Clarkesworld: Year Five (Clarkesworld Anthology), page 32
The octopus did not answer. She could not speak. Yet he knew, because he was what he was, that she understood what he was. She was not a red peacock or a black flower, yet she was, in a similar way, a new thing. Or an old thing, taking advantage of a new opportunity. It did not matter. Of such opportunities, embraced and exploited, were new things born.
One of the mother octopus’s wet, attenuated tentacles curled over the edge of the broken glass, twitching slightly. Nodding, Death touched this. A moment later the octopus turned gray and dropped into the water. The tank roiled with movement as her children swarmed in for a last loving taste of her.
The small octopus that had leapt out of the water, and which had continued to cling to the glass, observing, while Death killed its mother, remained where it was. Death nodded to it, solemn, then turned to go.
Movement caught his eye. The small octopus had begun to scurry up toward the hole in the glass. Death stopped.
“No,” he said, recalling that its mother had not come ashore ’til dusk, with the tide. “Wait until morning, near dawn. Bring water with you.”
The baby octopus stopped, its sides heaving with the effort to breathe out of the water. He had no idea whether it understood him. If it did, it would wait, and have that much better a chance of surviving the trek to the ocean. Perhaps a few of its siblings would attempt and survive the journey too, and in turn they would pass on the necessary skill, and the intelligence to use it, to the young who came after them. And in time, with luck and other opportunities . . .
It was how people had begun. It was how all new things began. He understood this, the life and death of species, as he had always understood the life and death of individuals. But perhaps he had been too preoccupied with the latter, as a result failing to notice the former.
The little octopus detached itself from the side of the tank and dropped back into the water, darting in for its own share of the mother’s corpse. Death felt himself ignored and forgotten—but that was all right. The young did not often think about Death, but Death was no less eternal for their disinterest.
He smiled with the realization that some concepts would always be the same, no matter who conceptualized them. Still . . . lifting his hand, he contemplated the shape and structure of tentacles. They would be very versatile, he decided, though they would take some getting used to.
Then he turned and headed for home.
A few days later, Death went to Union Square. He walked over to the worshippers on the south-end steps, and asked them what to do.
“Just . . . think about the one you’re trying to help,” said the Dragon King, who had been looking at him oddly since his arrival. “That’s all any of us really needs, y’know. But if you don’t mind me saying so, buddy, I never expected to see you here. I figured—” He paused, abruptly looking embarrassed. “Well, I figured you didn’t mind seeing the rest of us crash and burn.”
Death understood. Others usually assumed worse. “Death comes on its own,” he said. “I don’t have to do anything to facilitate it. But everyone deserves a chance to try and survive.” Even us, he had decided.
“Well, sure. But . . . ” The Dragon King scratched his long, curling moustache, finally letting out a weak laugh. “Man, you’re weird.”
Death smiled. It pleased him to be called “man,” though eventually there would be other names and other manifestations for him. He would not be the same, filtered through such different imaginations. None of them would be—but it was now important to him that his fellows hold on, take the opportunity to adapt if they could. The world had not ended, after all. The stuff of which he and his kind had been made, had not vanished. The thinker did not matter, so long as thought remained.
“Thank you,” Death said, and then he clapped the Dragon King on the shoulder. (The Dragon King started and threw him a puzzled look.) “Now tell me: are bagpipes easy to learn?”
While he still had fingers, he would need a way to pass the time.
Signals in the Deep
Greg Mellor
Earth
There’s a place in our future where we are all heading, driven by our instincts and the deep heritage of our genes. It is a place where we are more at peace, in harmony with the universal fabric from which we were born. It’s what I was taught, and it’s what I believe. Our past provides a foundation, a platform from which we can achieve great things: growth, meaning, enlightenment.
I tried to instill this belief into Matthew as any good mother would—show, don’t tell. But it seems that the young are both deaf and blind to old-world values. I rationalized his anger at first. Looking beyond the veil of testosterone, it was his imperative to experience life for himself and to sometimes learn things the hard way. After all, there is no manual when you are born into the skin you live in.
Then, as Matt blossomed from boy to teenager, I began to doubt myself and wondered what I had done to estrange him. The genome patent meant he didn’t need a father, but there were plenty of male role models during his semesters at the private didactic havens. He developed incredible skills in languages and mathematics, and although the complex problem solving could make him so detached, in hindsight it was a source of comfort for him. He was gifted from the start—before he was even born—and if I was honest with myself, it had raised my expectations into the stratosphere.
And therein lay the irony: in providing for everything perhaps I had unwittingly given him little cause to look back. There was no sense of the past for his generation; everything was about the here and now, and the future was something to worry about when it arrived. I realized, too late, that I must have come across as so set in my ways: stern, reflective, always grounded.
The chill autumn nights are spent pondering these things under the spatter-painted veil of stars. The motor on the tracking dish hummed quietly, the barrel of the telescope cold in my hands. Ancient light shone into my eyes, translating into images, connecting me again—the past was always with me.
But did Matt see it now? Was there such a thing in his world?
I wasn’t sure. Heaven help me, after two years with no word or sign from him, I wasn’t sure at all.
And there was only one way to find out.
Earth + 100km
My journey began with cold sweat beading on my skin as the elevator rose up and up on a white-knuckled ride into vacuum. I had never been good with heights, but this was ludicrous. Nothing should be this high—it seemed physically impossible—yet the elevator kept going until the cerulean sky turned indigo and the stars shone more intensely.
The steward had been keeping a watchful eye over me on the way up. He had a ceaseless capacity for small talk, which was harmless enough, but now a worried frown creased his face as I clumsily disembarked.
“Are you okay, Beth?”
I didn’t reply, preoccupied with weightlessness and being towed across the bridge to the shuttle port by an usherbot the size and shape of a dustbin. I glanced through the viewing ports, trying to keep my eyes away from the cloud deck far, far below. There were several more elevators in the distance, rising like needles along the curvature of the world.
“They’re impressive,” the steward said, a cheeky smile playing at the corners of his lips.
Please go away. I nodded and smiled as best I could. “There are so many of them, and it’s all happened so quickly.”
“I guess that’s why they call it the Quickening.” His lips turned down as my face darkened at his pun. I had used affordable nanotech to create Matt’s genome and I often blamed the technology for my predicament, but it was just a classic case of denial.
As we entered the bustling port I began checking for signs to the shuttle departure lounge, but this was a damn confusing place. No doubt there were a thousand data casts flying about, but what I needed was a physical sign.
The steward’s eyes widened, convinced, I am sure, that I was a complete anachronism. Then to my surprise he tucked his arm through mine with that same familiarity. “Where are you traveling, Beth?”
Okay, so maybe I do need your help. “Pluto . . . Charon Relay Station, actually.”
His eyes widened even further. “The back of beyond. I’ve always wanted to go there, they say the stars are . . . ” He caught my look again. “The departure lounge is just this way.”
Earth + 2AU
It is said that you can make friends in the most unlikely places. And this shuttle was one of those places: a cold, disorienting cavern, with row upon row of rockbusters reeking like a metal refinery.
The rockbuster next to me tried to strike up a conversation, his third attempt. “You’re a long way from home . . . ?”
“Beth.” My feet dangled, child-like, over the edge of the seat.
“I’m Ryan.”
A rockbuster named Ryan; what stories your mother could tell.
He turned his enormous plated head, gyros whirring, metal creaking, and leant over me. His massive bicep brushed dangerously close to my head. “Are you management?”
“Do I look like management?”
“No.” He seemed unphased by my terseness, but I doubted that anything could bother these giants. “And you’re not a tourist. Not that we get many out this way. Some engineers, a few scientists, and management . . . sometimes.”
“So you work the belt?” It was an infantile deflection, but home seemed so far away, my worry now consuming more hours of each day that passed. Maybe that was a mother’s lot in life, but then again, it seemed that I had more than my fair share—a constant, gut churning state. And it was starting to show.
“What do you think?” His eyes gleamed mischief deep beneath the edge of his cheek plates.
“Judging by your pitted armor, three-meter frame and stubborn demeanor, I’d say so.”
He half turned in his seat, his plates sliding across each other like an avalanche, a smile on his segmented lips. With a hint of conspiracy in his voice, he said, “So you must be looking for something . . . or escaping something.”
My exasperated sigh misted the air. “I’m looking for my son.”
“Ah.” He relaxed back in his seat, another avalanche. “The truth. We’re all searching for it in our own way. You find a vein of ore; it’s an achievement, a vindication that you serve a purpose. There’s truth in that. If your friends speak plain words, you know you can depend on them—truth again.”
“You’re quite the philosophical one.”
His eyes swiveled. “For a robot?”
“No, I wasn’t going to say that.”
“But you thought it.”
Maybe. I let out a long breath. “Okay, yes.” Ryan was human deep down. And I had no doubt that his decision to work in vacuum, to go through the physical torture of bio-metal skin grafts, was not an easy one. I knew this, yet to listen to him, to look at him . . . “I’m sorry.”
He shrugged. “Maybe I come across like one: irrefutable, irritating logic and all. But space does that to you. There’s no room for shades of grey, at least not in my line of work.” Then, “I take it you haven’t seen him for a while?”
I nodded, trying to stop the surge of emotion, the pent up frustration. This man’s presence was calming, but at the same time he was a stark reminder to me, raking my fear, gathering up a storm of dreadful possibilities. I began to wonder how much Matt had changed. What had he gone through to adapt? What decisions had he made—life-changing decisions? Would I even recognize him? And more importantly, was he happy in himself, accepting, like Ryan, or was he still the angry young man I remembered?
Ryan patted me gently, his hand completely covering my forearm. “Solar winds and empty space, it shouldn’t be too hard to find him.”
My tears floated up and away from my face, tiny spheres drifting.
Earth + 6AU
Chartering the light sail had cost me the rest of my savings. The cabin was very small and beige and although it had all the necessary facilities, it would become a lonely prison during the long months ahead. The fixed autopilot’s lights blinked occasionally from a tiny alcove, its bland chrome head rotating on a stalk, constantly monitoring.
Ahead, through the viewing cells, the sail stretched out like delicate foil reflecting sunlight into shards. But photonic pressure alone could not drive this tiny ship, and so it needed supplementing from the orbital laser array at Jupiter to bring it up to the velocity necessary to reach the outer solar system.
And behind: the Sun so remote now that I had forgotten its warmth. But then it is hard to feel warmth of any kind when one’s soul is locked in ice.
I had sent a message out to Matt on my departure from Earth, and again at the asteroid belt. The only thing I received was a silence that spoke volumes. My anxiety shifted then, became anger.
He was the communications expert. The outer system relay stations were being constructed to assist with the exploration and population of the Kuiper Belt. So if he could communicate with the settlers, why was it so hard to stay in touch with me? If he had no time for a personal message he could have arranged an automated update or blog. Hell, he could have sent something by solar snail mail by now.
I looked down at my jiggling legs and placed my hands on my knees. Peering into the dark, hoping that it might calm me somehow, I saw a light appear beyond the edge of the sail, tracking against the star field. It was on the same vector; perhaps it was a tourist yacht. But something about it didn’t feel right. It was tracking quickly now, which meant its relative velocity must be enormous, well beyond anything I had heard about.
“Pilot, what is that to port?”
The pilot’s head rotated and two lights blinked on its chrome head. After a few seconds there was a metallic reply: “Unknown.”
“Your best estimate?”
Another few seconds: “Experimental space probe or military craft.”
“Military? But there’s nothing out here.”
Solar winds and empty space.
Earth + 38AU
I had taken to roaming the methane ice wastes of Charon during the days. The baroque spacesuit had good power, large spotlights and was insulated enough to stave off the incredible cold. Even so, it was still reckless of me to wander the hills and valleys. But not so reckless that I didn’t steer clear of the cryo-geyser fields, though on my darker days I thought that being trapped in the geysers might provide a fitting end to my foolishness.
The backlit crescent of Pluto peaked above the horizon, casting long shadows across the ground, stretching out towards me—raven wings of a kind. My mind was playing tricks, and all I could do was let it run wild. What else was there in this hell hole?
I think I was a distraction for the grizzled scientists and technicians at the relay station for, oh, ten minutes or so. They were as perplexed as I was when I drifted in like flotsam, a random event that upset their daily routine. They had no idea where Matt was, nor were they willing to answer my questions about what he was actually doing if he wasn’t at the station. After some grumbling they sent a message to him then hastily located me in a habitat dome away from the main nest of the station to wait for the reply. Three weeks later, my mind turning lethargic in the stale air, the walks were providing a reprieve of sorts.
Today I had ventured further than before, taking languid strides out to a low ridgeline south of the habitat. The suit’s external crampons gave me purchase, but occasionally I tripped until I got into the ludicrous rhythm of moon walking: walk, sprawl, slide, stand, walk.
By the time I made it to the ridgeline I was gulping for oxygen. I checked the suit monitor: still green. Then something caught my eye and I crouched down instinctively. The valley beyond was covered with domes with square lit windows, radio dishes at the perimeter, a launch platform lined with the translucent delta-shapes of spaceships resting on landing stems. And there . . . rockbusters operating large equipment . . . there, humans in white skinsuits . . .
The com-channel crackled in my helmet.
“What?” I began to turn, sensing movement behind me.
“State your identity.” A young man’s voice, used to being obeyed.
“Don’t move.” A young woman now.
My spotlights swept over them . . . white skinsuits . . . sleek gold-glass helmets . . . carrying long barreled vac-weapons . . . grey static across my vision now . . . a heavy feeling in my head . . . down on one knee . . . “Wait—”
Earth + 38AU
“You were extremely lucky,” Graeme said. He had permanently windswept hair and a serious frown for a fourteen-year-old.
“Those old suits are unreliable,” Trace said. “And you were out there too long. You could have asphyxiated.” Her eyes were palest blue and her black hair was tied up in a spiky bun, giving her an innocent look that belied a sharp wit and intelligence. I liked her a lot—an attitude tempered with a maturity beyond her years. She reminded me so much of Matt just before he left home.
I glanced around the white walls of the med-room. The single viewing port revealed one of the launch pads I had spied from a distance. “What are you doing here?”
Graeme’s frown deepened. “That’s classified.”
I turned to Trace, my eyes pleading.
She arched an eyebrow at Graeme. “I think we can ease up a little. The approval arrived via the Jupiter Relay this morning.”
He gave her a whatever look.
I looked at them both in turn. “You’re not here to help the settlers, are you?”
Graeme sat back in his chair. “No, ma’am.”
Trace lent forward and took my hand. Her skin was warm, and filled me with hope I thought I had lost, until her words cut through, grating at my naivety. “Matt doesn’t work on Charon.”
“It’s taken me a year to get here. Where is he?”
She squeezed my hands and glanced through the viewing port. “He’s out there, beyond the heliopause.”
