include Robert A. Heinlein (1974), Jack Williamson (1975), Clifford D. Simak (1976), L. Sprague de Camp (1978), Fritz Leiber (1980), Andre Norton (1983), Arthur C. Clarke (1985), Isaac Asimov (1986), Alfred Bester (1987), Ray Bradbury (1988), Lester del Rey (1990), Frederik Pohl (1992), Damon Knight (1994), A. E. van Vogt (1995), Jack Vance (1996), Poul Anderson (1997), Hal Clement (Harry Stubbs) (1998), Brian W. Aldiss (1999), Philip José Farmer (2000), Ursula K. Le Guin (2002), Robert Silverberg (2003), and Anne McCaffrey (2004).