IGMS Issue 42 Page 11

  We lived exactly the same life until a few minutes ago, for me; a few weeks or months ago, for Rigg-the-killer. But we are different people.

  "So you leave the decision up to Umbo and Param," said Ram Odin.

  "And Olivenko and Loaf," said Rigg Noxon. "We're companions, not a military force with someone giving orders and everyone else required to obey."

  "Besides," said Rigg-the-killer, "I don't want to leave the future of the human race on both planets in the tiny little hands of the sentient mice of Odinfold."

  "What do you plan, then?" said Ram Odin. "To sneak on board the Visitors' ship?"

  "Yes," said Rigg-the-killer.

  "No," said Rigg Noxon, at exactly the same moment.

  They looked at each other in consternation.

  "We could sneak on," said Rigg-the-killer. "We can slice time the way Param does, now that we have the facemask to let us perceive units of time that small. We'll be invisible for the whole voyage back."

  "And when we get there, what will we do?" asked Rigg Noxon. "There is only a year between the coming of the Visitors and the return of the Destroyers. Most of that must have been spent voyaging. So when they return to Earth, the response, the decision, it's immediate. What are we going to do, give speeches? Hold meetings?"

  "Your talents with time don't make you particularly persuasive," said Ram Odin. "And powerful people don't change their minds because of speeches."

  "As soon as we arrive," said Rigg-the-killer, "we jump back in time and learn everything we need to know, make the connections we need to make."

  "Of course," said Rigg Noxon. "We'll fit right in. Nobody will notice we're from another planet. I'm sure that in all human cultures, kids our age will be taken seriously and be able to influence world events. Especially kids wearing parasites on their faces."

  "Or you could figure out who needs to be assassinated and kill them," said Ram Odin.

  Both Riggs looked at him in consternation. "We know you're an assassin," said Rigg-the-killer. "We're not."

  "On the contrary," said Ram Odin. "You came here bragging that you are."

  "In self-defense," said Rigg-the-killer. "But you -- when your ship made the jump and you realized that there were nineteen copies of the ship, of you, of all the colonists, you made the immediate decision to kill all the other versions of yourself."

  "Precisely to avoid the kind of weak-minded, incoherent 'leadership' you exhibit," said Ram Odin. "And please remember, I'm the Ram Odin who didn't order the death of anybody."

  "No, you're the sneaky one who hid out until the quickest killer version of yourself had died of old age and then you established your colony in Odinfold, violating most of the decisions your murderous self made and then living forever," said Rigg-the-killer. "Proving that you don't always think one person is fit to make all the decisions for everyone -- even when that person is a version of yourself."

  Ram Odin rolled his eyes and then nodded. "It's extremely annoying hearing this from a child."

  "But no less true," said Rigg-the-killer.

  "Once you've killed somebody," said Rigg Noxon, "can anybody honestly consider you a child anymore?"

  "Then you're still a child because I stopped you from killing anybody? And I'm an adult?" asked Rigg-the-killer.

  "Yes," said Rigg Noxon. "In a way. Maybe because I'm a child, or maybe because of the quirks of causality arising from the different paths we've walked recently, I have a slightly different plan."

  "Either we go back with the Visitors or we don't," said Rigg-the-killer. "The difference isn't slight."

  "Don't be like him," said Rigg Noxon, "and assume that because you didn't think of it, it must be wrong."

  "Think of what?" asked Ram Odin impatiently.

  "I think I should go to Earth, but not with the Visitors," said Rigg Noxon.

  A couple of beats of silence, and then Ram Odin shook his head. "This ship can't fly again. The inertial field kept it from damage when it collided with Garden, but we can't raise it from the planet's surface. Even if we could get rid of the millions of tons of rock above us right now, the ship doesn't have enough power to lift us out of the gravity well of Garden."

  Rigg Noxon shook his head. "You're forgetting what we do," he said.

  "He means for one of us to go backward in time to when the ship arrived," said Rigg-the-killer. "He means for us to keep making little jumps into the past, following your path moment by moment, backward along with this ship as it slammed into Garden. I mean, as it unslams, backing out of this hole and up into space, backward and backward until it gets to Earth. Until we get to the point where you launched on this voyage."

  "This ship was built in space," said Ram Odin. "It never was on Earth."

  "We go back to when it was built," said Rigg Noxon. "Then we follow someone else's path off the ship."

  "If you can even do that," said Ram Odin, "what's the point? Why not go back with the Visitors as the other Rigg suggested and then jump back in time?"

  "There are some key differences," said Rigg Noxon. "First, we don't have to spend the voyage in hiding -- not the way we would by slicing time on the Visitors' ship."

  Rigg-the-killer was nodding. "And we'll have the jewels," he said, holding up the bag of jewels that gave them the ability to control the ships' computers -- and stored all the information the computers had gathered in the meantime.

  Ram Odin looked at the jewels. "Each time you jump backward," said Ram Odin, "the ships' computers and the expendables will be sensing these things for the first time."

  "And each time," said Rigg Noxon, "it will give them a complete account of everything that's been learned in the eleven millennia of history on Garden."

  "So they can take preventive measures and cause us all not to exist?" asked Ram Odin.

  "They wouldn't cause us not to exist," said Rigg-the-killer. "Preservation of causality and all that. But yes, it might cause them to prevent the terraforming of Garden in the first place. What about that?" he asked Rigg Noxon. "Do we leave the jewels behind? If we do, the ship will process us as stowaways and have the expendables put us into stasis or just kill us."

  Rigg Noxon shook his head. "No. Remember what Umbo learned in his reading in the library in Odinfold? The Odinfolders -- or the mice, who can tell? -- worked out the math of what happened in the jump. It didn't just create nineteen copies of the ship and all the humans and machinery on it. It also made either one or nineteen other copies that moved exactly backward in time."

  "So what?" asked Rigg-the-killer. "They're moving backward in time. Even when we jump around, at the end of a jump we're still moving forward in time, the same direction as the rest of the universe. And the backward movement of the ship or ships would exactly duplicate the forward voyage of the ship coming here, so we'd still be inside the ship that voyaged out. We'll never be able to find the backward-moving ship. Or ships."

  "Not with the skill set we've had up to now," said Rigg Noxon. "But what if we could learn to go the other direction?"

  "What if we could jump straight to Earth without using any starship at all?" asked Rigg-the-killer. "Because we can't. There's no reason to think we can."

  "I think Param holds the key," said Rigg Noxon.

  "She slices time very thin, but she still moves forward in time."

  "Because all she knew was slicing," said Rigg Noxon. "She couldn't jump forward or backward, the way we can. Now, with our facemasks, we can slice time the way she does. We can see those tiny divisions and do something about them. But we can also jump backward. We can slice time backward."

  "We're still moving forward," said Rigg-the-killer. "Between slices."

  "So what?" asked Noxon. "If we slice time thin enough, and we jump backward two nanoseconds, stay there for one nanosecond, and then jump backward another two nanoseconds, the effect is that we move backward in time at the rate of one nanosecond per nanosecond, which is the same rate that the back-traveling ship will be moving backward through time."

>   "But when we're in existence, we're going forward," Rigg-the-killer insisted. "No matter how fine you chop the time."

  "Maybe you're right," said Noxon. "But you're forgetting the very first thing we ever did. We saw a path, Umbo slowed it down for us, and we latched on. That was how we jumped, by latching on to a person. If we can at least detect a backward-moving person's path, we can attach and it will change our direction."

  "Or maybe not," said Rigg. "Maybe forward-time and backward-time annihilate each other when they touch, like matter and anti-matter."

  "So I'll do it alone," said Noxon. "I'm the extra copy, right? So if I get annihilated, we're back to the right number of Riggs, that's all."

  "And then," said Ram, "you can take hold of the backward-moving version of me and pull me -- him -- back into the normal timestream again."

  "Just what we need," said Rigg. "More Ram Odins."

  "I've shepherded nineteen wallfolds for eleven thousand years," said Ram. "What have you done?"

  "You hurt his feelings," said Noxon.

  "He's too sensitive," said Rigg.

  "You do realize that there was a time-jump of 11,191 years. Not to mention a leap of several lightyears through folded space. Do you think you can hang on through that much time and space and a change in direction?"

  "It'll be interesting to see," said Rigg. "We'll find out by trying it."

  "We'll find out," said Noxon, "but I'll do the trying."

  "You get all the fun with physics?" asked Rigg.

  "I'm the extra. We can afford to lose me."

  "Well, I can," said Rigg. "But you can't."

  "I won't be around to miss me when I'm gone," said Noxon.

  "I'm not sure how your brains even function," said Ram. "Everything you say makes no sense. And it's perfectly sensible."

  "We can both go back, but on different ships," said Noxon to Rigg, ignoring Ram. "I'll latch on to the backward ship and ride it to Earth, and you hide on the original ship and jump back to the beginning of the voyage."

  "You both get there at exactly the same time," said Ram. "The beginning of my voyage."

  "Not really," said Rigg. "When I get there, if I do it, I have to deal with the fact that I'm in the same timeflow. If I don't slice time or jump, I'm visible. But Noxon, he arrives there completely invisible. And in an invisible ship. I'll be there without any friends, because I can never show myself during the voyage."

  "Why not?" asked Ram.

  "Because I didn't," said Rigg. "It was you on that voyage. Did you see me? If you had seen me, there's a good chance it would have derailed the entire sequence of events. Leading to the nonexistence of nineteen colonies on Garden." He turned to Noxon. "You see the danger? One slip, and you might undo everything."

  "But I won't have to hide from the Ram on my backward voyage, because he's a post-voyage Ram," said Noxon. "He's not causally connected to this universe, so I won't change anything at all. And I'll have a ship that isn't buried under a million tons of rock."

  "Moving backward in time," said Ram.

  "If I can pull myself and the backward Ram Odin into the forward-flowing timestream, I should be able to pull the ship with us. Material objects can be dragged along."

  "If your venture succeeds," said Rigg, "then I won't need to go back with the Visitors. For all I know, the Visitors will never come at all."

  "So while I go to Earth, you'll stay here?"

  "If you succeed, then the world of Garden won't be destroyed," said Rigg. "So while you're playing God back on Earth --"

  "You'll play God here," said Noxon.

  "Visit all the wallfolds," said Rigg, "and decide whether to bring the Walls down."

  "Or some of them, anyway. Keep the dangerous ones quarantined," said Noxon.

  "Keep the technologies of Odinfold and the facemasks of Vadeshfold and the power of the expendables out of the hands of Mother and General Citizen," said Rigg.

  "So you're going to make a play to be King-in-the-Tent?" asked Noxon. "They'll be eager to follow you, with your pretty face."

  "I'll set up Param as Queen-in-the-Tent. Or abolish the monarchy and the People's Revolutionary Council," said Rigg. "I have no plan."

  "Yet," said Ram Odin.

  "I'll have a plan when I need one," said Rigg.

  "In a pinch, plans kind of make themselves, mostly because you don't have a lot of choices," said Noxon.

  "Aren't you going to ask the advice of someone older and wiser?" asked Ram Odin.

  "When we find somebody wiser," said Noxon, "we'll ask him for advice."

  * * *

  Novel published by Simon Pulse, November 4, 2014

  Small Offerings

  by Paolo Bacigalupi

  * * *

  Readouts glow blue on driplines where they burrow into Maya Ong's spine. She lies on the birthing table, her dark eyes focused on her husband while I sit on a stool between her legs and wait for her baby.

  There are two halves of Maya. Above the blue natal sheet, she holds her husband's hand and sips water and smiles tiredly at his encouragement. Below it, hidden from view and hidden from sensation by steady surges of Sifusoft, her body lies nude, her legs strapped into birthing stirrups. Purnate hits her belly in rhythmic bursts, pressing the fetus down her birth canal, and toward my waiting hands.

  I wonder if God forgives me for my part in her prenatal care. Forgives me for encouraging the full course of treatment.

  I touch my belt remote and thumb up another 50ml of Purnate. The readouts flicker and display the new dose as it hisses into Maya's spine and works its way around to her womb. Maya inhales sharply, then lies back and relaxes, breathing deeply as I muffle her pain response in swaddling layers of Sifusoft. Ghostly data flickers and scrolls at the perimeter of my vision: heart rate, blood pressure, oxygenation, fetal heart rate, all piped directly to my optic nerve by my MedAssist implant.

  Maya cranes her neck around to see me. "Dr. Mendoza? Lily?" Her words slur under the drugs, come out slow and dreamy.

  "Yes?"

  "I can feel it kicking."

  My neck prickles. I force a smile "They're natal phantasms. Illusions generated by the gestation process."

  "No." Maya shakes her head, emphatic. "I feel it. It's kicking." She touches her belly. "I feel it now."

  I come around the natal sheet and touch her hand. "It's all right, Maya. Let's just relax. I'll see what we can do to keep you comfortable."

  Ben leans down and kisses his wife's cheek. "You're doing great, honey, just a little longer."

  I give her hand a reassuring pat. "You're doing a wonderful thing for your baby. Let's just relax now and let nature take its course."

  Maya smiles dreamily in agreement and her head rolls back. I let out a breath I hadn't known I was holding and start to turn away. Maya lurches upright. She stares at me, suddenly alert, as if all the birthing drugs have been lifted off her like a blanket, leaving her cold and awake and aggressive.

  Her dark eyes narrow with madness. "You're going to kill it."

  Uh-oh. I thumb my belt unit for the orderlies.

  She grabs Ben by the shoulder. "Don't let her take it. It's alive, honey. Alive!"

  "Honey --"

  She yanks him close. "Don't let her take our baby!" She turns and snarls at me. "Get out. Get out!" She lunges for a water glass on her bedside table. "Get out!" She flings it at me. I duck and it shatters against the wall. Glass shards pepper my neck. I get ready to dodge another attack but instead Maya grabs the natal sheet and yanks it down, exposing her nude lower half splayed for birth. She claws at her birth stirrups like a wolf in a trap.

  I spin the dials on my belt remote, jam up her Purnate and shut off her Sifusoft as she throws herself against the stirrups again. The birthing table tilts alarmingly. I lunge to catch it. She flails at me and her nails gouge my face. I jerk away, clutching my cheek. I wave to her husband, who is standing dumbly on the opposite side of the birth table, staring. "Help me hold her!"

  He sna
ps out of his paralysis; together we wrestle her back onto the table and then a new contraction hits and she sobs and curls in on herself. Without Sifusoft, there is nothing to hide the birth's intensity. She rocks against the pain, shaking her head and moaning, small and beaten. I feel like a bully. But I don't restart the pain killers.

  She moans, "Oh God. Oh, God. Oh. God."

  Benjamin puts his head down beside her, strokes her face. "It's okay, honey. It's going to be fine." He looks up at me, hoping for confirmation. I make myself nod.

  Another Purnate-induced contraction hits. They're coming fast now, her body completely in the grip of the overdose I've flushed into her. She pulls her husband close and whispers, "I don't want this, honey. Please, it's a sin." Another contraction hits. Less than twenty seconds apart.

  Two thick-armed female orderlies draped in friendly pink blouses finally come thumping through the door and move to restrain her. The cavalry always arrives too late. Maya brushes at them weakly until another contraction hits. Her naked body arches as the baby begins its final passage into our world.

  "The pretty queen of the hypocritic oath arrives."

  Dmitri sits amongst his brood, my sin and my redemption bound in one gaunt and sickly man. His shoulders rise and fall with labored asthmatic breathing. His cynical blue eyes bore into me. "You're bloodied."

  I touch my face, come away with wet fingers. "A patient went natal."

  All around us, Dmitri's test subjects scamper, shrieking and warring, an entire tribe of miscalibrated humanity, all gathered together under Dmitri's care. If I key in patient numbers on my belt unit, I get MedAssist laundry lists of pituitary misfires, adrenal tumors, sexual malformations, attention and learning disorders, thyroid malfunctions, IQ fall-offs, hyperactivity and aggression. An entire ward full of poster-children for chemical legislation that never finds its way out of government committee.