IGMS - Issue 24 Read online

  Ender said nothing. The more he demanded that they hurry, the more Sergeant would digress and delay.

  "For once I agree with Ender," said Carlotta. "I programmed turbulence into the lens and it's getting to me."

  So Ender was right that it felt worse than usual. For only the ten thousandth time in his life, Ender wished he had beaten the kuso out of Sergeant when they first met. It would have established a different pecking order.

  Instead, Ender paid attention when Mother kept telling him about how the other kids were "just as much our genuine children as you," even though Ender had actually been born from Mother's body and the other kids had been implanted in the wombs of surrogates.

  For the normal kids, that was no big deal -- they would have no memories of living anywhere else. But the antonines, Sergeant and Carlotta, were aware of everything at six months instead of three years. They remembered their surrogate families and felt like strangers with Mother and Father.

  Ender could have bullied and bossed them, but he didn't. He tried not to imply that he thought of himself as the "real" child, though at the age of twelve months, of course he felt that way. Sergeant's reaction to the strange situation was to assert himself and try to take control. He must have been hell for his surrogate parents in the first year of his life. They would have had no idea what to do with a child who talked in full sentences by six months, who climbed everywhere and got into everything by nine months, who was teaching himself to read at age one.

  Carlotta, on the other hand, was reticent; her surrogate parents might not have known just how much she could do at such an early age. When Father and Mother brought her home, she responded to the new situation with shyness, and she and Ender quickly became friends. Sergeant, feeling threatened, had to turn everything into a contest -- or a fight.

  Ender mostly evaded Sergeant's belligerency. Unfortunately, Sergeant took that to mean submission. Except when he took it as arrogance. "You don't compete because you think you've already won everything."

  Ender didn't think he'd won. He just thought of competition with Sergeant as a distraction. A waste of time. It's not fun playing with somebody who absolutely has to win, every single time.

  "The Giant is taking a long time to die," said Sergeant.

  In that instant, Ender understood the entire meeting. Sergeant was getting impatient. He was son of the king and impatient to inherit. How many times had this script been acted out in human history?

  "So what do you propose?" asked Ender neutrally. "Evacuate the air from the payload area? Poison his water or his food? Or will you insist we all hold knives and stab him to death in the Senate?"

  "Don't be melodramatic," said Sergeant. "The bigger he gets, the harder it will be to deal with the carcass."

  "Open the cargo bay and jettison it into space," said Carlotta.

  "How clever," said Sergeant. "More than half our nutrients are tied up in his body and it's beginning to affect life support. We have to be able to reclaim those nutrients so we have something to eat and breathe as we get larger."

  "So we cut him up into steaks?" asked Ender.

  "I knew you'd react that way," said Sergeant. "We won't eat him, not directly, we'll slice him and put him in the trays. The bacteria will dissolve him and the lichen will have a growth spurt."

  "And then huzzah, double rations for everybody," said Ender.

  "All I propose is that we stop feeding him his full daily calories. By the time he notices, he'll have become so feeble that he can't do anything about it."

  "He won't want to anyway," said Ender. "As soon as he realizes we're trying to kill him, he'll want to die."

  "Melodrama!" said Sergeant. "Nobody wants to die, unless they're insane. The Giant wants to live. And he isn't sentimental like you, Ender. He'll kill us before he'll let us kill him."

  "Don't assume that the Giant is as evil as you," said Ender.

  Carlotta tugged on his foot. "Play nice, Ender," she said.

  Ender knew how this would play out. Carlotta would express her regret but she'd agree with Sergeant. If Ender tried to give the Giant extra calories, Sergeant would beat him and Carlotta would stand by, or even help hold him. Not that the beatings ever lasted long. Ender just had no interest in fighting, so he didn't defend himself. After a few blows, he always gave in.

  But this was different. The Giant was dying anyway. That caused Ender enough anguish that the idea of hastening the process was unbearable.

  Nothing unbearable had ever been proposed before. So Ender's reaction surprised even him. No, especially him.

  Sergeant's head was right there, just above Ender's own. Ender reached up, and with all the power of his arms, he rammed Sergeant's head into the wall.

  Sergeant's hands immediately snaked out to begin the battle, but Ender had taken him by surprise -- no one had ever actively hurt Sergeant before, and he wasn't used to dealing with pain. By the time Sergeant's hands were groping for Ender's arms, Ender's legs were braced on both sides of the field containment shaft and he was ramming the heel of his hand full strength into Sergeant's nose.

  Blood sprayed out and floated in globules that "fell" in every direction in the turbulent gravity field.

  Sergeant's grip faltered. This was serious pain. Ender could hear him shouting in fury into the tin can.

  Ender shaped his hand into a fist and drove a knuck into Sergeant's eye.

  Sergeant screamed.

  Carlotta twisted on Ender's foot, shouting, "What are you doing? What's going on?"

  Ender braced himself against her grip and drove the edge of his hand into Sergeant's throat.

  Sergeant choked and gasped.

  Ender did it again.

  Sergeant stopped breathing, his eyes bugging out in terror.

  Ender pulled himself along until his mouth was over Sergeant's. He locked their lips together and blew into Sergeant's mouth, hard. He got blood and snot from Sergeant's nose all over in his mouth when he did, but he hadn't yet decided whether to kill Sergeant. The rational part of Ender's mind, which had always been in control till now, was beginning to reassert itself.

  "Here's how it's going to be," said Ender. "Your reign of terror is over. You proposed murder and you meant it."

  "He didn't mean it," said Carlotta.

  Ender lashed back with his foot and caught her in the mouth. She cried out and then just cried.

  "He meant it and you would have helped him with it," said Ender. "I've put up with this goffno till now but now you crossed the line. Sergeant, you're not in charge of anything. If you try to give orders to anybody again, I'll kill you. Do you understand me?"

  "Ender, he'll kill you now!" cried Carlotta through her tears. "What's happened to you?"

  "Sergeant will not kill me," said Ender. "Because Sergeant knows that I just became his commanding officer. He's been dying to have one, and the Giant wouldn't do it, so I will. Since you don't have a conscience of your own, Sergeant, you will have mine from now on. You don't do anything violent or dangerous without my permission. If you catch yourself thinking about harming me or anyone else, I'll know it because I can read your body like a big-print book."

  "No you can't," said Carlotta.

  "I can read the human body the way you read the machinery on the ship, Carlotta," said Ender. "I always know what Sergeant's planning, I just never cared enough to stop him until now. When the Giant dies, of his own accord, in his own good time, then we will probably do something like what you proposed, Sergeant, because we can't lose the nutrients. But we don't need those nutrients now and we won't need them for years. Meanwhile, I'll do all I can to keep the Giant alive."

  "You would never kill me," croaked Sergeant.

  "Patricide is a thousand times worse than fratricide," said Ender, "and I won't even hesitate. You didn't have to cross this line, but you did, and I think you knew what I'd do. I think you wanted me to do it. I think you're terrified by the fact that nobody ever stopped you from doing anything. Well, this is your lucky
day. I'm stopping you from now on. You and your weapons and your war games -- I learned how to damage the human body and I can promise you, Sergeant, I have permanently changed your voice and your nose. Every time you look in the mirror, every time you hear yourself talk, you'll remember -- Ender is in charge and Sergeant will do as Ender tells him. Got it?"

  As punctuation, Ender wrung Sergeant's nose, which was definitely broken.

  Sergeant cried out, but that hurt his throat terribly and he gurgled and choked and spat.

  "The Giant's going to ask what happened to Sergeant," Carlotta said.

  "He won't have to ask," said Ender. "I'm going to repeat our conversation to him, verbatim, and the two of you will be there to listen. Now, Carlotta, back down this shaft so I can drag Sergeant's miserable body out to where we can get the bleeding stopped."

  InterGalactic Interview With Ben Bova

  by Darrell Schweitzer

  Introduction: Ben Bova is best known as an author of numerous hard-science fiction novels, most recently the Grand Tour, in which he re-explores the Solar System planet-by-planet in the light of current scientific knowledge. The most recent of these is Leviathans of Jupiter (2011). He is also noted for the Sam Gunn series (collected as The Sam Gunn Omnibus, 2007), the Orion series, the Kinsman series, and for numerous stand-alone novels. He was a very successful editor of Analog between the years 1971 and 1978 (where he discovered, among other new writers, Orson Scott Card) and then fiction editor and later editorial director of Omni magazine (1978-82). He won the Hugo Award for Best Editor six times. He is President Emeritus of the National Space Society and served as president of the Science Fiction Writers of America.

  SCHWEITZER: Could you describe your beginnings? How did you discover science fiction? What made you want to write it?

  BOVA: I grew up in South Philadelphia during the Great Depression of the 1930s and, later, World War 2. I got turned on to astronomy when I was about 11: a class trip to Philadelphia's science museum, the Franklin Institute, included a visit to its planetarium. When they turned on the stars, I became instantly hooked on astronomy. In those days (circa 1943) there were a few far-seeing people who dreamed of building rockets and flying to the Moon. I became fascinated with rocketry and astronautics. Then I found that there were stories about doing such things. That's how I discovered science fiction. Mostly I read magazines such as Astounding (later renamed Analog). When I started writing, I wrote about what interested me: science fiction.

  SCHWEITZER: Let's also talk about your science background. What did you do on the Vanguard project?

  BOVA: I'm not a professional scientist. My degrees are in journalism, communications, and education. I had the good fortune to become a protégé of the director of the planetarium, Dr. I.M. Levitt, who led me to read widely in the sciences. I became a newspaper reporter, but when I learned that the U.S. would attempt to launch an artificial satellite during the International Geophysical Year (1957-58) I talked myself into a job as a technical editor for the Glenn L. Martin Co. (now Lockheed Martin Corp.), on the basis that Vanguard would be very much in the public eye, and the project would need someone who could understand the engineers and translate what they were doing into prose that the general public could understand. I stayed with the project through the furor of Sputnik, Vanguard's dismal failure on its first attempt to launch a satellite, and finally through three successful satellite launches. I also met Arthur C. Clarke when he came to the Martin plant to gather material for a nonfiction book he was doing about "the first man-made satellite of Earth." Arthur and I remained good friends until his death.

  SCHWEITZER: Were real rocket engineers and such people interested in science fiction in those days?

  BOVA: Yes, some of them were. Many of them went into technical careers because they read science fiction in their youths.

  SCHWEITZER: So how did you discover the science fiction community?

  BOVA: I'd been reading science fiction, and trying to write it, for years and years before I found out that fandom existed. I was working as a technical editor on the Vanguard project, at the Martin Co. just outside Baltimore, when David Kyle phoned me. He had heard about me through a mutual friend; I had no idea who David was. He told me that he was helping to make arrangements for the World Science Fiction Convention that year (1956, if memory serves) in New York City. I had no idea that there were science fiction conventions. David asked if I could bring a couple of engineers from Vanguard to speak at the convention. I recruited the two top engineers on the project, and that Labor Day weekend we drove up to New York and the Biltmore Hotel.

  We rode an elevator to the floor where the convention activities were taking place. The elevator doors opened, and there were fans of all sorts and descriptions, many of them in costumes of one sort or another. And smack in the middle of all this bustle was a seven-foot tall poster of some sci-fi monster, with Forrest J. Ackerman standing beside it, happily reading a copy of his own magazine, Famous Monsters of Filmland.

  My engineers were gray-flannel-suit types, narrow ties and button-down collars. They did a one-eighty and ducked back into the elevator. I had to tug them out, literally by their coattails. They were very apprehensive. But once I got them to the auditorium where they were to make their presentation, they were introduced to Arthur C. Clarke, Willy Ley, and others whom they knew by reputation as authorities in the field of rocketry. They settled down and gave their presentation. I must say that it was so dry that a lot of the audience got up and left. But they had a good time afterward with Arthur, Willy, et al.

  SCHWEITZER: How long were you writing before you got anybody interested in anything you wrote? Did you get some of those legendary, long letters of rejection from John Campbell?

  BOVA: The first letter I ever got from Campbell was a reaction to a letter of criticism I had sent about the scientific accuracy of a story he'd published. His letter began, "Okay, wise guy." It went on for several pages, and gradually I realized that John was challenging me to write a better story. Eventually I did.

  The first short story I ever sent to a publisher was bought for a magnificent $5.00. This was a local magazine in Philadelphia, my home town. I cashed their check and rode the trolley car to see these magnificent people. Alas, their offices were padlocked! The magazine had gone broke. I wondered if my $5.00 had busted them. But it taught me an important lesson: Cash all checks immediately. Don't wait for the company to fold.

  I wrote my first novel in 1949. It was never published; probably a good thing. I struggled for ten years, learning my craft the hard way. My first published novel was The Star Conquerors, which came out in 1959.

  SCHWEITZER: What was your relationship with Campbell like? Were you one of those writers whom he took to lunch and then pitched ideas to?

  BOVA: John Campbell was very kind to new writers, very solicitous. And he was a fountain of ideas. He spent the better part of his life striving to get writers to produce the kinds of stories that he wanted for Astounding/Analog. He discovered new talent and worked ceaselessly to develop it. He took me to lunch whenever I visited New York. He liked to challenge writers with intellectual puzzles, and many's the time a group of us sat around the lunch table trying to figure out the answer to his latest conundrum. John Campbell was one of a kind. What we call science fiction today is, in large part, what John decided the field should be.

  SCHWEITZER: Did you ever have any difficulties with John Campbell's reported dogmatisms? There was a time when he was insisting that psionics was the essential "science" every SF writer should know. Your writings do not suggest you ever shared this view. How did you cope with the fact that this brilliant, mentoring figure could fall for things like the Dean Drive and the Hieronymus Machine?

  BOVA: I think the talk about John's "dogmatisms" has been overblown. He never insisted that I write about certain subjects or include one of his pet hobbyhorses in any story I sent him. When John was first hired to edit Astounding Stories, he asked his boss, "What happens if I don't
get enough good stories to fill the magazine?" The boss fixed him with a stern gaze and replied, "A good editor does." I firmly believe that from that moment on, John spent his energies on encouraging, cajoling, badgering writers into producing good stories for Astounding/Analog. His famous crotchets, such as the Dean Drive, et al., were a technique he used to get his writers to think outside the box, to try to go a step or two beyond themselves and produce new concepts. He never rejected a story of mine (or anyone else's, I daresay) because it didn't include whatever hobbyhorse he was riding at the time.

  SCHWEITZER: How did it feel to fill his shoes? How did you become his successor?

  BOVA: Fred Pohl once remarked, after hearing someone introduce me as the man who filled John Campbell's shoes, that I also filled his chair. I think was referring to the size of my butt. Be that as it may, it was exciting to be the editor of Analog. The management of The Condé Nast Publications, Inc., certainly provided me with all the encouragement they could, and Katherine Tarrant stayed on to help me find my way. Kay had been John's assistant since he'd started on the magazine in 1937.

  How did I get the job? When John died so suddenly, the management asked Kay Tarrant to draw up a list of contributors to the magazine who had written both science fiction and science fact. Kay, in turn, asked half a dozen of the magazine's major contributors to draw up such lists. Apparently my name was on each one of them. A year after I started at Analog I asked the man who had hired me - who was now the president of Condé Nast - why he had picked me. After all, there were much more distinguished people available for the job. He told me that none of the "suits" in the company's management knew anything about Analog - except that it made a modest profit every month. They had been content to let Campbell run the show, and continue to bring in a profit. When he got the various lists of potential successors, he told me, he made it his business to read some of the fiction and some of the non-fiction that each person had written for the magazine. "Ben," he exclaimed, "you were the only guy I could understand!" Score one for an apprenticeship on newspapers, where clarity is vital.