He backs away, fearful, and you offer Marisol your hand. “Dance with me,” you say in a voice like the wind whipping through a dead man’s bones.
“Ellis,” she breathes, and then she’s in your arms. Other cold, pale arms reach out behind you, grasping William tight; he yelps, but they yank him away and he’s swallowed by the crush of bodies in their best, ragtag finery. You catch sight of Samuel, but he, too, is pulled into the masses before he can reach you. Dance, you think viciously, and they will, clasped tight in desert magic, until their bodies are torn to pieces.
Marisol is the one who taught you how to dance, on the groaning floorboards of her tiny room, and you hold her close as you sway to the music. She smells like she always does in the evenings, like perfume and dust. She can’t take her eyes off of you, and you wonder what you look like to her, whether the glamor cast over the miners has lent you your old appearance back, or if you have been transformed into something wholly different.
“Let’s get out of here,” you whisper, and Marisol mouths Yes. Grasping her tight, you elbow your way through the crowd of people reuniting with their family members, their brothers, their husbands. Some have taken to dancing again, those lost to them clutched tight.
You glance over your shoulder for Madam Lettie, but she’s standing stock still, gaze locked on the figure of a man who had joined you halfway across the flats, rising from the shade of a pair of yucca trees. As he draws closer, Lettie’s face fills with impossible hope.
“Robert,” she sobs, dashing forward and holding him close. His hair is the same color as yours, red like the earth, veined with silver, and his skin is dark as the dust. He holds her gently, his arms around her waist. Whatever words they have for each other are swallowed by the sound of the band and the crush of bodies around them.
Marisol’s slipper is lost in the rush, but the two of you flee from the lights and whirling skirts into the dust outside, the starlight bearing down on you like a thousand icy stares. Her hand in yours is the warmest thing you’ve ever touched.
“Ellis, you crazy bastard. They told me you were dead.” She laughs, too wild, tinged with grief. “Why didn’t you come back sooner?”
You are silent, turning her hands over in yours. “They weren’t wrong,” you say at last.
“I don’t understand,” says Marisol, but you can see by the sinking hope in her eyes that she does.
“I did die.” She shakes her head vigorously. “I’m still dead, Marisol. But I couldn’t rest without saying goodbye to you.” It’s mostly true, and it will do for now.
“I’m sorry, Ellis.” She’s crying, and your heart sinks. Marisol rarely cries, and seeing her waste water on you is more than you can take. “I should have stopped them from taking you, I should have fought harder—”
“This isn’t your fault,” you say into her hair. “Not at all.” A gentle tug of your power, and your bone and brittlebrush horse trots up to meet you. You drape your glittering coat over its back to make a seat for Marisol as she watches, unable to keep the fear and awe from her face.
“I didn’t know you could do that.”
You smile crookedly. “There are a lot of new things about me now. Come, get on.”
She swings up on the mount and scoots forward, holding her hand out to help you up. But you don’t take it. Instead, you reach into your pocket and press her stained red bandanna into her palm. It’s heavy with coins taken from the bodies of the dead, enough to buy a one-way train ticket out east. You know; you counted it yourself.
“No,” she breathes.
“You need to let me go,” you say gently.
“I can’t.” She grabs for you; you step back out of her reach. “Ellis, no! Get on the goddamn horse! We’re in this together, or not at all!”
“I can’t go with you,” you say. “I wish I could. God, I wish I could. But I belong to the desert now. I can’t leave.”
“Then I won’t either.”
“Don’t be a fool,” you snap, and she recoils. “Marisol, one of us needs to escape this place. And I can’t any more.” You gentle your voice. “Please.”
In the end, you give her your boots to wear in place of her single slipper. Your dark, naked feet stand out against the sand, but whether the sand is bearable because of the nighttime cool or because you no longer feel the desert’s burn, you don’t know.
Marisol promises to buy a ticket, but she also promises to come back for you when she can. You hope she will forget the second promise, but you know her too well to believe it.
“I love you,” she says, her eyes hard. “That’s the only reason I’m leaving. For you, Ellis. If you forget everything else, don’t forget that.” She digs her heels into the horse’s sides and it gallops away, your coat glittering under her skirt as she rides east.
“Well done,” murmurs the preacher man. He stands behind you, his coat flapping in the growing wind.
Well done, echoes the desert.
“Keep her safe,” you murmur. “Both of you, until she passes out of your realms.”
We know you will, says your mother, and the preacher man nods in agreement.
You watch Marisol’s horse until she passes out of sight, but you can still feel each hoofbeat strike against the baked clay, a staccato at the edge of your consciousness. You flex your fingers and look over your shoulder at the saloon. The windows are bright, and the chatter and music leaks from the doorway.
Nothing is permanent, but maybe Marisol was right. Maybe seeing a miracle and the ones you love, even for just one night, for one last time, will be enough.
The desert hums in your throat, and the language of the dead things coats your teeth. Back, then, towards the bluffs and the mesas, to the wilds where the coyotes cry over the yucca and the bodies of fallen men. Your kingdom lies out there among the wide, desolate plains, waiting for you to lay claim to its whispering bones.
The rising sun sears long red marks into the cloudy sky, and behind, you can hear the dead dancing themselves into a frenzy, long-lost miners with their wives and friends held close, spinning inhuman wild, as if afraid a spell will break.
You straighten your borrowed shirt and begin walking. Overhead, the sky rumbles with the promise of rain.
NEBULA AWARD WINNER
NOVELETTE
THE LONG FALL UP
WILLIAM LEDBETTER
William Ledbetter has more than fifty speculative fiction stories and nonfiction articles published in markets such as Asimov’s, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Analog, Jim Baen’s Universe, Escape Pod, Baen.com, Daily Science Fiction, the SFWA blog, and Ad Astra. He’s been a space and technology geek since childhood and spent most of his non-writing career in the aerospace and defense industry. He administers the Jim Baen Memorial Short Story Award contest for Baen Books and the National Space Society, is a member of SFWA, the National Space Society of North Texas, a Launch Pad Astronomy workshop graduate, and is the Science Track coordinator for the Fencon convention. He lives near Dallas with his wife, a needy dog, and two spoiled cats.
Like millions on Earth and aboard the Jīnshān Space Station, I watched Veronica Perez every day, but unlike those other spectators I already knew how her story would end. She disgusted me and I hated her actions, but I was curious about how it started. Newshounds had already dug up every detail of her past, from an interview with her first boyfriend at age thirteen to her biology doctorate dissertation only fifteen years later, but none of that revealed the true person.
As I ran through my systems check and prepped my ship for extended acceleration, I watched her first broadcast again, but this time with sound muted. I noted tiny movements of her eyes and mouth, the nervous way her hands twitched, and the slight wrinkles between her eyes. She clearly believed what she was saying, but how could she be so heartless? How could she doom her own child to such a life? Even after a third viewing, I still wanted to scream in her face.
“Play it again, Huizhu.” I said to the ship’s AI. “With sound this time.?
??
“My name is Veronica Perez,” she said. “I’m outbound on an elliptical orbit that will bring me back to the Mountain one year from now and I’m six months pregnant.”
She was so haughty, so proud of her crime. It sickened me. I’d been hired and trained to protect Jīnshān Station—or “the Mountain” as she had so casually called it. I found the casual term disrespectful. Jīnshān Station was a Bernal sphere habitat parked at Lagrange Point Five with a population of over twenty-seven thousand. My parents and sister lived there, so I embraced my job eagerly. I was also prepared to kill to protect my family, though I’d never expected my foe to be a pregnant woman.
My status board turned green, indicating the crèche was ready for me to enter. “Open the hatch, Huizhu.”
The ship’s AI obeyed without comment and I peeled off my clothes as the crèche hissed open.
“No father acted as my accomplice,” the woman continued. “I used a robotic device to implant the fertilized egg two days after my acceleration burn, so the child has gestated entirely in a zero-gravity environment.”
I stepped into the warm acceleration jelly and began attaching the unpleasant wires and tubes necessary for an extended burn.
“She’s cold-blooded,” I said aloud.
Huizhu said nothing. That bothered me.
We were told that ship’s cortexes were not true AIs, but if we couldn’t tell the difference, did it matter? After two years of deep deployment, Huizhu had become my only friend and companion, yet times like this reminded me she was just another tool.
I closed the crèche lid then sealed the close-fitting helmet, wincing at the sting when interface posts pricked my shaved scalp. The helmet visor flickered to life with status and information feeds. Two small windows opened, one displaying an interactive diagram of my intercept course and the other showing the young woman still spouting her obviously well-rehearsed declamation.
“I’m willingly breaking the law and prepared to accept my punishment to prove that healthy children can be produced in null gravity.”
She used the word “produced” as if she were discussing industrial output at a corporate board meeting. I had seen the videos and pictures of children gestated in zero gee. They were twisted and tortured innocents. They were the reason laws had been passed.
Then Perez got to the part that bothered me most.
“Mom and Dad? If you’re watching, I’m sorry.” She paused, emotion showing in her face for the first time. “I know you won’t understand this and will be disappointed in me, but you’re going to have a grandson. He’ll just have to spend his entire life in microgravity.”
Not only was she creating a deformed person, but even intended to saddle her parents with the child’s care while she rotted in prison. My older sister had requested a child permit six years ago and was still waiting. Population on Jīnshān was strictly controlled for obvious reasons, but this woman had deliberately jumped the queue.
As the gel finished filling my acceleration crèche, I instructed Huizhu to fire the main thrusters. Even with the cushioning, I drifted almost back to the rear wall before the gel compressed enough to stop me.
Perez assumed pursuit would come from Jīnshān, where even the fastest ships like mine couldn’t reach her in less than six months, but I was part of a picket line and I was ahead of her. Officially an asteroid defense, in reality existed for situations just like this. I would intercept her ship in sixty-one days.
She would see me coming, probably during my deceleration burn, but if she ran she’d be under gee forces and could never claim that the baby developed in a full zero-gravity environment. I still had plenty of time to carry out my assignment and prevent her from giving birth.
INTERCEPT: 52 DAYS, 12 HOURS, 4 MINUTES
“Play it again with sound, Huizhu.”
Her second video flickered on my visor, then started again.
“I’ve read the messages sent my way and I assure you I’m not a monster, nor am I trying to produce one. My child might have slightly longer arms, legs, and fingers than one born on Earth, but hasn’t humanity finally learned to accept and embrace physical differences? The important thing is that he’ll be just as human as your children.”
Pleading in her voice. She didn’t want them to hate her son. Perhaps this was more than a political statement after all?
“There is no genetic manipulation, only cellular adjustments that started immediately and will continue through his entire life, but every human in space relies on machines to stay alive and healthy. We build space stations, spaceships, and protective suits. My body is filled with nanomachines that repair radiation damage, prevent optical degeneration, and address dozens of other health issues associated with null gravity. My child will simply have all of these from the beginning.”
I switched off the sound again and embraced the quiet inside my nested mechanical aids of mask, crèche, and ship. Her words held a grain of truth. Not only did we need machines to survive in space, but aside from those who lived inside Jīnshān’s centrifugal gravity, none of us would ever walk the surface of Earth again without mechanical help. Still, she was having a child, not conducting a science experiment.
INTERCEPT: 47 DAYS, 2 HOURS, 51 MINUTES
After only fourteen days, an intrepid astronomer spotted my drive plume, calculated a trajectory, and made the information public. He’d even been able to identify my ship type by characterizing the exhaust spectrum and determined it was human-rated. The entire solar system knew I was on an intercept course with Perez’s ship.
“Have we received new orders yet?” I asked Huizhu.
“No new communications from base, sir.”
“They can’t expect me to kill her now—the public will be watching. The Russians will use it as an excuse to embargo the station. Nearly half of the station investors are Americans, but the United States government will still call it an atrocity.”
Or was Jīnshān beyond having to play the game of international politics and public opinion? The station was an economic powerhouse and a true mountain of gold for the investors. Housing humanity’s fourth-largest economy, it had a firm grip on cislunar space and control of all off-planet commerce. Every asteroid mined, ship built, or powersat switched on paid Jīnshān well for the privilege.
“Do you think carrying out your orders will be an atrocity?” Huizhu said.
“Why do you ask that?”
“I don’t understand how killing Veronica Perez and her child puts Jīnshān Corporation in a morally superior position.”
“I suppose it would save the child a lifetime of pain and suffering. It would also be an example to others who might be willing to commit the same crime.”
“It makes no logical sense,” Huizhu said. “Children born with physical or mental disabilities on Earth are not euthanized. Legal punishment for breaking the zero-gee child law is imprisonment, not death. Some people will agree with a decision to terminate Veronica Perez and her child, but many others will not. Why risk turning public and government opinions against Jīnshān Station when taking no action would cost them nothing?”
“I don’t know,” I said. She was right. My employers obviously had reasons for taking such a risk, but I didn’t see them. Huizhu had voiced serious questions that had not even occurred to me. A chill made my skin prickle in the warm jelly.
When the message finally came, it merely reaffirmed my original orders, but my employers were being quite cautious. Even though sent via encrypted laser communications, the instructions themselves would also be opaque to anyone who caught and decrypted them. Intercept Perez. Use Plan 47. Innocuous as that message might look to outsiders, their intent was perfectly clear to me.
As an asteroid defense picket ship, my hold contained many things capable of redirecting big rocks, like surface-mountable pusher rockets and hyper-velocity missiles, but Plan 47 required I use a device that had only one purpose: to cripple spacecraft by shutting down their critical systems. The FL239 int
erdiction device utilized a small nuclear detonation to pump a directed EMP generator. Even military-hardened electronics couldn’t survive the pulse within optimum range. Technically the device was developed to enable apprehension and boarding of criminal vehicles, but since the pulse was powerful enough to fry spacesuit electronics as well as the ship’s life support, it was a death sentence for anyone aboard.
Not for the first time since I’d received my orders I felt uneasy and had doubts. Most of all I wondered why they’d sent me. There were several robotic craft nearby that could have accelerated faster and arrived sooner.
INTERCEPT: 41 DAYS, 7 HOURS, 11 MINUTES
I received my first message from Veronica Perez. It was a tight beam, meant for me alone.
“Can we talk?” Her face was drawn and pale. She looked tired and perhaps upset.
“Huizhu, please record and prepare to send the following message via tight beam. My name is Jager Jin. I am—”
“I cannot send your message,” Huizhu interrupted.
“What?”
“I’ve been ordered to allow no communications from this ship except to approved channels at Jīnshān Station.”
A heat grew in my belly and crept up to my face, making the mask suddenly uncomfortable.
“Why?”
“They gave no reason. My response-to-orders protocol is detailed in document 556845.67FG. Would you like me to open that file for you?”
“No!” I snapped. This made less and less sense.
Veronica’s next message came an hour later and she was a little more composed. Her eyes were harder and her expression intense. “I don’t know why you won’t respond. I just want to talk. I’d like to know your true intentions. The Mountain claims you were sent to render assistance should I need it. I don’t believe that.”
She paused and her gaze wavered for a second. “If you’ve been sent to kill me and my baby I can’t stop you, but at least have the decency to face me.”