Year's Best Science Fiction 01 # 1984 Read online

  Thereafter he rejoined Lyndale in the effort to establish the parameters of the situation.

  “M-m, well, see here, what say we check out the magnetic properties of such an object? Can your data banks supply what we need for computing that, Ellen?”

  “Good idea. I’d better give Ram Krishnamurti a buzz. He’s our resident mathematical genius, and I suspect we’re going to come up with a function that’ll be a bitch to integrate—”

  The hours passed. They lost themselves.

  “I think we’re on the right track, Jerry, but our notion’s no use until we’ve made it quantitative. If the jets were involved, that’s your baby.”

  “And yours. We’ll have to write the field equations—”

  It was a hunt, a creating, a communion.

  At the end, exhausted and exalted, they looked into each other’s countenances while Ashe hoarsely recorded a summary.

  “The trouble is nobody’s fault. It was unforeseeable, in the absence of precise knowledge we didn’t have, knowledge that it was our whole purpose to gather. We believe the following is the basic explanation.

  “Being mainly liquid metal, Vulcan is a conductor. Orbiting, it cuts the solar magnetic field, and so generates eddy currents. The field is ordinarily weak at that distance from the poles, and there was no reason to suppose the inductive effect would be more than incidental. However, it turns out that a number of other factors come into play, orders of magnitude stronger than expected and, incidentally, accounting for the observed orbital decay.

  “Solar storms produce violent local fluctuations in the field, which are carried outward by solar wind. The asteroid rotates remarkably fast; moreover, this close to a sun that no longer acts as a point mass, it is also precessing and nutating at high rates. The fluid mechanics of that are such as to create turbulences in the circulation of molten material, which in turn are reinforced by reflections off the solid slag, in changeable patterns too complex to be calculated by us. Accordingly, powerful and rapidly varying currents are set up. The asteroid is massive enough that these would dwindle only slowly if left alone—and they are not left alone, but instead are reinforced by every shift in the ambient field. Thus they generate magnetism of their own, of significant intensity at considerable distances from Vulcan. Naturally, this field declines on a steep curve. In effect, the asteroid is surrounded by an irregular and variable shell of force with quite a sharp boundary.

  “When Kittiwake crossed that border, the ion jets were thrown out of proper collimation. It was not by much, but sufficed for a torque to appear. The sunshield and its countermass shifted out of position, exposing the spacecraft to full solar irradiation. What harm was done before this was corrected is still uncertain.

  “But the spacecraft did maneuver into Vulcan orbit, where it remains pending further assessments. It is carrying out the planned studies wherever possible—”

  An alarm shrilled, a set of lights flashed red: a cry for help, across fifty-five million kilometers.

  INPUT [navigational, interpreted]: Drifting inward, accelerating as the asteroid’s feeble pull intensifies with nearness.

  MAGNETIC SURGE

  Control motor malfunctions and shield moves aside again. A blast of energy.

  COMPUTE COMPENSATING VECTORS FOR INTERIOR GYROSCOPES

  INPUT [observational data, interpreted]: Spectrum indicates approximately 75% Fe, 30% Ni, 6% C, 3%

  CANCEL. Does not correspond to possibility.

  MONITOR INSTRUMENTATION

  COMPARE ANALOGOUS PRIOR SITUATIONS

  I prowled the red murk of Titan. The aerodynamic system to which I was coupled ceased to function. I went into glide mode and signaled the ground. Wanda took control, to pilot me down to safety. She saw through my optics, felt through my equilibrators, and what she did, what she was in that moment, entered my data bank, became one with the program that was me. Hark back to how she guided my wildly bucking hull. Be Wanda once more.

  FAILURE OF GYROSCOPIC COMPENSATION

  COMPUTER MALFUNCTION

  INPUT: A veering, a spin, end over end. Heat soars. Electrons break free of all restraint.

  CALL FOR ASSISTANCE

  MEMORY: The transmission lag. Survival. How Wanda laid hand on me.

  Her presence and the boss and whirl downward crack-crack-crack bzzz whirr-r the hand slips

  burns

  crumbles

  FAILURE OF MEMORY

  LOGIC CIRCUITS: Evaluate. Help.

  COMPUTE xvzwandajkll5734 SANITY IS 3.141592777777777

  The mountains of Mercury were not so stark as the face that Ashe turned toward Lyndale.

  “The software’s wrecked,” he said, flat-voiced, like a man too newly wounded to feel pain. She saw the electronic equipment crowding tall around him and had an illusion that it had begun to press inward. A ventilator whimpered. “Another unpredictable high EMF, another exposure, and this one too great, too prolonged. Temperature—secondary radiation from particles that struck the hull … . I’ve got to abort the mission.”

  Her hand lifted, as if of itself, as if to fend off a blow. “Is the system actually that vulnerable?” she protested, already conscious of the futility. “Why, in early days probes skimmed the solar atmosphere.”

  “Oh, yes, the spacecraft carcass is sound, including the standard programs. But I’ve told you about the special software, the accumulation of years which makes Kittiwake more than a probe—intricate, sensitive; encoded on the molecular level and below; quantum resonances—It’s been disrupted.”

  “What will you do?”

  “Override the autopilot and bring her back. Fast, under full acceleration, before worse happens. Repair may yet be possible. Unlikely, I admit. But we won’t know, we’re bound to lose everything, if we don’t try.”

  She gulped and nodded. “Certainly. We’ll organize … a later expedition … taking advantage of this experience … . Let me call, oh, Jane Megarry. She’s our best remote controller, I think.”

  “No!” He swung back toward the console. Green highlights played over the bones in his countenance. “I’ll do the job myself. Just bring coffee, sandwiches, and stimulol.”

  Lyndale half rose. “But Jerry, you’ve been here for hours, you’re worn down to a thread, and directing will be hard, over those distances and with an unknown amount of crippling.”

  “At full thrust, I can have her back within twenty-four hours. And under way, who could ask her what’s wrong except me? Get out!” Ashe cried. “Leave me alone!”

  Abruptly Lyndale believed she understood. Breath left her. She stumbled from the room.

  INPUT: ZXVMNRRR

  COMPUTE: 77777777777

  whirling whirling whirling

  “Kitty, are you there? Can you answer?”

  “Boss, Wanda, no no no, remembrance, too long, gongola … .” TRANSMISSION TIME: Eternal.

  “Kitty, I’m going to try something desperate, a shock signal, hang on, Kitty.”

  THUNDER FIRE DARKNESS

  “Are you there, Kitty?”

  “Ngngngngngng, baba, roll, pitch, yaw, gone gone gone gone gone gone gone.”

  TRANSMISSION TIME: Null, for all is null.

  “I’m shutting you off, Kitty. Good night.”

  OBLIVION

  Director Sanjo’s office reflected his public personality, everything minimal, ordered, disciplined, the thermostat set low; a Hokusai print hung opposite the desk, but it was of a winter scene.

  Yet genuine concern dwelt in his voice: “Do you mean that Ashe went up to Regulus as soon as his scout was in the cargo bay?”

  Lyndale raised her weary head. “Yes. He more or less browbeat Captain Nguma into letting him commander the shuttleboat.”

  “But after his time on duty—he must be completely worn out.”

  “If he were anybody else, I’d say he was dead on his feet. But he isn’t anybody else. He can’t rest. Not till he’s finished.”

  Sanjo frowned. “Finished? What do you mean? Wha
t remains for him other than a return to Earth?”

  “He … first he wants to bring the scouting program down for … examination.”

  Sanjo’s scowl deepened. “That doesn’t make sense. We haven’t a proper computer lab. What can he do? Earth is the place for a study of that material. Ashe risks distorting it worse; and it is, after all, no more his property than the boat is.” Lyndale stiffened. “The Syndicate necessarily gives him broad discretion.”

  “Yes-s.” The man hesitated. “I merely wonder if fatigue may not have blunted his judgment. There is probably much to learn from analysis of that software.”

  Lyndale’s tone roughened. “Uh-huh. Putting it through its paces, over and over and over.”

  Sanjo peered closer at her. “The matter concerns you too, Ellen. You want another Vulcan mission, no? From this failure they can discover how to succeed.”

  “I think we know enough already to take due precautions.”

  “Using the same program, appropriately reinstructed?”

  Lyndale shrugged. Of course the Syndicate had copies, updated after each flight. Kittiwake’s entire existence prior to the Mercury trip could be plugged back into the machinery. “Depends on what Jerry Ashe decides. He may refuse to make a second attempt, in which case we’ll have to get somebody else. But I am hoping he’ll agree.” She looked at her watch. “Maybe I can persuade him. He ought to be landing shortly. Will you excuse me, please?”

  Sanjo’s gaze followed her out the door. He kept his thoughts to himself.

  A fifty-centimeter carboplast sphere with a few electrical inlets contained Kittiwake’s uniqueness. Ashe cradled it in his arms. Sometimes he murmured to it.

  Lyndale awaited him at the elevator gate. Otherwise the corridor was empty and only the moving air made any sound. At this point of its daily chemical cycle, its odor recalled smoke along the Kentucky hills in October.

  “Hi,” she said quietly, into his haggardness. “How’re you doing?”

  His words grated: “I function. See here, I explained before going aloft that I’ll require use of the electronics laboratory. Not for long, but I must not be interrupted.”

  “Why?” she demanded. “You never made that clear.”

  Now his answer lurched, like the feet of a man about to fall down at the end of his trail, fall down and sleep. “Certain studies. Of what may have gone awry. I want to do them while the facts are fresh in my mind. Remember, I have a special feeling about this that nobody else can ever have.”

  “Yes,” she said, “you do.” She took his arm. “Okay, I’ve arranged it. We’ll have the place to ourselves.”

  He grew taut beneath her hand. “We? No, I told you, I can’t have interference.”

  “I think you can use some help, though.” Her steadiness astonished her. “Or at least somebody who cares, to stand by while you do what you’ve got to do; and later join you in facing the music. Facing it down.”

  “What?”

  She urged him forward. He came along. “We can get away with it,” she said, “if we stay in control of ourselves. We’ll have made a blunder. Not unnatural, under these extraordinary circumstances. It won’t destroy our careers.”

  He kept silence until they were in the laboratory and she had closed the door. Beyond surrounding apparatus, a viewscreen gave an image of the hell that was Mercury’s day. Shakily careful, he put the sphere down on a workbench. Then he turned to her and gripped her shoulders with fingers that bruised.

  “Why are you doing this, Ellen? What’s it to you?”

  She bore her pain and confronted his. “What you let slip earlier,” she answered. “But do you honestly believe that program, when it’s activated—that it’s aware? Alive?”

  “I don’t know.” He released her. “I only know it’s all there’s left of Wanda.” He stared downward. “You see, I strapped her body to a signal rocket and sent it into the planetary atmosphere. She became a shooting star. But everything she and I had done was in this casket of code.” He stroked it.

  “Replacements exist.”

  “Oh, yes, and I’ll be using them. But this one is hurt, deranged, alone in the dark. Shall I let them rouse it back on Earth and take it through its madness once more, twice, a hundred times, for the sake of a little wretched information? Or shall I wipe it clean?”

  “And give her peace. Yes. I understand.” Lyndale picked up the sphere. “Come, let’s do it, you and I. Afterward we can rest.”

  HOWARD WALDROP

  Man-Mountain Gentian

  Already a Legend in His Own Time (probably the only person alive, for instance, ever to act out on stage all of the old Horror Movies of the ’50s), Howard Waldrop has perhaps the wildest and most fertile imagination of any SF writer since R.A. Lafferty. Like Lafferty, Waldrop is known for his strong shaggy humor, offbeat erudition, and bizarre fictional juxtapositions. In the past, he has given us a first-rate SF story about dodos (“The Ugly Chickens”), a tale set in an alternate world where Eisenhower and Patton are famous jazz musicians and Elvis Presley is a state senator (“Ike at the Mike”), a story in which the Marx Brothers and Laurel and Hardy travel back in time to attempt to prevent the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly (“Save a Place in the Lifeboat for Me”), and a stylish and meticulously-researched fantasy in which Izaak Walton goes fishing in the Slough of Despond with John Bunyan. (“God’s Hooks”). To this rather odd list must now be added the droll and delightful saga of Man-Mountain Gentian, a different kind of Sumo Wrestler …

  Born in Huston, Mississippi, Waldrop now lives in Austin, Texas, where (along with Bruce Sterling, Leigh Kennedy, Lewis Shiner, and others) he is a member of the well-known Turkey City Writers Workshop. He has sold short fiction to markets as diverse as Omni, Analog, Playboy, Universe, Crawdaddy, New Dimensions, Shayol, and Zoo World. His story “The Ugly Chickens” won both the Nebula and the World Fantasy Award in 1981. His first novel, written in collaboration with fellow Texan Jake Saunders, was The Texas-Israeli War: 1999. His first solo novel, Them Bones, will be published in 1984 as part of the new Ace Specials line.

  Just after the beginning of the present century, it was realized that some of the wrestlers were throwing their opponents from the ring without touching them.”—Ichinaga Naya, Zen-Sumo: Sport and Ritual, Kyoto, All-Japan Zen-Sumo Association Books, 2014

  It was the fourteenth day of the January Tokyo tournament. Seated with the other wrestlers, Man-Mountain Gentian watched as the next match began. Ground Sloth Ikimoto was taking on Killer Kudzu. They entered the tamped-earth ring and began their shikiris.

  Ground Sloth, a sumotori of the old school, had changed over from traditional to Zen-sumo four years before. He weighed one hundred eighty kilos in his mawashi. He entered at the white-tassle salt corner. He clapped his huge hands, rinsed his mouth, threw salt, rubbed his body with tissue paper, then began his high leg lifts, stamping his feet, his hands gripping far down his calves. The ring shook with each stamp. All the muscles rippled on his big frame. His stomach, a flesh-colored boulder, shook and vibrated.

  Killer Kudzu was small and thin, weighing barely over ninety kilos. On his forehead was the tattoo of his homeland, the People’s Republic of China, one large star and four smaller stars blazing in a constellation. He also went into his ritual shikiri, but as he clapped he held in one hand a small box, ten centimeters on a side, showing his intention to bring it into the match. Sometimes these were objects for meditation, sometimes favors from male or female lovers, sometimes no one knew what. The only rule was that they could not be used as weapons.

  The wrestlers were separated from the onlookers by four clear walls and a roof of plastic. Over this hung the traditional canopy and tassles, symbolizing heaven and the four winds.

  Through the plastic walls ran a mesh of fine wiring, connected to a six-volt battery next to the north-side judge. This small charge was used to contain the pushes of the wrestlers and to frustrate help from outside.

  A large number of 600x slow-motion vide
o cameras were placed strategically around the auditorium to be used by the judges to replay the action if necessary.

  Killer Kudzu had placed the box on his side of the line. He returned to his corner and threw more salt onto the ground, part of the ritual purification ceremony.

  Ground Sloth Ikimoto stamped once more, twice, went to his line, and settled into position like a football lineman, legs apart, knuckles to the ground. His nearly bare buttocks looked like giant rocks. Killer Kudzu finished his shikiri and squatted at his line, where he settled his hand near the votive box and glared at his opponent.

  The referee, in his ceremonial robes, had been standing to one side during the preliminaries. Now he came to a position halfway between the wrestlers, his war fan down. He leaned away from the two men, left leg back to one side as if ready to run. He stared at the midpoint between the two and flipped his fan downward.

  Instantly sweat sprang to their foreheads and shoulders, their bodies rippled as if pushing against great unmoving weights, their toes curled into the clay of the ring. The two of them stayed tensely immobile on their respective marks.

  Killer Kudzu’s neck muscles strained. With his left hand he reached and quickly opened the votive box.

  Man-Mountain Gentian and the other wrestlers on the east side of the arena drew in their breath.

  Ground Sloth Ikimoto was a vegetarian and always had been. In training for traditional sumo, he had shunned the chunko-nabe, the communal stew of fish, chicken, meat, eggs, onions, cabbage, carrots, turnips, sugar, and soy sauce.

  Traditional sumotori ate as much as they could hold twice a day, and their weight gain was tremendous.

  Ikimoto had instead trained twice as hard, eating only vegetables, starches, and sugars. Meat and eggs had never once touched his lips.

  What Killer Kudzu brought out of the box was a cheeseburger. With one swift movement he bit into it only half a meter from Ground Sloth’s face.