Asimov's Science Fiction: July 2013 (7 page)

Trusting the goodwill of the Wiggleweb elves, Cammy abruptly shoved Earl through the wormhole. And before Nelda could even shout—a fist to her gut, a leg sweep and a push sent her in Earl's wake.

The f loor resumed solidity. The Wiggleweb elves bowed toward Cammy. "Most excellent Linda Hamilton style aggression! Now, the real deal!"

A new short-cut wormhole opened. Englobed like a beloved human herder by a pack of trusty miniature musk oxen vigilant against Lifter wolves, Cammy dropped through. Gravity shifted vectors, and then she was standing half a kilometer away—where Bengt dangled dispiritedly, awaiting the Kafkaesque Penal Colony Rube Goldberg machinery of filleting. He was fourth from the head. So wan and listless were the victims of the yubba-vine extraction process that they hung there as quietly as country hams.

Like macro-amoebas, the pack of Wiggleweb elves merged their substance and f lowed a pseudopod around Bengt. They engulfed him, unhooked his heels, and passed him into their center, where Cammy clasped him furiously to herself. His bloated body felt semi-alien, semi-familiar. "Oh, Bengt, you big idiot doofus glutton!" Bengt's affect remained bland and f lat and sadly diminished. "Sorry, Cammy. I screwed the hot dog, or it screwed me. Guess I'm no Takeru Kobayashi after all."

"Don't worry, B-boy, we're gonna get you home safe and sound. Everything will be super fine!"

"Super fine without my vine? How I pine and do decline. Can't ref ine the mind off line."

"Oh, shit! Hey, you!" Cammy addressed the general location of the head elf—who was still merged with his posse. "Not ignorant
hey you!"
came the response. "Papa Palapa, at your rescue." "Okay, sorry, Papa Palapa. How do I get my man's yubba vine back?" "Oh, neato mosquito! We go check gift wrap division." The fused mob of little people, bearing Cammy and Bengt in their metaphoric belly, dropped down another teleportal (Cammy was almost getting to enjoy these rides), and emerged at an assembly line where single-minded workers were packing up fetish-like objects into long circuit-laden homeostatic shipping boxes as big as those that might hold a dozen untrimmed South American roses. Papa Palapa whisper-boomed to Cammy: "I busy up head wrapper man, you check out vines!"

Peeling off from the pack, Papa Palapa engaged the foreman, an off icious, vice-presidential candidate type, who soon assembled his team of packers to help respond to Palapa's frenetic, double-talking badinage. The yubba vines were unattended.

Very tentatively, Cammy lowered her foref inger onto one of the gnarly assemblages, a weird welter of cartilage, vertebrae, ectoplasmic tendrils, bits of bone, viscera, ganglia and dendritic microtubules.

As soon as her finger touched the vine, she was blasted with non-self memories of growing up black in Roxbury. She jerked back in surprise. Reluctantly, she began test
"Bengt! Here you are!" Her husband lowered his face to within an inch of the funky neuro-anima web. "I think I recognize my pineal gland." He reached down and grabbed the yubba vine. Instantly the old Bengt was back! He draped the soul-chord around his neck like a scarf. And as he donned the vine, it camouf laged its grisly essence beneath a sparkling illusion of crystals, tufts, spangles, and shells. "Cammy, I love you so much! I'd give you my yubba vine if you wanted it." "It belongs to you." The pack of Wiggleweb elves, sensing victory, shuff led Bengt and Cammy away from the gift-wrap division. And now the elf-mass subdivided into the former happy throng. Papa Palapa rejoined them. "Okay, pards! Time now for 'Open the pod bay door, Hal!'" Cammy felt sure they would be stopped at any minute. But another instant sub-quantum wormhole jaunt brought them to a collection of small shuttle vessels.

"Can't send you straight to Earth via spaghetti system," Papa Palapa intoned. "Whole planet interdicted. Must use last train to Clarksville." Only then did Cammy really take cognizance of their escape vehicle.

The flying saucer consisted of a shallow chassis approximately as big as a modest hot tub, with side and rear vanes for aerodynamic maneuvering. Half the interior space was occupied by the shielded drive mechanism. A transparent dome rested atop the passenger space. A few failsafe controls clustered around a small steering wheel. Maybe comfortable for Wiggleweb elves, but two humans could barely fit side by side on the padded bench seat, with their legs folded and knees up around their ears. "This is all you got?" "Lifter buggers can't be chewers! Hop in!" Papa Palapa raised the dome with a click and a whoosh of hydraulics.

Hopping was not the operative verb. Cammy let Bengt insert his unnatural bulk f irst, on the passenger side, before cramming herself in behind the wheel. Papa Palapa dropped the dome, which sealed claustrophobically around them with a reassuring thunk. "Whitney Houston, we have ignition!" The UFO trundled forward under invisible tractor beams, passed into an airlock, then was squeezed into naked space like a zit exploding. Freedom! Except that now they faced an enormous wormhole, big as a cathedral! Sucker-dotted tentacles the size of freight trains spilled from the hole into the raw vacuum, questing for their ship.

A hologram vidscreen on the dashboard f lared into life. The 3-D monitor was filled with a writhing nest of saliva-threaded beaks and ciliated mouths, a congeries of rasping tongues and fangs. Cammy felt like puking.

The chaotic organic eating machine bellowed, "Buy one get one free offer still in effect! No rebates! You're in the offer! So get in my shopping cart, you insolent canned goods!"

Against the background of the stars, the wormhole could be seen moving like the oval of a dark anti-searchlight. The tentacles moved ever closer and closer to the small craft with the humans inside.

Cammy shrieked, then grabbed the steering wheel and slammed a button marked

FAST. She made like she was sweet sixteen—behind the wheel of Daddy's Camaro once again, all hot tequila in her veins.

The wormhole stayed on their tail for a time but somehow—after a timeless hell of dodging and near misses—they broke into the clear, perhaps too trivial a prize for more recapture effort to be expended.

Cammy had triumphed. Or was it Olala's behind-the-scene interventions that had achieved the thrilling climax to this episode of
Terran Self-Selecting Provender Challenge?

As the upper edges of Earth's atmosphere began to heat the nose of their absurdly tiny craft, Olala himself appeared on the hologram display.

"Good going, kids! We're a hit again! Another season assured. And now that you're in the know, I can get loosey goosey with you. What a relief!" Olala reached up to grip his hair and pulled off his prosthetic human disguise. Pointing up directly from the fake shoulders of his cyborg exoskeleton sat a squat lobster head, all mandibles and feelers and beady glassy eyes. Cammy was too numb to be shocked or scared.

Bengt crowed, "Boil me scarlet and dip me in butter. Now I know why you steered clear of those annual fraternity clambakes."

"Nah, just too boring. After all, what's a little cannibalism among friends?"

As a USAF officer who volunteered for and was denied a posting in Kuwait during the build-up to Operation Iraqi Freedom, Gray Rinehart remains inspired by all those who defended, and are defending, the cause of freedom in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere—and particularly the courage, fortitude, and commitment of those who have borne the brunt of battle. His third story for
Asimov's,
informed partly by observations while serving on temporary duty in Kazakhstan and Russia, asks...

Miroslav did not expect to find a colonel waiting for him when he returned from physical therapy. The off icer was looking out the window; Miroslav came to sluggish attention, unused to his ill-f itted prosthetic leg.

The stranger turned away from the window and regarded Miroslav's awkward pose. "Please, Captain," he said, his voice heavy though he smiled and nodded, "stand at ease, or sit if you prefer."

Miroslav shifted his single crutch a little, careful not to throw his balance off. He would not sit unless the colonel did so, even though his muscles quivered as if he had just completed a twenty-kilometer forced march.

Would they send a high-ranking off icer to discharge him? Any nurse could have delivered the paperwork; it would be less humiliating.

"How is your recovery?" the colonel asked. "Are you receiving adequate treatment? Are you progressing well?"

Miroslav acquiesced to the small talk. "I am stronger," he said. He stood on his own for a second and tapped his false leg with the crutch. As he put the crutch back down, he lifted his prosthetic left arm. "I am not... as capable as I once was."

The colonel frowned, as if he preferred not to discuss the reality of Miroslav's amputations. He strode to the hard steel chair and sat, perched on the front edge like a gargoyle leering from the side of a building. He sniffed; a brief look of distaste
crossed his face from the room's antiseptic smell. After that lapse, he regarded Miroslav with the cool concentration of a sniper.

Miroslav shuff led to the bed and, fumbling only once, managed to seat himself. Until two days ago, he had required a nurse's assistance to do even that much. Perhaps this was progress. He supposed if they had given him a better leg, one fitted with sensors and tuned to signals from his brain, and an arm that would support any signif icant weight, he might at least look more normal. But why waste such things on him when it was easier to muster him out? He knew the Americans built truly modern limbs, good enough to keep the willing wounded in service, but he held out no hope of that.

"Captain Ponomarenko, I am Colonel Lutrov. I am here because your case has attracted high-level attention in the government. I am sure you can guess what sort of attention."

Miroslav was certain he could. His family name had secured him some small notoriety in his early career, and his successes in the ongoing Chechen campaign had earned him more, but having an uncle as a very senior Kremlin off icial meant that Miroslav endured more jealousy from peers and more entreaties from sycophants than he cared to acknowledge. It also meant that his failure in his most recent skirmish would have attracted the wrong sort of attention.

"Yes, Colonel, I believe I can."

"Good. We would not want to disappoint your powerful friends."

"No," Miroslav said, "of course not."

"Then I am to give you this," Colonel Lutrov said, and pulled a thick brown envelope from the inside pocket of his jacket. He read aloud the white label on the front. "Captain Miroslav Aleksandrovich Ponomarenko, you are ordered to proceed to the Nikita Trubetskoy Military Sub-Academy and present yourself there on 17 June. Report in civilian attire." The colonel stood, stepped to the bed, and offered the envelope to Miroslav.

Dubious, Miroslav took the envelope and read the label himself. He turned it over, ready to open it and read the contents, but the colonel extended a hand as Miroslav saw the bold print over the flap: TO BE OPENED ONLY BY TRUBETSKOY SUBACADEMY DIRECTOR.

"What is this?" Miroslav asked, his fatigued muscles tensing like primed explosives ready for a firing signal. "Am I to be a spectacle, to frighten children?"

Colonel Lutrov returned to the chair and sat as alert and observant as before. "I am not at liberty to discuss the details, but I can say that you will observe and interact with the cadets. You went to Trubetskoy, did you not? Surely recent heroes visited you from time to time."

Miroslav sniffed, as much at the title "hero" as at the memory of the dignitaries who visited the school when he was a cadet. Most were old men, perhaps important or even powerful in their own ways, but none of them particularly inspiring.

"I thought you were bringing me discharge papers," he said.

The colonel raised his eyebrows. "Not today. Just orders."

"Ridiculous orders," Miroslav argued. "This is less than a week away."

Colonel Lutrov shrugged. "You said you were getting stronger." When Miroslav did not challenge this statement or ask any more questions, the colonel stood. "I have done my duty here, Captain, so I bid good day to you. I will alert the staff that you will be discharged soon. I am certain your remaining therapy here will be enough to prepare you for your journey. I hope to meet you again, and to hear about your... return to your youth."

He left Miroslav turning the envelope over and over, reading each side again and again, and wondering at how far he had fallen.

Miroslav's stump itched where it met his prosthesis. The itch intensif ied the longer he stood still, yet he could not make himself move. He should just cross the street and go inside, but doubt and memory kept him rooted to the grimy sidewalk. A coughing, asthmatic panel van lurched down the street. Miroslav resisted the urge to scratch his stump.

He also resisted the urge to return to the Metro station, and from there to the base to ask for discharge papers instead of the strange, sealed envelope he had been given. He must be the subject of some complicated and expensive practical joke. Or worse, an attempt to honor him.

In the absence of further movement on the street, Miroslav studied his destination. He was surprised how much the sub-academy looked exactly as it had when he graduated from it twelve years before. The school dominated the street, its bleak concrete face seeming slightly smaller than he remembered. Three stories high, grey as everything else in the old suburb, its rows of small windows protected with iron grates still reminded him of a prison.

He regarded the rest of the block, and found little to impress him there, either. The apartment complex in front of which he stood was decorated with a mosaic of grim, determined workers in baggy pants laying brick on brick to create more and more of the same dismal apartment buildings that stretched down the street. There the line of uniformity met crumbling shells and rusting skeletons of buildings never completed, where the Socialist ideal encountered the reality of history: with no central authority to direct them, the original crews had gone in search of other opportunities, abandoned projects in place, and left the edge of the city as brown, dingy, and unfulfilled as the once-colorful mosaic.

Miroslav rubbed his tongue over his teeth. Already he felt the grime and soot that covered everything starting to permeate him. The apartment balconies overf lowed with junk, as much the detritus of capitalism as were the empty storefronts lining the street on his walk from the station, while the unmowed swath of grass in front of the building spoke of a discipline sorely lacking in the civilian sector.

"I know you," said a voice above him.

An old man, balding and sun-browned, leaned against the railing of one of the balconies. He sucked on his cigarette, grinned, and blew a great plume into the air.

"Is that so?" Miroslav asked. He stepped painfully closer to the building, trying not to use the walking stick they had issued him. He did not venture too close, lest the stink of neglect and piss attach itself to him.

"Who else could you be, but Ponomarenko? We all know you here, in uniform or out." He took another drag off the cigarette. From a radio or television behind him a commentator's voice rose to announce a goal for the World Cup team. He grinned and continued, "You are the hero of Gudermes, the hero of Vedeno. What did they give you after Vedeno? Order of Suvurov?"

Miroslav winced a little at the sound of the names, his vision brief ly clouding with blood-tinged remembrances of the Chechen cities. He shook his head. "Order of Kutuzov, Third Class. And Order of Saint George, Fourth Class."

The old man's cigarette was a tiny nub in his stained fingers. "Idiots. There was a time you would have earned the Red Banner."

"And there was a time you would not so casually have called them 'idiots.'" The old man laughed, and nodded, as Miroslav said, "Besides, I'm no hero, only a survivor."

"Only a survivor... who has come home." The old man laughed at some private joke, then gestured across the street. "You're going back, then?"

"Perhaps," Miroslav said.

"You go on. Inside, they wait for you. You will do fine. You'll come out a new man." The old man winked, and returned to watching the street.

Miroslav crossed the street toward the ugly front door. He cursed both the cheapness of his new leg and the fact that he had had so little time to learn how to use it properly.

The stairway was wide, the treads slick and uneven in the shoddy Communist crafts tradition. Instead of using the damned cane, he held it in his hand as he pressed against the half-height brick wall, his prosthetic arm held out at an angle in front of him as he limped up the stairs.

The vestibule looked much as it always had: clean and Spartan; white walls broken only by a set of f lags, the academy's crest, and the latest portraits of national and military leaders and the school's namesake. He appreciated how much the wood f loor shone, having spent many hours polishing it himself when he was a cadet.

He remembered the way to the commandant's off ice. As he turned in that direction a pretty woman close to his own age, carrying a fancy new digital workspace—he could not tell what model—entered from the hallway. Miroslav hugged his left arm close to himself when he recognized her.

"Nastas'ya?" he asked.

She looked up. "Slava," she said, and beamed at him. Her smile, wide and perfect, was no less bright than her clear blue eyes. She was taller than he remembered, sleek in a white blouse and indigo skirt; her hair was more brown now than blonde, but she was still Anastasiya Kozyreva. "It has been too long," she said, and stopped, her eyes wider as the fullness of her words came to her.

She looked down at her feet, aware as he was why it had been so long but also why, if Miroslav had controlled events, it would have been even longer.

He had brought her brother's body home, had stood heart hammering and head pounding with her and her parents at the funeral. He had returned to his unit the next day. Once, when they were younger, he had talked of marrying his best friend's little sister, but when he failed to bring Pasha home alive he buried that boyhood fantasy with his friend.

"I am sorry, Nastas'ya," Miroslav said.

She sniffed. Her fingers danced over the surface of her portable workstation in a graceful pattern that meant nothing to Miroslav. "As am I, Slava. But I think you did not expect to see me. Come, Mr. Berezovsky is anxious to meet with you."

Her face and voice in tight control, Anastasiya led him into the anteroom of the commandant's off ice. She announced him and held the door for him to enter. Miroslav tried to meet her eyes again, but failed.

"Thank you, Miss Kozyreva, that will be all. Captain Ponomarenko, so good to see you. I am Jurek Mikhailovich Berezovsky, the academy, uh, administrator."

Berezovsky was much younger than Miroslav had expected. When he had gone to the Academy, the commandant had been Colonel Lenka Grigorivich Arsov, a decorated old soldier with ten tales of courageous action for each medal on his uniform. Arsov had been a gruff, self-important man to whom the military aspect of training was never tough enough, but who had nonetheless treated Miroslav fairly well.

Miroslav wondered if the sub-academy even had the same military air he recalled. Berezovsky did not use the title "commandant," and like Miroslav and Anastasiya the man was in civilian clothes. Had control of the academy, like so much of Mother Russia, been given into the hands of private enterprise? It seemed not from the trappings in the windowless office, including a passable rendering of the Battle of Waterloo that dominated one wall. But Berezovsky seemed too young ever to have worn a uniform.

The pleasantries over, Miroslav sat opposite Berezovsky. The man radiated pride and contentment from across the desk. "Captain Ponomarenko, I am so glad they sent you to us. You have made this academy very proud."

"You are very kind, Mr. Berezovsky. Of course I owe my success to what I learned here." He looked down at the inert plastic where his left arm had once been. "And, I suppose, my failure to what I forgot."

"Ah, still as modest as ever?" the administrator asked. "Still in the habit of forcing others to accept praise for things that you have done? Do you still take all the blame on yourself when things go wrong, too?"

Berezovsky's tone was much more familiar than Miroslav thought strictly proper. His puzzlement must have shown on his face, because Berezovsky continued, "Your school record was very complete, and we have heard much about your military record to date."

"Thank you," said Miroslav. "If I do share credit more than blame, that, too, must be something I learned here." He paused for a second, wondering suddenly if this habit he had developed was a strength or a f law in his character, and just as quickly wondering if he was being genuine about it in the first place. Rather than run that mental maze, he said, "Here, I am to give this packet to you." With his good hand, Miroslav reached into his coat and pulled out the sealed brown envelope.

Berezovsky unsealed the package, and retrieved and unsealed an inner envelope as well. From it he pulled a few slim sheets, each bordered in scarlet—a classif ication marking new to Miroslav. Berezovsky read the orders and nodded in sage understanding. A slow grin formed on his face. "Just as I expected, when I was told to welcome you," he said. "We have a fine group of cadets here now, and I think you'll enjoy getting to know them."