Moe said something in his own language, and the other answered with a syllable. “They’ve always been. They’re not like a building.”
I tried to close my eyes but couldn’t. It seemed to be getting worse. “Long? How long?”
“I’m sorry?” it said.
“How…long-does-it-last?” Whoopie said.
“It has lasted, how you calculate, thousands of thousands of days.”
Both of the Lalandians flipped, their tail ends in the air. They stared at each other almost nose to nose. “Many died here, starve and thirst, before we learned the way.”
“Die here,” Mercer said. “People stand here till they die?”
“Not people; not humans. You are the first to be here.”
“You didn’t tell me!”
“No. If I had told you, you would not have brought us out here. These two, John and Whoopie, would have died if they didn’t know the way. We like them.”
“The way?” I said. “That’s what you’re doing now?”
“Yes,” Moe said, and the two of them started moving away, stepping in unison.
“Wait!” Whoopie said. “We can’t…we can’t walk with our butts in the air!”
“I think it’s not the way you do it,” Moe said. “It’s who you are with. This is my mate,” and he said her name, which sounded like a digestive emanation.
“None of us have mates,” Whoopie said. “Not here.”
“It only has to be someone you are…attracted to? You concentrate on him. If he is also attracted to you, you can both walk away.”
“Oh my God,” Whoopie said, and half turned toward me. “You don’t like women.”
“I’m here,” Mercer said, tattoos and jowls and all. Her complexion turned a little grey, and she shook her head slowly.
“Whoopie,” I said softly. “Look at me.” With a huge effort I stepped around, facing away from the statues. She took two steps toward me.
I stared into her blue eyes, so striking against her dark skin. Soft skin that I had to admit I’d wanted to touch. Her mouth opened slightly in an expression of surprise. “There’s one woman I do like.”
“You have a funny way of expressing it.” Our faceplates clicked together, and she giggled and tried to put her arms around me. It was an awkward gesture in the clumsy suits, but unambiguous. The compulsion was suddenly gone, replaced by a more pleasant feeling. I returned her embrace, and we began to shuffle away.
“How far do we have to go?” I called to the Lalandians.
“Out of sight,” Moe said.
“Wait!” the newsie shouted. “What the hell are we going to do?”
Good point. If I were in her position, I’d be doomed. “How much air do you have?” They each had four hours.
“We can’t carry them,” Whoopie said. “Maybe her, but not him.”
“They might fight it, too.” We whispered out a plan, trying to ignore Mercer’s pleading with the woman, which would have been funny if it weren’t a life-and-death situation.
We wound up waltzing back to the GPV, where we clumsily kicked open the front storage locker. There was a cable attached to a winch there. We managed to detach it and make a loop.
It served as a kind of lasso. We tried it on the woman first, looping it under her arms. She couldn’t cooperate, but she didn’t resist until we actually began to pull. She dug in and tried to stay, but after a couple of tugs she fell down. We dragged her as fast as we could, back down the rise that led to the ledge. After a couple of hundred meters, we reached the two Lalandians, and she said she was okay. Whoopie and I were free to look at something besides each other.
“You’re a funny guy,” she mumbled, looking at her feet.
“Just versatile,” I said, though it was not something I’d known about myself. I felt intensely confused, but not unhappy.
“So now you go back and get Mr. Popularity?” the newsie said.
We looked at each other and laughed. “Don’t even think it,” Whoopie said.
He was a little more trouble, heavy and ornery. Once he was safe, we still had to go back and collect four air tanks.
Of course we still weren’t completely out of trouble. The Lalandians said they thought our radios would work when we were sufficiently far away, but then they didn’t really know anything about radios; they were no more or less magical than the statues.
We followed our GPV’s tracks back to where we’d lost control of it, and a little way beyond, all of our radios started chattering. They had observed some of what was happening from orbit, and the commander of the Marine detachment was about to send an assault team after us, assuming the helicopter had been hijacked, though by whom and for what reason was not clear.
Whoopie and I were glad to leave the service the next year, resisting a fairly sizable reenlistment bonus in exchange for a degree of sanity. Ten years later, we’re still together, with a normal kid and fairly normal jobs. As far as we know, the Lalande Effect is still a mystery.
In a universe full of mysteries, some of them wonderful.
(2004)
Heartwired
Margaret Stevenson walked up the two flights and came to a plain wooden door with the nameplate relationships, ltd. She hesitated, then knocked. Someone buzzed her in.
She didn’t know what to expect, but the simplicity surprised her: no receptionist, no outer office, no sign of a laboratory. Just a middle-aged man, conservative business suit, head fashionably shaved, sitting behind an uncluttered desk. He stood and offered his hand. “Mrs. Stevenson? I’m Dr. Damien.”
She sat on the edge of the chair he offered.
“Our service is guaranteed,” he said without preamble, “but it is neither inexpensive nor permanent.”
“You wouldn’t want it to be permanent,” she said.
“No.” He smiled. “Life would be pleasant, but neither of you would accomplish much.” He reached into a drawer and pulled out a single sheet of paper and a pen. “Nevertheless, I must ask you to sign this waiver, which relieves our corporation of responsibility for anything you or he may do or say for the duration of the effect.”
She picked up the waiver and scanned it. “When we talked on the phone, you said that there would be no physical danger and no lasting physical effect.”
“That’s part of the guarantee.”
She put the paper down and picked up the pen, but hesitated. “How, exactly, does it work?”
He leaned back, lacing his fingers together over his abdomen, and looked directly at her. After a moment, he said, “The varieties of love are nearly infinite. Every person alive is theoretically able to love every other person alive, and in a variety of ways.”
“Theoretically,” she said.
“In our culture, love between a man and a woman normally goes through three stages: sexual attraction, romantic fascination, and then long-term bonding. Each of them is mediated by a distinct condition of brain chemistry.
“A person may have all three at once, with only one being dominant at any given time. Thus a man might be in love with his wife, and at the same time be infatuated with his mistress, and yet be instantly attracted to any stranger with appropriate physical characteristics.”
“That’s exactly—”
He held up a hand. “I don’t need to know any more than you’ve told me. You’ve been married twenty-five years, you have an anniversary coming up…and you want it to be romantic.”
“Yes.” She didn’t smile. “I know he’s capable of romance.”
“As are we all.” He leaned forward and took two vials from the drawer, a blue one and a pink one. He looked at the blue one. “This is Formula One. It induces the first condition, sort of a Viagra for the mind.”
She closed her eyes and shook her head, almost a shudder. “No. I want the second one.”
“Formula Two.” He slid the pink vial toward her. “You each take approximately half of this, while in each other’s company, and for several days you will be in a state of mu
tual infatuation. You’ll be like kids again.”
She did smile at that. “Whether he knows he’s taken it or not?”
“That’s right. No placebo effect.”
“And there is no Formula Three?”
“No. That takes time, and understanding, and a measure of luck.” He shook his head ruefully and put the blue vial away. “But I think you have that already.”
“We do. The old-married-couple kind.”
“Now, the most effective way of administering the drug is through food or drink. You can put it in a favorite dish, one you’re sure he’ll finish, but only after it’s been cooked. Above a hundred degrees Centigrade, the compound will decompose.”
“I don’t often cook. Could it be a bottle of wine?”
“If you each drink half, yes.”
“I can force myself.” She took up the pen and signed the waiver, then opened her clutch purse and counted out ten hundred-pound notes. “Half now, you said, and half upon satisfaction?”
“That’s correct.” He stood and offered his hand again. “Good luck, Mrs. Stevenson.”
The reader may now imagine any one of nine permutations for this story’s end. In the one the author prefers, they go to a romantic French restaurant, the lights low, the food wonderful, a bottle of good Bordeaux between them.
She excuses herself to go to the ladies’ loo, the vial palmed, and drops her purse. When he leans over to pick it up, she empties the vial into the bottle of wine.
When she returns, she is careful to consume half of the remaining wine, which is not difficult. They are both in an expansive, loving mood, comrades these twenty-five years.
As they finish the bottle, she feels the emotion building in her, doubling and redoubling. She can see the effect on him, as well: his eyes wide and dilated, his face flushed. He loosens his tie as she pats perspiration from her forehead.
It’s all but unbearable! She has to confess, so that he will know there’s nothing physically wrong with him. She takes the empty pink vial from her purse and opens her mouth to explain—
He opens his hand and the empty blue vial drops to the table. He grabs the tablecloth…
They are released on their own recognizance once the magistrate understands the situation.
But they’ll never be served in that restaurant again.
(2005)
Brochure
Who among us is not enriched by a return to our roots? Billions of people and others have gone to great expense and trouble to find their way back—not just to the place where they were born, but to the various worlds to which they can trace their distant ancestors and affines and primary clones.
But not one in a million has gone all the way back.
For many centuries since Old Earth was condemned as officially uninhabitable, it has been sitting unused, a reliquary for archaeologists and historians, and a “worst-case” scenario for terraformers—notoriously, the most unmarketable piece of real estate in Sirius Sector. Now, at the dawn of the 125th century, the Disney-Bertelsmann Consortium is proud to announce that Terra is returning to usefulness, ready to take a new and important place in the human and humanized universe.
(A “century” was once a significant fraction of the human life span, and for the first thirty or so twyops after the discovery of consciousness, centuries were used as a primary chronological unit.)
Beginning at midnight, 1021.9445 Two-Pop, with allowances for relativistic contraction (31 December 12400 Old Style), DBC will be offering monthlong Catastrophe Tours of Old Earth. A multigigacredit undertaking, Catastrophe Tours will thrill humans and others by re-creating the unique sequence of disasters that finally resulted in the Diaspora and Rebirth.
FEEL THE HORROR as trillions of anaerobic microorganisms strangle in an atmosphere that slowly poisons itself with oxygen! DBC’s unique “Time Out” () field compresses centuries into seconds, so that with your own eyes, or similar organs, you can watch the evolution of the tiny creatures who would become the rulers of a transformed planet.
SEE THE TERROR as a mighty asteroid crashes into the Yucatán Peninsula! With DBC’s “Time Out” () field, follow the shock wave in excruciating slow motion, as it circles the planet, destroying thousands of species and paving the way for the temporary primacy of mammals on Earth.
(DBC offers to sufficiently armored species the special option of “surfing” the shock wave; watching in real time as it pulverizes everything in its path. Individuals must be able to withstand impulses greater than one thousand gees and temperatures greater than molten iron.)
For a cooler time, FREEZE YOUR WHATEVER OFF as ice fields expand from the poles nearly to the equator! Again, DBC’s “Time Out” () field speeds up the process so that what was once an excruciating strangulation becomes a breathtaking crystalline transformation.
An optional winter sports package is available for suitably hardy species, although DBC takes no responsibility for your safety. Some of the animals are big, and all of them are hungry.
THRILL TO THE FOUR HORSEMEN Mortality Play as the “human” race, in its primal incarnation, is decimated time and again by war, pestilence, famine, and plague. They aren’t real, of course, by modern standards, but their suffering is real enough!
LAUGH AT THE “FINAL TRUMP”—whose humorous double meaning will be explained—when a combination of ultimate weapons with greed finally ends war and suffering by eliminating nearly all potential victims! Customers with sufficiently developed appreciation of irony, and lovers of symmetry, will be amused by the rightness of the ultimate disappearance of oxygen, and the return of the planet to its original anaerobic owners.
Disclaimer: No advanced life-forms are harmed by this entertainment. The only creatures that still survive on Earth are a few hardy, rapidly mutating species, who thrive on disaster.
(2000)
Out of Phase
Trapped. From the waterfront bar to a crap game to a simpleminded ambush in a dead-end alley.
He didn’t blame them for being angry. His pockets were stuffed with their money, greasy crumpled fives and tens. Two thousand and twenty of their hard-earned dollars, if his memory served him right. And of course it did.
They had supplied three sets of dice—two loaded, one shaved. All three were childishly easy to manipulate. He let them win each throw at first, and then less and less often. Finally, he tested their credulity and emptied their pockets, with ten sevens in a row.
That much had been easy. But now he was in a difficult position. Under the transparent pretext of finding a bigger game, the leader of the gang had steered him into this blind alley, where five others were hiding in ambush.
And now the six were joined in a line, advancing on him, pushing him toward the tall Hurricane fence that blocked the end of the alley.
Jeff started pacing them, walking backwards. Thirty seconds, give or take a little, before he would back into the fence and be caught. Thirty seconds objective…
Jeff froze and did a little trick with his brain. All the energy his strange body produced, except for that fraction needed to maintain human form, was channeled into heightening his sensory perceptions, accelerating his mental processes. He had to find a way out of this dilemma, without exposing his true nature.
The murderous sextet slowed down in Jeff’s frozen eyes as the ratio of subjective to objective time flux increased arithmetically, geometrically, exponentially.
A drop of sweat rolled from the leader’s brow, fell two feet in a fraction of a second, a foot in the next second, an inch in the next, a millimeter, a micron…
Now.
A pity he couldn’t just kill them all, slowly, painfully. Terrible to have artistic responsibility stifled by practical obligations. Such a beautiful composition.
They were frozen in attitudes ranging from the leader’s leering, sadistic anticipation of pleasure (dilettante!), to the little one’s ill-concealed fear of pain, of inflicting pain, to Jimmy’s unthinking, color-blinded compulsion to take apar
t, destroy…ah, Jimmy, slave of entropy, servant of disorder and chaos, I will make of you an epic, a saga.
I would, that is. I could.
But Llarvl said…
That snail. Insensitive brute.
Next time out I’ll get a supervisor who can understand.
But next time out, I’ll be too old.
Even now I can feel it.
Damn that snail!
The ship hovered above a South American plantation. People looked at it and saw only the sky beyond. Radar would never detect it. Only a voodoo priest, in a mushroom trance, felt its presence. He tried to verbalize and died of a cerebral occlusion.
Too quick. Artless.
Llarvl was talking to him “Bluntly, I wish we didn’t have to use you, Braxn.” His crude race communicated vocally, and the unmodulated, in-and-out-of-phase thought waves washed a gravelly ebb and flow of pain through Braxn’s organ of communication. He stored the pain, low intensity that it was, for contemplation at a more satisfactory time.
He repeated: “If only we had brought someone else of your sort, besides your father, of course. Shape-changers are not such a rarity.” He plucked out a cilium in frustration, but of course felt no pain. Braxn was too close; sucked it in.
“A G’drellian poet. A poet of pain. Of all the useless baggage to drag around on a survey expedition…” He sighed and ground his shell against the wall. “But we have no choice. Only two bipeds aboard the ship, and neither of them is even remotely mammalian. And the natives of this planet are acutely xenophobic. Hell, they’re omniphobic. Even harder to take than you, worthy poet.
“But this is the biggest find of the whole trip! The crucial period of transition—they may be on the brink of civilization; still animals, but rapidly advancing. Think of it! In ten or twenty generations they’ll be human, and seek us, as most do. We’ve met thousands of civilized races, more thousands of savage ones; but this is the first we’ve found in transition. Ethnology, alien psychology, everything”—he shuddered—“even your people’s excuse for art, will benefit immeasurably.”