FSF Magazine, June 2007 Read online

  "You okay?” the man said to the woman. The woman nodded and stood and put her hand alongside her face where she was bleeding a little. Lázaro didn't know who had hit her but if he found out he'd make them real sorry.

  Then a voice with no body started shouting and the man in the room cursed and he and the woman took Lázaro away to another place and a second woman came and they all stood around looking at Lázaro and jabbering but nothing they said made any sense to him. Something about swag and something about skunking a deal and other stuff. The woman had a box with shiny things in it and the man talked about what was real and the woman said it was real and did he want it or not and he said he didn't trust her and the other woman, the pretty woman with the black eye, she kept crying and Lázaro kept trying to talk but the words were gone, solid gone, and the harder he tried the more gone they were. First he wept, then he got mad again and stood up and made fists, and the man pulled Lázaro's sleeve up and slapped a skinsting against his arm and then he went to sleep.

  He woke up two days later. His brain hurt. Before he could be all the way awake, they fed him and skinned him and he passed out again.

  * * * *

  How she got it

  It's only available in the Hub and even there you need a full croesus and permission from the Govs carved in platinum and set with gems just to get within a klick of it. Made from some kind of venom from some kind of bug that can only live on a planet that got crudded to death years ago, so you can see that it's pretty rare. But that's not what the story's about, how she found it and got it and brought it back, and we're not stopping the story to say. She found it. She got it. She brought it back. That's enough.

  * * * *

  Clarity

  The fourth time he woke up, he opened his eyes and saw Antonio sitting there, holding a bowl of hot soup. Behind him a woman in spacer's clothes sat with her butt on the edge of a table, arms crossed, staring at him.

  "Toño,” Lázaro said. “Híjole, me duele la cabeza como un verdadero diablo."

  "Yeah, well, that ain't too surprising,” Antonio said but he was grinning like a maniac. “Have some soup."

  "Corazón,” the woman said, like she'd said it a lot before. She had captain's bars on her sleeves. Lázaro decided he didn't like her.

  "Mi Fregado Suerte,” she continued.

  Lázaro scooted himself up to sit against the wall and took the bowl. “I been drunk?"

  "Kinda,” Antonio said. He passed a hunk of bread.

  "Corazón's last run."

  Lázaro frowned at her. “Corazón's last run, some chingadero ratted him to the Freddies and they dumped him on some cagado asteroid somewhere and trashed the rest of us too."

  "But he had a cargo, he dumped it before the Freddies caught him,” she insisted. “Where'd he dump it?"

  Lázaro took a bite of the bread. It was fresh and tasted great. “Toño?” he said, his mouth full. “What's goin’ on?"

  Antonio shrugged, leaning back in the chair. It creaked and wobbled, but it held him.

  "She got an offer for us,” Antonio said. “She's got MemMax, enough to fix what the Freddies did to you. What she wants is the zero point to get to where Corazón dropped his loot, and she'll share it out fifty-fifty, you an’ me on one side, her and her crew on the other."

  "You don't even have to come with,” she said. “Maybe better if you didn't. You just tell me where and—"

  "And you take off with the whole thing,” Antonio said, like he'd said it a lot already. “What, you think we're stupid or something? Laz can't go ‘cause the Freddies got him chipped and he can't leave the Curve but I'm goin’ with. You got a problem with that, you say it and we can stop the whole thing right here."

  "Skitte,” she said. “Your ponyboy ain't got enough MemMax in him to be permanent, just enough to buy him maybe a couple weeks then bang, right back to Stupidville. You ain't about to stop it right here."

  "And I ain't about to give you the numbers and watch you fly off and hope someday you'll be back, neither,” Antonio retorted. “And he ain't my ponyboy, he's my brother, got it?"

  They kept bickering. Antonio's foxleather jacket hung from the back of the rickety chair, frayed along the seams so that Lázaro could see the plastic of it. Antonio's slick black hair showed some gray at the roots. He had always cared a lot about his looks, even back when they were kids. Lázaro sat up and swung his legs over the side of the shelf. Now that the soup was gone, the room smelled stale and close and there was nothing in it that said it was his place, no glyphs or books or anything, but he knew it was his anyway. He recognized the stains on the wall.

  He recognized his memories, too. Being a kid, school, the Academy, climbing mountains, the first commission, the years with Emiliano Corazón, the last run, the bust, and what the Freddies did to him afterward. He remembered the years roaming the Curve while more and more of himself sloughed away, and he remembered Jane, the Jane that had been and the Jane that was.

  "How'm I chipped?” he said, interrupting their conversation. Both heads swung toward him. “How'm I chipped?” he repeated. “Where'd they put it?"

  "It's, like, it's a blastoma nano.” Antonio hesitated. “It's in your brain, Laz. They shoot it into your artery, right about here, and it heads up to your brain and latches on.” He took his fingers off his neck. “They know it's there, they check for it, ‘slong as they get a signal back they know where you are and that you ain't dead, and it sleeps. But you try to leave, we even try to find it, it goes malignant."

  He pulled his mouth down and shrugged and went back to the argument while Lázaro thought about that and about his memories. The argument kept intruding, making noise inside his head as well as outside. Finally he put his hand out to stop them.

  "Enough,” he said. “Here's how we'll do it. I'll give Toño the zero points, there and back, and your Fibs can run the numbers. I'll stay here with the rest of the MemMax, you two go get the cargo. Is Trafalgar still outside Freddie control?"

  "Oh yeah,” the captain said. “Outside and wide open."

  "You go there, look for a company name of Chisler Chang-Himmel. They commissioned the smuggle, they'll still pay for it. Chang's got a long memory. You divide up the loot, Antonio brings our half back here, you go wherever you want with your own cut. Agreed?"

  "Hold on,” the captain said. “Why unload it on Chang-Himmel? If it's that damned valuable, we could bid it up...."

  "It's kids,” Lázaro said. “Chang's kids, embryos. Stem cells, some of them, others already growin’ parts. Everything in ten-year stasis. Chang commissioned them, then welshed on the debt. Hemetica wouldn't release them and blackballed Chang from the other clone houses, too. Chang's pretty desperate for spare parts. I been out for what, four years?"

  "Five,” Antonio said.

  "Five. Chang still wants them and nobody else does ‘cause they're tailored. You want to unload them, you got only one market but that market'll pay big. You take the stuff to Trafalgar. Chang'll want a recognition code—Toño's gonna carry that. And part of the price is Chang gives Toño a ride back. You get the money, you split the money, you split. Nobody gets a chance to screw nobody."

  "Stem cells,” the woman said. “About how big a payload?"

  Lázaro showed her with his hands; maybe the size of a spacer's duffle, maybe a bit smaller. “That's why it's tricky,” he said. “It's a small box and it's just floating out there on some bitty asteroid, probably no bigger than the one they left Emiliano on.” He rocked back; the shelf creaked and sagged a little. “So, you gonna do it?"

  Antonio and the woman looked at each other, then she shrugged and he stuck his hand out and they shook on it. She went outside while the men huddled over the table and Lázaro made Antonio memorize the zero-point coordinates and the recognition code. When Lázaro was satisfied, he put out his hand to keep Antonio from rising.

  "Hey, that stuff about the chip. True?"

  "Yeah, bro. All of it.” Lázaro looked at him and Antonio said, “Bu
t listen, man, it's not a bad life. And when this comes down we'll have so much scratch we won't never have to even think about it again, we can walk on money and drink credits and piss gold, we'll be kings of the Curve. You remember all that scratch you used to send home, kept us all goin'? It'll look like mouse dicky next to what we're gonna have. We ain't gonna be livin’ in no squats, either. Hell, you could buy Papa Carlisle's if you want, kick that skanky noface bastard outta there and have it all for yourself.” He hit Lázaro's shoulder. “What you say, bro? Pretty sweet, yeah?"

  "And the stuff, the MemMax—"

  "Relax, there's plenty. You got about half in you right now. You get Jane to come in an’ babysit you while you finish it off. Another week, maybe ten days, and bammo! The gunk's outta your brain and the Freddies won't know nothing."

  "And if I stop now—"

  "But that won't happen, cause the bitch's gonna give us the rest of the drug just as soon as we let her in again. You take it while we're gone, and when I come back, I tell you bro, kings of the Curve.” He hit Lázaro's shoulder again and opened the door for the woman.

  * * * *

  And that's almost the way it went down

  Antonio and the numbers and the codes and the captain lifted off for the Continuum as soon as she could gather her crew and sober them up. Lázaro stood at the edge of the Curve dome and stared up through the gap until a ship rose into the sunlight, then walked back to his apartment, avoiding Papa Carlisle's. He didn't want to see it. He didn't want to see any more of the Curve than he had to.

  Back in his squat, Lázaro sat with his hands in his lap and remembered, although some of the older memories were getting fuzzy and others were already gone. But the Curve memories were clear and strong: laughing with Antonio at Celia's, Papa Carlisle's mirror face, the taste of beer and the way it made him feel like he was flying, and Jane who wasn't Jane but who was, somehow. He remembered how the Curve curved inside its arc of dome and how small it all was, and how the only sky was the little bit of it that leaked in beside Papa Carlisle's. When Antonio came back with all that scratch they'd still be in the Curve and none of the memories would matter because what the hell use was it if you remembered mountains if you couldn't touch them?

  There was another memory waiting, an older one. He turned away from it and the very act of turning brought it over him like a falling of light.

  * * * *

  How it works

  I don't know exactly, I'm no Fibs and neither are you. But it starts where you are, that's the zero and grows square to square, from (zero) where you are to (one) to (zero+one) to (one+one) to (two+one) to (three+two) to (five+three) to (eight+five) and on out forever, in growing strides to the reaches of the universe, and every right-angle step is a dimension from zero (here) where you start to (here+up+down) to (here+up+down+backwards+forwards) to (here+up+down+backwards+forwards+time), dancing through the dimensions and the Fibs dances each step, hands and mind and body moving to the rhythm of phi and the Fibs makes a turn and the boxes follow and the dimensions follow into the other there that is the Continuum, like launching the ship out through the pit of your guts, like sex only better because you're it and you're you and you're the ship and the boxes and the dance and the Continuum and when you're not the dance you're waiting for the dance like you wait for a breath or a heartbeat or anything else that keeps you alive because you're a Fibonacci Dancer. You're a Fibs.

  * * * *

  The King of the Curve

  He couldn't dance, not without a ship, not without the Continuum, not sitting at the table in his squat, not anywhere in the Curve, just not.

  He wondered how long the blastoma nano would take to work. He wondered if it would hurt. He wondered if it would eat memories too. He wondered what it would be like, living in the Curve knowing the dance was out there but unable to reach it, ever. He wondered what it would be like to die in the Curve knowing you were dying in the Curve.

  He couldn't change the Curve and he couldn't escape it, but he could change who he was within the Curve. When he understood that, he opened the box of MemMax ampules. There were four left, each one ready to slip into the skinsting and apply, and when they were all gone he would be a king of the Curve. His brother had said so.

  He took them into the reeking bathroom and broke each ampule into the commode, and flushed them away. Then he went back to the table and sat, hands folded, waiting to be Lázaro again.

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  Curiosities: The 27th Day, John Mantley (1956) by Bud Webster

  One of the most common—and hackneyed—stfnal concepts of the 1950s was our headlong descent into nuclear destruction, and the efforts of our Big Space Brothers to prevent it, either from altruistic motives or the purely selfish.

  In John Mantley's only sf novel, five very different people are kidnapped by an alien race and each given capsules which they are told contain enough explosi
ve power to destroy all life on Earth. There's a gimmick, though, one that actually places this book above most of the others, regardless of how many salt-grains it takes to swallow: in twenty-seven days, the capsules will be harmless—assuming that none of the five have used theirs before then. The capsules are keyed to the individuals so that if they die, the explosive is rendered inert.

  Not a bad little conceit, all things considered, because it elevates what would otherwise be yet another dreary ideological cautionary tale to a character-driven story that actually has some power behind it. Each of the characters—American, British, German, Russian, and Chinese—cope with their responsibility as best they can; some tragically, some heroically.

  One of the characters, a scientist, figures out something very important about the golden capsules and uses this knowledge to bring about exactly the outcome that the aliens wanted in the first place.

  Perhaps that outcome is, in retrospect, a bit obvious, but Mantley does it as well as any and better than most. He wrote for film and TV, and The 27th Day is certainly cinematic enough. Filmed in 1957, the movie is even more blatantly anti-Communist than the book, which is saying something.

  * * *

  Visit www.fsfmag.com for information on additional titles by this and other authors.