DAW 30th Anniversary Science Fiction Part 41

"Do you have a position on the Sunseekers?"

"The Sunseekers?"

"That s.h.i.+p with the new solar array technology. That grotesque advertising ploy-'you need never set foot in darkness again,' something like that. I can't remember their idiot slogan.

Maybe in your line of work you don't have to keep up on the gossip rags-"

"Oh!" said the voice of M. Maldonado. "Isn't that the s.h.i.+p that the actor Vasil Veselov's daughter ran away to- "That one," interrupted Anton. "Do you have any way to get a fix on it?

Here, let me see, they've got a public relations site that tracks- Yes. Here it is.

I've got it touched down in a muni-cipio called San Lorenzo Tenocht.i.tlan."

"I'll get all transport information for that region, but if you're in-ah-London, it will take you at least eighteen hours with the most efficient connections, including ground transport or hov-ercab.""I have access to a private 'car. Rose. Rose?"

"I'm here." Amazing how tiny and mouselike her voice sounded, barely audible, the merest squeak.

"Rose, now listen. It says here there's a little museum in San Lorenzo Tenocht.i.tlan. Do you know where that is? Can you get there and wait there?"

Of course, maybe it wasn't more than open welts sown with salt, discovering the truth: her father had wanted her with the Sunseekers all along.

Had manipulated her to get her there. Sur-brent-Xia had paid him to get his daughter onto the s.h.i.+p in the most publicly scandalous way possible. He had set it all up, used her to get the money and the publicity.

"Daddy doesn't want me," she said, voice all liquid as the horrible truth flooded over her, soaking her to the bones.

"I know, Rosie. But I love you. I'm coming. Just tell me where you are. Tell me if you can get to the museum."

"Okay," she said, to say something, because she had forgotten what words meant. A chasm gaped; she knelt on the edge, scrabbling not to tumble into the awful yawning void. What would she do now, if no one wanted her? Why would anyone want her anyway? Blemished, disfigured, stained. Ugly.

"Okay," he repeated, sounding a little annoyed, but maybe he was just worried.

Maybe he was actually worried about her. The notion shocked her into paying attention.

"Okay," he repeated. "I will be there in no less than six hours. You must wait by the museum. Don't go off with the Sunseekers, Rosie. I will meet you there, no matter what. Okay?"

"Okay."

Doctor Baby Jesus fell silent, having done his work. The fluorescent light flickered. A roach scuttled across the shelf, and froze, sensing her shadow. Her tears stained the concrete floor, speckles of moisture evaporating around her feet. She just stood there, stunned, unable to think or act. She couldn't even remember what she had agreed to. The light hummed. The roach vanished under the safety of the baby doll's lacy robe.

"Hola! Hey!"

The young voice, male and bossy, spoke perfectly indigenous Standard.

"Hey! You in here, girl?" The young s.h.i.+rtless tough who had hit Akvir upside the head and cursed at him in Spanish pushed aside the curtain and ducked in. "There you are. I'm taking you back to the village."

"The village?" she echoed stupidly, staring at the rifle he held. Staring at him. He had pulled the bandanna down and the ski mask off, revealing a pleasant face marred only by the half-c.o.c.ked smirk on his lips. He sounded just like one of her friends from home, except for the Western Hemisphere flatness of his accent.

"The village," he agreed, rolling his eyes. He did not threaten her with the gun. "Those Sunseeker people, they're all there, waiting to get picked up.You're supposed to go with them. We got to go, p.r.o.nto. You know. Fast."

"That's by the museum, isn't it?"

"Si," he said, eyes squinted as he examined her. "You okay?"

She wiped her cheeks. Maybe the dim light hid the messy cry.

"We got to go," he repeated, s.h.i.+fting his feet, dancing up two steps and pressing the curtain aside with his rifle as he glanced out into the church. "It'll be dark soon. They got some 'cars coming in to get all of you out of here before sunset. You got to get out before sunset, right?"

"The museum," she said. "Okay. Is it far?"

"Four or five kilometers. Not far. But we got to go now."

She nodded like a marionette, moving to the strings pulled by someone else.

She got her feet to move, one before the next, and soon enough as they came out of the church she found her legs worked pretty well, just moving along like a normal person's legs would, nothing to it. A group of little boys played soccer along the dirt track of the hamlet, shouting and laughing as the ball rolled toward the river but was captured just in time. They turned off into the ragged forest growth before they pa.s.sed the house where she had talked to her father; she saw no sign of Marcos except the flash of the ceramic satellite dish wired to the roof.

The boy walked in front of her. He had a good stride, confident and even jaunty, and he glanced back at intervals to make sure she hadn't fallen behind or to warn her about an overhanging branch and, once, a snake that some earlier pa.s.serby had crushed with repeated blows. It had bright bands on what she could see of its body, a colorful, beautiful creature. Dead now. She sweated, but he had a canteen that he shared with her-not water but a sticky sweet orange drink. A rain shower pa.s.sed over them, dense but brief, to leave a cooling haze in its wake. All the time they walked, he kept the big plateau to their left, although they did not ascend its slopes but rather cut around them along a maze of dirt trails.

"Who was that woman?" she asked after a while.

"My great-aunt? She's some kind of crazy inventor, a genius, but she got into trouble with corporate politics. She was in prison for a long time, so I never saw her but I heard all about her. She was a real, uh, cabrona. Now maybe she is more nice."

Rose could think of nothing to say to this; in a way, she was surprised at herself for asking anything at all. Just keeping track of her feet striking the dirt path one after the other and all over again amazed her, the steady rhythm, the cus.h.i.+oning earth, the leaf litter.

The forest opened into a milpa, a field of well grown maize interspersed with manioc. A pair of teal ducks flew past. When they cut around the edge of the field they saw a stork feeding at an oxbow of muddy water, the remains of the summer's flooding. Lowlands extended beyond, some of it marshy, birds flocking in the waters.Another kilometer or so through a mixture of milpas and forest brought them to San Lorenzo Tenocht.i.tlan on the sh.o.r.e of El Rio Chiquito. Here the houses had a more modern look; half a dozen had solar ceramic roofs. There was a fenced-off basketball court and a school with a satellite dish and a plaza with a flagpole where the Sunseekers sat in a distraught huddle on the broad concrete expanse, staring anxiously westward while a few onlookers, both adults and children, watched them watching the horizon.

It was late afternoon. The sun sank quickly toward the trees. The Ra sat forlornly on the gra.s.sy field behind the school, within sight of the old museum.

Its stubby wings looked abraded, pockmarked, where the solar array had been stripped off.

"Rose!" Akvir jumped to his feet and rushed to her, his hand a warm fit on her elbow. "We thought we'd lost you!" He was flushed and sweating and a bruise purpled on his cheek, but he looked otherwise intact. He dragged her toward the others, who swarmed like bees around her, enveloping her with cries of excitement and expansive greetings. "You're the hero, Rose! They said you begged for our lives to your dad and he asked them to let us go. And they did! All because of your father! They're all fans of your father! They've all seen his shows. Can you get over it?"

She stood among them, drowned by them. All she could do was stare past their chattering faces at the boy who had led her here. He had fallen back to stand with a pair of village women, his arms crossed across his bare chest and the rifle, let loose, slung low by his b.u.t.t. One of the women handed him a s.h.i.+rt; she seemed to be scolding him.

"Look!" screamed Zen.o.bia, still clutching her torn clothing. "There they are!

There they are!"

A pair of sleek, glossy hovercars banked around a curve in the river and leveled off by the boat dock, but after a moment during which, surely, the navigators had seen the leaping, waving, shouting Sunseekers, they nosed up the road to settle, humming, on the gra.s.sy field beside the disabled Ra. Akvir and the others jumped up and down, clapping and cheering, as the ramp of the closer 'car opened and three utility suited workers, each carrying a tool kit, walked down to the ground. They ignored the crying, laughing young people and went straight for the Ra. After about five breaths, the second 'car's ramp lowered and a woman dressed in a bright silver utility suit descended to the base where she raised both hands and beckoned for them to board.

The sun's rim touched the trees. Golden light lanced across the village, touching the half hidden bulk of the great stone head beyond the museum gates.

With a collective shout rather like the ragged cry of a wounded, trapped beast who sees escape at long last, the Sunseekers bolted for the 'car. Halfway there, Akvir paused, turned, and stared back at Rose, who had not moved.

"Aren't you coming?" he shouted. "Hurry! Hurry! They're fixing the Ra, but meanwhile we're going on. You don't want the sun to set on you, do you?""I'm not coming."

Everyone scrambled on board, one or two shoving in their haste to get away. Akvir glanced back at them, s.h.i.+fting from foot to foot, as Zen.o.bia paused on the ramp to wave frantically at him. The sun sank below the trees.

He took two steps back, toward the hover, sliding away as they were all sliding away, following the sun. "You don't want to stay here with the night-bound? With the great lost?"

"It's too late," she said.

She had always belonged to the great lost. Maybe everyone does, each in her own way, only they don't want to admit it. Because no matter how diligently, across what distance, you seek the sun, it will never be yours. The sun s.h.i.+nes down on each person indifferently. That is why it is the sun.

His fear of being caught by the approaching dark overcame him. He gave up on her and sprinted for the ramp; as soon as he vanished inside, it sealed up and the second hover lifted off with a huff and a wheeze and a high-pitched, earsplitting whine that set all the dogs to barking and whimpering until at last the 'car receded away over the trees, westward. The first hover remained, powering down. The technicians had lamps and instruments out to examine the scarred wings of the Ra.

Rose stared at the lines the gra.s.s made growing up in the cracks between the sections of concrete pads poured down in rectangles to make the huge plaza.

The eruption of gra.s.s and weeds created a blemish across the sterility of that otherwise smooth expanse. In the village, music started up over by the museum where someone had set up a board platform in front of the fence. Guitars strummed and one took up a melody, followed by a robust tenor. A couple of older men began dancing, bootheels drumming patterns on the wood while their partners swayed in counterpoint beside them, holding the edges of their skirts.

The boy approached across the plaza, torso now decently covered by a khaki-colored long-sleeved cotton s.h.i.+rt that was, not surprisingly, unb.u.t.toned halfway to the waist. He no longer carried the rifle.

"Hey, chica. No hard feelings, no? You want to dance?"

"I'm waiting for my brother," she said stoutly. "He's coming to get me. He said to wait right here, by the museum."

"Bueno," agreed the boy. "You want a cola? There's a tienda at the museum.

You can wait there and drink a cola. I'll buy it for you."

Shadows drowned the village, stretched long and long across houses and gra.s.s and the concrete plaza. The transition came rapidly in the tropical zone, day to night with scarcely anything like twilight in between. She had not seen night for almost three months. Was it possible to forget what it looked like, or had she always known even as she tried to outrun it? Had she always known that it was the monster creeping up on her, ready to overtake her? The daylit gleam of the Ra's wings was already lost to theft and now its rounded nose and cylindrical body faded as shadows devoured it.Laughter carried from the museum as a new tune started up. The smell of cooking chicken drifted on the breeze. Dogs hovered warily just beyond a stone's throw from the women grilling tortillas and shredded chicken on the upturned, heated flat bases of big canister barrels.

"You want a cola?" repeated the youth patiently. "I'll wait with you."

"I'll take a cola," she said, surprised to find that all her tears had dried. She set her back to the west and trudged with him toward the museum, where one by one lamps were lit and hung up to spill their glamour over the encroaching twilight. A woman's white dress flashed as she danced, turning beside her partner.

"Your dad's El Sol?" he asked, a little nervously. "En verdad? I mean, like, we all see all his shows. It's just amazing!"

"Yeah."

Inside she was as hollow as a drum, but down and down as deep as the very bottom of the abyss, there was still a spark, her spark. The spark that made her Rose, no matter who anyone else was. It was something to hold on to when there was no other light. It was the only thing to hold on to.

"Yeah," she said. "That's my dad."

The sun set.

Night came.

S. Andrew Swann.

I first heard of S. Andrew Swann through his agent, Jane Butler. Jane had received a ma.n.u.script from Steve and been very impressed. When she sat down and talked with him, she realized that he was not a one-note author. Steve was br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with ideas he wanted to write about.

When Jane sent Steve's ma.n.u.script to me, I, too, realized this was a young man who could definitely write, whether he was exploring some of the long-established areas of science fiction and giving them a new twist, or charting brand-new territory of his own.

In July, 1993, Steve's first Moreau novel, Forests of the Night was added to DAW's science fiction list. Since then Steve has gone on to write three more novels set in the Moreau universe, as well as works which run the gamut from science fiction to supernatural suspense to fantasy. Recently, his Moreau novels have been optioned for the movies.

"The Heavens Fall" is a tale that will send a chill down your spine, and make you think long and hard about crime, punishment, and the price of "justice."

-SG.

THE HEAVENS FALL.

S. Andrew Swann.

"Let justice be done, though the heavens fall!"

-Earl of Mansfield (1705-1793).

"This is a court of law . . . not a court of justice."

-Oliver Wendell Holmes, jr.

(1841-1935).

JOHNNY knew him. Mosh Frazier. Mosh of the wild hair. Mosh of the tattoos, skulls, and fire. Mosh of the wide leather belt and the evil temper. Mosh was Johnny's friend. At least that's what Johnny thought.

Johnny had always been a little slow about people.

Johnny's home was a farm shack in the poorest county in upstate New York.

All his since Momma died. Johnny let Mosh share Momma's house. In return, Mosh gave Johnny money, gave Johnny beer, brought Johnny women, introduced Johnny to drugs- Johnny never poked into Mosh's business. Johnny never asked what Mosh did out in the overgrown field in back of the house. Johnny never asked Mosh what he did alone in the shack when Johnny went to town.

Johnny really thought Mosh was a friend. Mosh was good to Johnny. Johnny would never do anything to upset him. Never.

Then Mosh left.

Then the police came.

The police dug up the overgrown field in back of Momma's house.

The police found the bodies of fifteen women.

The police said Mosh didn't exist.

Her head throbs. She's drunk a lot, and downed a lot of pills that she probably shouldn't have. She opens her eyes, fearful of light.

No reason to fear. There's no light except from the moon. She's thankful for that. The bedroom is dark, monochrome and fuzzy. Enough light beams in from the cracked window for her to see that she's alone. Sober now, mostly, she decides that the place is a pit. Smells of beer, old cigarette smoke, and something else- Mothb.a.l.l.s?

Where the h.e.l.l is he?